Is there like a cheat code for dating apps?
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32m here and ive been on dating apps for over 10 years and think they've gotten worse since the whole swiping algorithm. I always do max swipes daily on fb dating, tinder, and bumble with minimum to no success. Tinder being the worst of the three. Ik irl is better, I just am not good at it with social anxiety and overthinking. Anybody find what works on these apps if you're an average looking man?
If you have social anxiety, that's the bottleneck here.
Don't stress about the apps. I'm an attractive guy, almost always in a relationship, and in any of the times I was single, I never got a date through a dating site.
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32m here and ive been on dating apps for over 10 years and think they've gotten worse since the whole swiping algorithm. I always do max swipes daily on fb dating, tinder, and bumble with minimum to no success. Tinder being the worst of the three. Ik irl is better, I just am not good at it with social anxiety and overthinking. Anybody find what works on these apps if you're an average looking man?
wrote last edited by [email protected]Having gone from the guy with no matches to getting good matches, in part from advice from female friends, here's what worked for me in order of priority:
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De-red flag. Remember, men are about 5-10x as likely to commit acts of violence as women. So imagine you're looking at your profile as a third person, assuming there's a good chance you're a serial killer. Make sure your jokes are clearly jokes and can't be read as hinting at any extreme beliefs or even overall weirdness. Seriously, there's like a 90% chance that if you haven't done this already, you've got something on your profile that's terrifying to most women. Now a common faulty cognition I see is "I should tell her what other girls don't like about me as a warning". No, stop. That's not how you do it. Because girls will assume it's 1000% worse than what you're saying, and even worse the algorithm will nuke you if you get too many rejections. Instead, see step 4) and reject other girls who won't be into you.
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Good pictures. Again, 1) comes into play here. No dark backgrounds. Nothing that looks like one of those pictures they show of suspects on the news. Outdoors is good. If you have pictures with people, great. If not, no sweat, just make it look good. Look up a guide on how to take a good selfie and use it.
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Keep your written answers short. No one reads them anyway, unless they're really long and creepy. You're not going to convince her you're Shakespeare, she's really just checking to make sure you don't remind her of someone she had a terrible experience with.
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Now all that being said, the best strategy for swiping is to be the opposite of most people. Don't just swipe on anyone who meets your attractiveness standards. Instead, swipe only on girls you'd really be excited to meet, and that you think would be excited to meet you too. Are you frugal? Don't swipe right on the model with a Gucci bag. I know it's hard. But you really have no chance of making it and dating her would make you miserable anyway. So swipe left and get the little boost that helps you meet a better match. I will say I've followed this strategy on Hinge which supposedly has a better algorithm for matching people, so I can't guarantee it for other sites.
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This is not useful advice for dating apps.
While that is true, i think it also nicely points out that dating apps are actually not a great way to find a partner anymore
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There is no universal definition of attractive for all people, women, men, robots or space aliens.
Be your true self and if you look far enough, you’ll be someone’s fantasy ( no guarantees on if you will find them attractive as well ).
Even if only 1 in 10 million people think of you as their fantasy; that means you have 800+ possible partners to choose from.
If any of the said 800 people are reading this, drop me a line
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32m here and ive been on dating apps for over 10 years and think they've gotten worse since the whole swiping algorithm. I always do max swipes daily on fb dating, tinder, and bumble with minimum to no success. Tinder being the worst of the three. Ik irl is better, I just am not good at it with social anxiety and overthinking. Anybody find what works on these apps if you're an average looking man?
Don't bother. I've tried so many of them and they're almost all shit.
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32m here and ive been on dating apps for over 10 years and think they've gotten worse since the whole swiping algorithm. I always do max swipes daily on fb dating, tinder, and bumble with minimum to no success. Tinder being the worst of the three. Ik irl is better, I just am not good at it with social anxiety and overthinking. Anybody find what works on these apps if you're an average looking man?
Type "power overwhelming" in chat
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There is no universal definition of attractive for all people, women, men, robots or space aliens.
Be your true self and if you look far enough, you’ll be someone’s fantasy ( no guarantees on if you will find them attractive as well ).
Even if only 1 in 10 million people think of you as their fantasy; that means you have 800+ possible partners to choose from.
Rephrasing, you don't prefer people who you find attractive?
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Rephrasing, you don't prefer people who you find attractive?
Attractive for me is about the contents of one’s mind and heart.
I prefer my husband; who could gain or lose more than a 100 lbs and I would still be attracted to him. (Not that I wouldn’t encourage him to be healthy, so we can share more years together)
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32m here and ive been on dating apps for over 10 years and think they've gotten worse since the whole swiping algorithm. I always do max swipes daily on fb dating, tinder, and bumble with minimum to no success. Tinder being the worst of the three. Ik irl is better, I just am not good at it with social anxiety and overthinking. Anybody find what works on these apps if you're an average looking man?
Disclaimer: I’m not straight, but when I used the apps I mostly matched with women, who were mostly cis and mostly straight.
It sounds like you’re looking for a LTR. Tinder is mostly for HUs. Everyone I met on there was casual-only or wanted long term but like, desperately. Bumble wasn’t a significantly different crowd when I tried it, in spite of the hype. Hinge I heard was better for LTRs, with a questionnaire system and everything, but never tried. Overall, my impression was that lots of the “looking for something real” folks in the apps probably should’ve been prioritizing therapy and learning to love themselves before throwing themselves into another LTR. This leads to my main point at the bottom.
For more swipes/matches, top rec is almost always better photos, especially for straight men, but I would modify that recommendation slightly. I think you should first ask yourself some questions about your target audience.
Why: Let’s say you’re advertising yourself as a kind stable safe and hard-working man looking for a LTR. That profile, to be successful with your target audience, will easily scare away the casual crowd for lots of reasons. The sincere and detailed bio, the photos of you posing with others at formal events, etc are all workable but limit your marketability to a specific subset of women who mostly lurk.
Just for fun think about a hypothetical fuckboi-version of your usual profile, complete with poorly lit bathroom selfies, shirtless beach photos, and a bio that’s just a line from a Tarantino film. That alter ego will get more swipes than you, not because he’s prettier or fitter than you but because he seems approachable, fun, and easy. So maybe ask yourself what of this alter-ego actually expresses aspects of your personality, and consider incorporating a bit more of him.
The apps weren’t built for courtship rituals and in general it’s very hard to generate chemistry by text. Even a relationship that starts off casual can go many places, and has the advantage of beginning with everyone’s cards down. Just my .02… GL
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Yep, there's a cheat code.
- Be attractive.
- Pay them.
For "be attractive" a lot of people think the requisite level of attractiveness is unattainable for them. Its not. Be decently in shape, groom yourself, have some style in the way you dress. The other half is taking good photos. Take photos that look good, that you look good in, and which create a vision for what the best version of your life looks like.
And then pay them. Tinder, bumble, and hinge basically have a monopoly on the market. Its pay to play. You can get matches without paying, but it is a lot fewer and a lot less.
Never pay. If you pay once, they make it even harder to get matches to entice you to pay even more.
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Ok, obviously people being attracted to you is a huge plus but there are plenty of average and even below average dudes out there with amazing women. Why?
Because they're typically genuinely nice, caring dudes that don't treat women like some mountain to be summited.
You want to know how to have enjoyable relationships with women? Maybe try actually being friends with a woman; no ulterior motives. Just find a friend and nurture that friendship. It's incredibly easy to be around women when you don't tack a bunch of sexual bullshit onto every situation involving them.
Inevitably, you'll either find a suitable partner organically or you'll be introduced to someone that meshes well with you.
Women make up 50% of the population. If you can't have a normal interaction or a friendship with them, that's a problem that requires you to look inward to resolve.
I feel you are mostly right in this one but I heard women hate people who befriend them for sake of seeking a relationship beyond friendship.
On the other hand, let's say you always looked at a woman as friend and suddenly she expresses her feelings for you down the line. Would you be ready to mold the relationship on the spot, which you have seen as a platonic friendship from the get-go? Why is that they can do it but not men?
And if you had crush on someone and you intentionally made friendship with them to give you a chance for it to go beyond friendship, would that be a wrong thing? And if in case, they had expressed feelings to you because they liked your personality, would you be able to say that they were always was your crush? Wouldn't that throw then off seeing you were seeking romantic relationship with them from the start?
I might've gone slightly off-topic but this is a good discussion I feel.
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Good photos. Not shitty selfies. Have your friends take “candid” photos of you doing stuff. They’re not actually candid, they’re fully thought out and planned.
For someone who has not put much emphasis in taking good pics of mine, I really understood the importance of this when someone asked me to share good pics and I had to go dig out my pics from 3yrs ago.
I have never used these social media apps where main moto of them was posting your pics and hence I ended up not liking the idea of pics at all, until I realised they are important to have, just for yourself and your loved ones.
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Attractive for me is about the contents of one’s mind and heart.
I prefer my husband; who could gain or lose more than a 100 lbs and I would still be attracted to him. (Not that I wouldn’t encourage him to be healthy, so we can share more years together)
Wow, that is really sweet. For most people I think physical attractiveness plays a much bigger role, especially on dating apps where it's just a picture or two and a bio.
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While that is true, i think it also nicely points out that dating apps are actually not a great way to find a partner anymore
I mean, they were never, like, a fun way to meet a partner. But they certainly are a way.
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Never pay. If you pay once, they make it even harder to get matches to entice you to pay even more.
Have you experienced this yourself? Because I have not experienced this.
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I mean, they were never, like, a fun way to meet a partner. But they certainly are a way.
i can see that, certainly. and there are cases where they are unavoidable. But still (and i show my age here) I'd still rather avoid them if at all possible
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I feel you are mostly right in this one but I heard women hate people who befriend them for sake of seeking a relationship beyond friendship.
On the other hand, let's say you always looked at a woman as friend and suddenly she expresses her feelings for you down the line. Would you be ready to mold the relationship on the spot, which you have seen as a platonic friendship from the get-go? Why is that they can do it but not men?
And if you had crush on someone and you intentionally made friendship with them to give you a chance for it to go beyond friendship, would that be a wrong thing? And if in case, they had expressed feelings to you because they liked your personality, would you be able to say that they were always was your crush? Wouldn't that throw then off seeing you were seeking romantic relationship with them from the start?
I might've gone slightly off-topic but this is a good discussion I feel.
Would you be ready to mold the relationship on the spot, which you have seen as a platonic friendship from the get-go?
I'm not a relationship expert so I can only give a response based on my own subjective feelings and opinions.
I'd say that you'd probably be able to tell pretty easily if a friend would be a suitable partner if you've spent a decent amount of time around them. It might be a bit of an uncomfortable conversation to turn them down, but good friends should have healthy communication and a discussion about why the interest isn't mutual would probably go over well. If you just say no and provide no context as to why, that would likely end badly.
would you be able to say that they were always was your crush?
I did exactly this with my wife. We initially became friends because she was one of my roommate's girlfriend like 15 years ago. We had a strictly platonic relationship for about 10 years, but I was crushin hard after 5.
Turns out that so was she.
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Disclaimer: I’m not straight, but when I used the apps I mostly matched with women, who were mostly cis and mostly straight.
It sounds like you’re looking for a LTR. Tinder is mostly for HUs. Everyone I met on there was casual-only or wanted long term but like, desperately. Bumble wasn’t a significantly different crowd when I tried it, in spite of the hype. Hinge I heard was better for LTRs, with a questionnaire system and everything, but never tried. Overall, my impression was that lots of the “looking for something real” folks in the apps probably should’ve been prioritizing therapy and learning to love themselves before throwing themselves into another LTR. This leads to my main point at the bottom.
For more swipes/matches, top rec is almost always better photos, especially for straight men, but I would modify that recommendation slightly. I think you should first ask yourself some questions about your target audience.
Why: Let’s say you’re advertising yourself as a kind stable safe and hard-working man looking for a LTR. That profile, to be successful with your target audience, will easily scare away the casual crowd for lots of reasons. The sincere and detailed bio, the photos of you posing with others at formal events, etc are all workable but limit your marketability to a specific subset of women who mostly lurk.
Just for fun think about a hypothetical fuckboi-version of your usual profile, complete with poorly lit bathroom selfies, shirtless beach photos, and a bio that’s just a line from a Tarantino film. That alter ego will get more swipes than you, not because he’s prettier or fitter than you but because he seems approachable, fun, and easy. So maybe ask yourself what of this alter-ego actually expresses aspects of your personality, and consider incorporating a bit more of him.
The apps weren’t built for courtship rituals and in general it’s very hard to generate chemistry by text. Even a relationship that starts off casual can go many places, and has the advantage of beginning with everyone’s cards down. Just my .02… GL
wrote last edited by [email protected]I've always tried to go for the ltr profile with lots of details.. I've since given up but I feel like it might be worth it trying your suggestion with a more easy going version. Thanks
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Been in a relationship for quite a while so this is 2nd hand knowledge, but you wanna avoid any app that's been around for more than 2-3 years.
At the beginning the apps need to get a reputation for successfully hooking people up and they're usually not urgently searching for money thanks to venture capitalism. After that point though they need to grow and profit.
You know what's bad for user growth in a dating app? Successfully matching people into a long term relationship; those users may never return.
The end result is what I hear tinder is these days: a siphon into the bank accounts of single people that will do everything it can to avoid making them not single.
what apps have been around for less than 2-3 years?
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32m here and ive been on dating apps for over 10 years and think they've gotten worse since the whole swiping algorithm. I always do max swipes daily on fb dating, tinder, and bumble with minimum to no success. Tinder being the worst of the three. Ik irl is better, I just am not good at it with social anxiety and overthinking. Anybody find what works on these apps if you're an average looking man?
On the apps, the cheat code is paying up. Even then, it won't guarantee any success. Last app I used was bumble, around the end of 2023, which was on its way of enshittification, but still worked muuuuuuuuuch better than tinder. Got lucky and met my current gf there (4th or 5th woman I managed to go out on a date from that app, out of many that I chatted with).
My main problem which makes me rely on the apps is that I simply rarely feel like going outside. Not doing any group activities seriously hurts your chances of finding anyone interesting.
Real life wise, your best bet would be trying dance classes, especially any that are supposed to be danced in pairs
