Ask Lemmy

I tried tinder once 8 years ago when I moved to a new city. Quickly deleted it. Basically every swipe was a match but then the men would not answer, eventually unmatched without ever answering or immediately text something sexual. Oh and so many "my profile says X but actually...." I think I met with three guys over the course of three month or so and they all tried to pressure me into having sex on the first or second date. One even mocked me for thinking any man would look for anything other than quick sex on tinder.

So it was pretty horrible and I felt mostly unsafe with the guys I met so I quickly stopped using it. I think it's a horrible way to meet people.

Used tinder, got married, been married for a few years now. 9/10, the app deserves a 3, but it worked.

Used OKCupid from ~2008 to 2016. Maybe 10 or so 1-2 month relationships in that time. Plenty of first dates. Then met my wife. Married in '23.

I've heard it's a fucking nightmare now though. OKCupid used to be all about the profiles and questions, but soon after we stopped using it, it turned into a Tinder clone with just photos. Add in a healthy dose of AI, and I'm sure it's a very unpleasant time.

Used hinge, tinder, okcupid, and maybe a couple others. I'm a guy who doesn't date men, 30s, in a large urban area, average looks and fitness.

I found I could get about a date a week if I put in effort. Most people aren't putting in effort. Most of your effort is going to go into the void. You just have to accept that most people kind of suck and aren't going to respond. But just reading their profile and sending a message like a normal person puts you well above average.

Many people seem to just half ass it and I don't understand why. Like, their profile says they love NK Jemisen. You write that you love her books and ask if they read her latest. They write back with "no", and of message, no follow up. Like how do you expect that to work out favorably? If you don't have time, don't respond. If you're not interested, unmatch. A dead end reply just wastes everyone's time.

The apps themselves are not focused on good outcomes. They want money. That doesn't always mean giving you the best match right away. But sometimes it works out anyway.

I have met several people - and eventually my wife - via apps. I'd describe the process as painful, possibly soul-sucking. I would not consider myself attractive, but am not super ugly either. It took a lot of effort though, and was generally highly depressing. I guess it worked, but I feel like there have to be better ways.

Perspective of Average looking guy in his 30s.

No. Did not find, got one date once.

Used for years on and off.

It was horrible.

One match a month at most that was not a bot.

Biggest problem: lopsided demand for male vs females.

Terrible way to meet people.

Used it in an attempt to find a girlfriend.

On one hand, they were absolutely crap to deal with and awfully predatory. That said, I met my spouse on Hinge so I guess I owe them enough to say it worked. Just don't pay and don't get discouraged when it takes time to get there.

I met my wife IRL, but that was after more than a decade on dating apps and multiple long relationships from them. They are the best tool ever created for learning to accept rejection, and learning to feel attraction dynamics/what your preferred partner may be attracted to. Best tool ever, also, if you struggle with confidence around your attracted gender, or struggle with self esteem. Even hyper attractive people who are looking for "the one" have to learn to overcome these things, it's just how romantic value works psychologically. These issues used to be my main barriers (and some baggage) and I didn't have a single date for 8 years before I decided "fuck it" and made a tinder account. It was awkward and it fucking sucked at first. Actually, using the app basically always fucking sucked, but it generated hope, at least, and opportunity. I had social and performance anxiety out the ass in the beginning, though.

Relationships/dating are like anything else: practice makes perfect. It sounds weird, I know. You don't need multiple partners necessarily, but you will grow and change and being in a relationship is the only way to promote that growth and change specifically in response to a relationship. In addition to "practice", these apps also allow you a LOT of vetting before you spend a single dollar or minute on a bad fit. This can be so frustrating with meeting people IRL and finding out a deal breaker after a LOT of investment. Usually you're only getting big picture information, but for me, a person who doesn't jive with the majority of the culture in my community (religion & politics), they were an absolute game changer!

It's been a long time, so take a big grain of salt with these recommendations, there may be better or more specific options for you! Hinge was my favorite. I only actually went out on dates with 3 people, but they were all high quality encounters. This was just after it came out, too, so there is probably a bigger user base now? Second I would say bumble, but it's a little more specialized.

A long time ago tinder was the best for volume and minimal investment time, it was also the one I used the longest and with by far the most success. Not sure how it is now, but as the cis man I was at the time I swiped right on every single profile and didn't get myself invested by being picky in the searching phase on tinder. There is plenty of time to reject before the first meet up and, even with people who swipe you back, the vast majority will simply ghost you after a bit, and that's just how it is, unless you are lucky enough to be drop dead gorgeous. I was learning not to set myself up for heartbreak by dreaming dreams I was gathering from pictures and text blurbs. You must learn to accept the rejection and stop letting it bother you first, and tinder was amazing at that, eventually you run out of people in your area, or at least I did, but this strategy on tinder made it so I didn't waste a lot of time reading and lopsidedly investing in anyone who was going to simply swipe my ass left in 0.5 milliseconds anyway. You can also run into people you know on any of these apps, which can be good or bad. Patience is key, don't lose hope, gain strength and resilience. Frame it as practice and self improvement, and not as magically finding the one in the first week.

Lastly, my absolute best dating advice in retrospect is MAKE YOURSELF HAPPY FIRST. Find a passion, find what fires you up, find your creativity, explore things that make you uncomfortable, take yourself on trips, or out to interesting activities with interesting people, grow as much as you possibly can outside of a relationship, even after you are in one. Regardless of gender, race, culture, sexuality, etc. every human on earth is attracted to passion, security, and ambition in a partner. Work on those traits first (also: hit the gym/eat right, it's just the reality of physical attraction) and you will attract people to you, which is natural and the ultimate goal in order to meet a person that can grow with the best version of you. In short, become the person you would be attracted to and definitely do not expect your future partner to make you into that person, or allow you to become that person after the fact. It's on you, no matter what stage of the journey you are at when you meet them.

The security of self actualization also allows you to feel confident enough in yourself to recognize when a relationship isn't working and take action, which is absolutely essential to not becoming trapped because you don't think you could do better, or find anyone else. No matter what people say, no one is ever attracted to another person, indefinitely, simply because that person is also attracted to them, it doesn't happen. Even in the highest value partners across the spectrum of all humans ever, attraction waxes and wanes. So, if your goal is a rock solid, "grow old together" kind of love, you absolutely must build it on a solid foundation that will survive the difficult moments, and that isn't possible without being solid within yourself first and foremost.

I would not have had the confidence, or relationship skills to have met and married my wife without my time learning about myself through the use of these apps.

Used many of the dating sites/apps over the years. Tinder, OkCupid, PlentyofFish, Match, Hinge, Happn, Facebook Dating and at least one or two others. Literally found nothing on ALL of them. I had one date from OkCupid, a coffee date. And it was hella awkward, it lasted maybe 30 minutes, and we both went our separate ways.

The very few matches I would get would either net me a "promotional" message for their OF page, or I would get one word responses for 3 messages and then ghosted. I would say at least 70% of the accounts I ever even interacted with were bots or fakes of some form.

One good success story though, and I'm still with her to this day, is from Bumble. I used Bumble several times over the years, and usually had my same luck, but 2 and a half years ago I matched with someone and we hit it off from the start. We're still going strong 🤙🏻🤙🏻

It's really a shot in the dark on that shit. You'll most likely find nonsense, but if you're a gamblin' fella, the reward could be worth the risk.

Something no one seems to have mentioned in this thread is what a huge culture change Tinder was. Tinder singlehandedly made online dating mainstream. Before Tinder I've literally had a couple of women tell me they would never meet anyone from online dating sites, that it just reeks of desperation, that it's like putting an ad in a newspaper for a date and there's no substitute for meeting someone in real life. A couple of years later everyone is on Tinder (including those same people). People shifted almost entirely to online dating and approaching anyone asking for a date IRL became "too forward and unwelcome".

I think online dating has always been a cesspool of women getting creepy and threatening messages and guys shouting into the void with unreplied messages. Sure it pays off for some (I've seen some friends get dates and hookups, but back then no one wanted to admit to meeting online), but the widespread acceptance of these platforms hasn't changed the fact that every website and app is just an enshitified mess.

Tried one for the first time about a year ago, but only for a few days. Bi poly woman, looking for any poly individuals of any gender. (Not interested in being a unicorn for bicurious couples.)

I figured Feeld would be a good choice since its kink/queer-friendly.

• within one day I had over 70 likes. Despite living in a small town and setting <20km range. Almost every single one was from a (gender declared as) man that hadn't bothered to fill out their profiles with anything at all. Maybe a third didn't even have a picture (not that it would've mattered, because I want to meet people not bodies, but who do they think is going to swipe right on a sunset, or on Wrath of the Lich King box art?)

• Plenty of couples looking for unicorns that listed themselves as one person to be on my feed anyway. Always with vague filler that tells me nothing about them or what they're looking for, stuff like 'connect and see where it goes'.

• plenty of (hypothetical) women that were theoretically looking, but actually the profile was their male partner, whom you had to talk to first, despite saying nothing about her. No photos, no hobbies, nothing about her as a person. Idk if he was standing guard to feel in control and soothe his relationship insecurities, or if she wanted him to protect her from all the risk/effort, but either way: nope. They're almost never looking for a mutual experience, theyre looking for a volunteer to perform her fantasies for free

• I had every permutation of individual switched on: trans men, women (cis or trans), enbies etc included... but 99% of what I saw was cis men. I don't know if they were promoted by the app or they really are almost all of the users, but the app would literally start looping through the same empty profiles of cis men without ever showing me a queer woman (that wasn't a couple pretending)

• Once I stopped including cis men (which i felt very conflicted about but i was so fucking overwhelmed), I finally started seeing queer women (and more unicorn hunters ofc). Almost all of them had fully filled out profiles but the amount of likes dropped to like... 2 over the remaining 3 days I had the app installed.

• one pan man put a 'super like' on me which let me see him directly, he'd actually filled put his profile which was great because it gave me something to open with. We had a great conversation but I slowed down on meeting up in person right away because I needed to attend to some real-life needs and invited him to connect outside the app while that happened, which he agreed with but then kinda disappeared without doing so. Maybe he assumed I wasn't actually interested or I would take too long, idk. A shame because I did like him

I have a (mostly) straight male partner and he showed me his app experience: most of the straight women didn't bother filling out their profiles at all either, nor did gay men. It seemed only queer women filled it out almost every time? We theorised that the queer dating pool is really small so it's understood you have to represent yourself to be seen, and women want to have an idea of who you are before they reach out.

Meeting other women is hard so I'd probably need to get back on apps at some point, but damn. Really do feel sorry for everybody out there. All of the people I've actually dated have been met in-person.

Haven't used them in about 10 years so can't speak to recent experience but before that used them on and off. Experience was okay, a few good dates and a few one off dates where we didn't really match in real life. Nothing long term.

Overall don't like those apps, as a hetero short guy I figured I get filtered out of most searches so it takes a long time to find someone willing to meet up for a date, seems easier to talk to ppl in real life (IMO). You sort of know there might be a connection if you can get someone to smile face to face, or you know they are trying to do the same with you, that's not something you do over an app.

Used OkCupid about 9 years ago (mid 30s male). I tried it for a few weeks, liked what it was at the time, and did the 3 month cheap trial premium it whatever it was to get some additional data basically.

There were 3 girls I talked to repeatedly, and a bunch of one and done conversations.

Girl 1 seemed fun and had what seemed like good energy. We were supposed to talk on the phone and set up a date, I believe the situation was, but I was hanging out at my bandmate's house and lost track of time and she started flipping out on text for not calling. It seemed pretty excessive for us never having met or anything yet, so I called it quits on that one.

Girl 2 was quieter and a little bit reserved, but I really enjoyed talking to her. I really wanted to meet her, but she never got over her nerves or whatever it was to call or hang out, and she would go a few days without being online to chat, so I didn't know if it would lead anywhere.

Girl 3 was very conversational and outgoing. I feel we talked a week or so on the online chat and then we talked on the phone. We were supposed to meet up, but I didn't hear from her. She had ended up falling asleep after work and was apologetic about it. We ended up hanging out later and hit it off very well.

We've been together almost every day since and got married this November.

So it took about a month for me to have success. My story seems to be an outlier. She had many bad experiences before meeting me. I feel bad that I hear they trashed the app though. I really enjoyed the experience and thought the matching process was pretty nice.

Found my now-husband on Hinge. I was on the app a while (a year and change) before we matched, but he told me that I was his first match on it. There were a lot of duds and a few first dates that led nowhere, but I didn't have any interaction with people I felt where dangerous or anything like that. Hinge also didn't feel like it had anything that felt overtly monetized compared to other dating apps (like bumble). This was back in 2020 so I have no idea what it's like now.

Ok, ill bite.

Was reluctantly on Hinge a while back (was 31M at the time). My sibilings twisted my arm to make a profile and helped design it (I dont take pictures of myself so it was challanging to make). Overall expirence was negative to neutral, over ~2 years of minimal useage just to the profile active, threw 15$ at the app to see if it changed the algorithm (it does). IIRC ~12 replies, 3 first dates/meet-ups and 0 second dates. Cant say I put a ton of effort It so I wont lose sleep over anything.

The shocking part of the whole thing was compairing results with my sister. She functionally did not need to go to the default feed, dozens if not hundreds of contact requests... We had a joke back when she was in college that if she felt like it, she would never have to pay for a dinner (obviosuly that would be a dick move, and she never took advantage of anyone, but the data was there).

Once it became obvious that the platform was full of bots, dumby accounts, and was noticably trying to prey on desperate people with credit cards, I just moved on. Over all advice, if you find an app thats very new and not owned by match group, go for it, you will likely meet people earnestly trying to make connections. Otherwise, dont bother, go find a date the old fashioned way, outside.

The sad truth is, these apps are not great for minorities, so I never had much luck on them. OkCupid’s articles and statistics further proved this. I miss when they used to release their in depth info, before Match bought them out.

I used them about 10yrs ago. Right when Tinder was starting to pick up in popularity I was thankfully able to get off of them.

Got one or two matches but never actually met up with anyone. Not my sort of thing I guess. They're just built to get you to pay for premium services.

Pre-covid, I had used Tinder, OKC, others a few times and while living in various states. Location made a big difference as to which platform was any good. One city, Tinder would be king and give decent results, but next city it would be a wasteland with trash and bots.

Post-covid, either the apps got even more money-hungry or I changed enough to not deal with the bullshit on those apps anymore. I found them worthless and haven't gone back.

I recall one message that was almost word for word match for a DM I had gotten on Reddit in that similar timeframe. Something along the lines of using my body and leaving me ruined for life. I figured if a pseudonymous reddit account, no photos or physical description of me, no posts even vaguely waving in the direction of sexual things gets the same sort of messages as my actual, intentional dating profile, I no longer wanted to interact with the men on those forums. Yeah, yeah, "not all men" but there's no way to filter them out from the ones with baseline social skills.

I used tinder on and off over the years and delete it not long after signing back up (moved a few times). I get matches but too many people expect hookups after a first hang out as if its the norm, not looking for that. For some people that might be great but I'm not into that scene. Currently trying bumble and it seems better on that end

These apps are cynically designed to extract money, not match people. They want to string you along for as long as possible. They exploit loneliness. It's disgusting.

I haven't used that kind of apps since like 10 years ago, they are all complete waste of time unless you are Chad or travel abroad to some poor country at least for men, if you are female you will get a lot more of options but the problem will be quality not quantity and the majority of men will just smash and bounce. IMHO there is nothing like knowing someone IRL for someone average looking.

Hmm. Primarily I used hinge. I had some okay conversations that never went anywhere. There were more conversations that turned gross at what felt like completely random. It didn’t seem like most people were very serious, just passing time or looking for something easy and quick.

The worst part was truly matching, honestly. I couldn’t be less interested in muscle dudes with big trucks. And yet that’s most often what the app offered me to swipe on. The worst two dates I ever went on were directly connected to using dating apps. I would never use them again to meet people. I’ll just rot.

YMMV.

Used tinder for a bit less than a year in 2019. I was about to turn 30. I'm not very social and outgoing and when I went out to have drinks I usually had a lot of guy friends with me which isn't very helpful when you're single.

It was.. interesting. Being ghosted, people not showing up to dates or being outright mean took a toll on my self esteem but I also met my spouse there and 6 years later we're happier than ever. We wouldn't have met without the app so I'm thankful :)

I’ve been in a committed relationship for the past few years, so I haven’t got the freshest experience, but:

I’ve always had luck with tinder and similar ones. Current relationship is from there too. But this is for mono relationships.

When I was going through my poly experiments era, tinder really didn’t work out for me. Or any of the others at the time, but tinder’s been the biggest here regionally so I’ll keep using that in place of all the similar apps.

Surprisingly enough, for any poly or just more casual stuff otherwise, the most action and great memories and experiences I got through Jodel. It’s not a dating app, but somehow it just happened to work. I didn’t explicitly send messages to anyone either, it just came to be.

Which is all to say, it’s not the explicitly dating apps alone one should consider. Or, rather, I guess it depends a lot on what one’s looking for, and perhaps speaks to just how much people you can meet and get contact with and get excited about and have nice memories with, without trying explicitly to do that. Just organically connecting with people on a personal level without any masks on.

But I never thought any of the different ways to meet people are necessarily bad or gave me any problems or whatever. People just meet and click, if they dare to put themselves out there. When I was younger, it was through school, work, bars, friends’ friends, parties, gigs, festivals, cafes, libraries… you know, basically anywhere there are people, you might just accidentally find a fun or endearing adventure with someone.

That’s not to say there aren’t any bad experiences too. But it does a lot of good to instead focus on the good ones and try and hang on to them, so you’ll dare to throw yourself out there again and have more of them. I know it’s not as easily done as it is said, but outright dismissing it without seriously trying will definitely not help and even actively sabotage your own confidence and vibe, you know?

A lot of it is just attitude. If you can find a way to remain happy and endearing and brave enough to get personal, close, even if for just little whiles at a time, then I almost guarantee you, you’ll just attract others somehow, somewhere, always. The question I guess is, will you pick up on it or dare to go with it when it comes to you? Because that shit is hard and stressful if you’re not used to it, very easy to just skip or ignore outright without even trying, without exposing yourself to the potential harm and heartbreak (potential love and warm memories too, mind you!), and only repeat practice will ultimately give you the perspective and outlook required to come out better each time.

But I digress. I know not everyone has a good time with these, perhaps a lot of it is regional/cultural too, but almost everyone I know, have mostly had amazing experiences, ultimately, through these apps. Some get to it some other way, mostly the means alternate, but people just tend to find each others naturally, somehow just end up in the right place in the right time. Sometimes that’s the tinder or other dating app. Sometimes it’s something else.

But I haven’t personally heard any horror stories, and all the heartbreak and sad stories have always ultimately been overshadowed by later joy and warmth found in the exact same apps or whatever. Neither have I experienced anything out of ordinary. Some heartbreak, some disappointments, sure, but most importantly, love and caring to outshine those. Nothing that wouldn’t happen if met otherwise.

I would talk to people and almost meet up but then get so anxious I'd get physically sick and bail.

i met my wife on there after 1 single day and now im FUCKED

Absolutely disgraceful that they exist. They prey on people's desperation to not be lonely and through that, people will pay anything to not be lonely anymore.

I've been on a couple of them and they do this Facebook-like trick, where they stuff your inbox full of notifications that people are suddenly wanting to contact you. But in order to access your inbox, you have to pay to see what's there. What are the odds that after just registering, making your profile and everything that it is just bots or nothing in that inbox?

Just bullshit and predatory.

Facebook's Dating app, while free and everything, they limit your character limit. So you have to dumb down your profile and you'll maybe get one person or two in spacious periods of time. But even then you're spending a lot of time just swiping past people who are restricted to the same thing and you don't learn a lot about them.