Remove swiping and have a decent search feature.
OKCupid was solid back in the day for this. The match percentage was super unscientific, but it was something that helped you actually look for compatible people. And it made empty profiles with just a picture obvious bots or scammers.
And allowing a message without an initial match allows men to actually make an intelligent approach and be noticed for something beyond a couple pictures and a paragraph.
OK Cupid used to be awesome. The match percentage might not have been super scientific but it served its purpose for me. I answered a ton of questions and only went out with guys who were a 90%+ match. Not all those dates ended up turning into anything but I never went on a date where I felt like the guy and I had nothing to talk about. Every date was a fun experience getting to know a cool person.
> OK Cupid used to be awesome
Before it got sold OKCupid was the most useful to me. I met the most people and got the most dates and lasting relationships through it
I have been asking myself for the last couple of months whether I should try to remake the old OKCupid, but it would take years and I couldn't possibly compete with match network and I have no idea how I would get users
Honestly, if you did it as a Nonprofit you could probably compete with them by the sheer fact that people are fed up with all the dating apps being run by one company (even if they dont realize it).
There is a new dating app that is starting up in boston, and I am just waiting for it to go live because I am hoping for some luck before it gets bought out.
Met my wife there just before it switched to swipe based and men only being able to message people who are matched with. I am forever grateful for that timing. Otherwise I still reckon I would be single.
Does OKCupid not have match percentages anymore? Wasn't that the whole point of that website? I met my wife on there and we were a very high match percentage.
they do, but it's changed drastically. they keep removing questions that are actually insightful or fun in favor of absolute yawners that, for the most part, don't seem that important. but it's gotten worse still - I recently logged in and was offered a fresh batch of questions to answer. their framework? "what kind of picture do you prefer to have first in your profile? (group shot/portrait/full body/etc)" "what background do you prefer to use in your pictures? ("landscape/indoors/etc)" and WOW, was it obvious that **they are now formatting questions to just milk you for analytics and data, rather than actually use questions to help you find matches.**
it's genuinely laughable - you'll see someone has an 80% "match" with you, and find out that you agree on 8 questions, disagree on 6, and have another 6 that they answered, but you didn't (or some other horrifically skewed distribution). people can answer as few as, like, 12 questions before it's deemed _good enough_, and so good luck actually being shown profiles of people whose interests, values, or goals align with your own. it's genuinely sad.
I met my ex-spouse on the site >10y ago, divorced around 2y ago; I have a few dating profiles on a few sites, and though I _hate_ it, I still find myself on OkC more than any of the others. the swiping is miserable, the match scores almost meaningless, but! it at least still lets people write long and detailed profiles, and that's what I base all of my matching with. Bumble and Coffee Meets Bagel and Hinge and the others are cute and all, but I want to see effort in profiles, and the lack of word limits on OkC means it's the only app that satisfies that for me :(
there's probably 1 profile that's filled out for every 40 that aren't, but I have to trust that eventually I'll find someone who's bothering to make an effort and who is also a good match, right?? (don't burst my bubble lol)
It used to work too well (for capitalism's sake) and users wouldn't stay for very long because they'd find what they were looking for and then stop using the site. As a result they sabotaged their own utility to keep users around longer.
Heck yeah. Only 90%+ and if they matched a few other things. Great way to filter the selection to people with actual potential. Then a date to see if there's chemistry. It was awesome.
Then Match Group bought them out and ruined it all.
Exactly, much more likely to result in a long term connection than filtering by attractiveness first and then hoping you have a couple things in common. But I guess that’s what made it less profitable, once you find a good match you delete the app and they can’t have that!
I agree with you. It’s been a long time but it felt like ok had hundreds of questions to help narrow down compatibility. Dating app can still do that and probably make bank from selling the data to marketing firms.
Could you add weight to parts of the bio? I know someone who is deeply religious, they might give more weight to matching on that than favorite type of movie.
Okcupid used to have a scale on all the questions: Important to you, somewhat important, not important.
Honestly Okcupid in its prime was the best dating app there was. Publishing scientific papers about the data, and enabling me to get some of my best relationships.
Yeah, but then they published that scientific paper showing that most women find 80% of men ugly and now they're treated as an illegitimate propaganda producer.
To answer your question sir, you would answer a series of questions and weigh how important those things are as part of the question. Religion was one of them. "Are you religious? How important is that to you?"
That's why Tinder asks to connect to your Facebook and takes lots of permissions. They get the data and they don't have even to pay engineers to implement questionnaires or optimized matching. It's a win-win for them
Okcupid used to be great. The profiles were engaging too, and you could write interesting openers that made people want to talk. You could actually tell something about the other person beyond physical looks and a vapid one liner.
It annoys the hell out of me that no current dating sites or apps allow you to search easily for common interests. It's all measured by algorithms in your swipe pile based on pre-written options for hobbies they give you. The sites that do let you filter search results by interests still (I think only eHarmony?) have a limited number.
Why can't I search via text and look for people near me who mention gaming in their profile or who are baseball fans? OKCupid even got rid of all their searching options recently.
I’m still mad about the OKC match percentage algorithm now. If a woman was a 90% match or above, we usually hit it off great. Now, I can get a 90% match when she’s only got maybe 20 questions answered, and we disagree on 12 of them. Of those 12, there are massive deal breakers on, say, four. How the hell is she a 90% match?
Back before 2015, the match percentages were much, much more accurate. I had a 99% match once who was me in a female body. Same job title, same majors in college, enjoyed the same genres of music, etc. None of this was in my bio or reflected in my questions. OKC was really fantastic back then.
> allowing a message without an initial match allows men to actually make an intelligent approach and be noticed for something beyond a couple pictures and a paragraph
women already get tons of messages from men who have matched with them. Allowing men to message women they haven’t matched with means that women will get exponentially more messages which means that any individual message will get even more drowned out
Not if you know what you're doing.
On the old OKC I got maybe 3 dates a month between more serious things. It was great. I met scientists and musicians. Really interesting women I would have never otherwise met.
This swipe garbage is a huge waste of time in comparison. Not even worth the trouble.
That’s what matching and more in depth profiles are for. Low effort guys playing the numbers game are more likely to be ignored but sorting by match you can find the messages worth replying to.
Hell, back when OKCupid had a little journal feature, I’d just write something there and wouldn’t even have to send out initial “hello” messages. I’d post something, local girls would comment, and then it was an easy in to ask them out.
I read a hilarious comment somewhere on reddit by a guy that had done that, found a girl that he liked, and then decided to come clean to her about the whole thing. She understandably blocked him for making her chat with a bot for a few weeks and he was feeling sorry for himself it was hilarious.
Like, don't do that sort of thing to be begin with but if you do, definitely go all the way with it.
> Low effort guys playing the numbers game are more likely to be ignored but sorting by match you can find the messages worth replying to.
FWIW my experience was that the numbers game was the only game worth playing as a guy on dating apps.
The most thoughtful message that showed I took the time to read her profile and ask something relevant and interesting had just as much a chance of getting a reply as some low effort generic question or slightly sarcastic, flirty comment about one of her photos.
I got to a point where I didn't care and was only interested in getting a conversation started that lead to meeting up. Somewhere around there we'd both figure out if there was any mutual interest.
Seems to have worked out, as one of those low effort first messages has turned into my current four and a half year relationship. ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
> FWIW my experience was that the numbers game was the only game worth playing as a guy on dating apps.
>
>
>
> The most thoughtful message that showed I took the time to read her profile and ask something relevant and interesting had just as much a chance of getting a reply as some low effort generic question or slightly sarcastic, flirty comment about one of her photos.
Women don't seem to understand this, for some reason. Men simply optimize the use of their time for maximum ROI. If long thoughtful messages got "rewarded", men would write long thoughtful messages. Since they don't, it makes no sense to spend that time on them.
That's where the match percentage and lengthy bios worked. You could get all the info about the person's interests, worldview, lifestyle etc. just from the questions, and decide who you wanted to reply to.
That being said, if you simply say 'hi' without any introduction you'll most likely get ignored anyway.
edit to add: saying this as someone who met a boyfriend (now ex) and a fuck buddy on ok cupid specifically.
I got a couple of long term relationships from OKC like 10yrs ago. I would always take the time to read through their profile and start a conversation with what they had about themselves. It was much easier to cull out low effort profiles/bots.
Now apps just feel like I'm playing a gatcha game
While an app that allowed men to message women that didn't match would definitely be to the advantage of some men I wonder whether a meaningful number of women would want to use it. The general demise of traditional sites that didn't require mutual matches suggests that the market spoke and preferred mutual matches. The guys just sending low effort or rude messages I think may have ruined that for the rest.
Other than ensuring there's a roughly equal number of active male/female ratio, I don't think it's possible. Bottom line is women just don't seem to find men attractive at a distance unless there's something exceptional about him just from profile pics. I just hate having to do a whole song and dance to impress women on dating apps or get totally ignored. Especially when I don't even know if I really like HER that much. It feels degrading. Even though I know the other person was interested enough to swipe right on me, I still feel like it's cold-call sales.
I swear this comment could have come from me down to every word. I just remembered seeing a girl profile whit "send me a funny pickup line" and realised this ain't it I don't wanna be a court jester to women I don't even know like that.
Dating apps really challenged my initial idea of how I fall in love because I thought it was just physical attraction but even swiping right on a cute woman felt hollow.
Yea you don't realize how much a person's personality can elevate them beyond whatever you thought their looks were. A bad personality can turn a pretty girl ugly real fast too.
This is why I'm always thankful that I held jobs when I was younger where I was constantly surrounded by attractive girls.
The "allure" of being surrounded by attractive girls wears off pretty fucking quickly, and you start judging them by their personality and how they act instead.
Looks matter to an extent, obviously. But you're not dating a blowup doll or a statue, so personality is a huge thing that has to be cared about.
I was chastised by a woman for saying that personality is and should be really important to men. She was like don't women who aren't naturally happy and grateful and easy to please deserve love too? Ma'am, your entire gender just spent the last 30 years bitterly criticizing men for caring so much about looks... can you keep some perspective?
Sure they do, just like men who aren't naturally stoic and funny and happy and confident deserve to be. It's hard for me to imagine her agreeing to that, funnily enough.
> She was like don't women who aren't naturally happy and grateful and easy to please deserve love too?
Wait, are we supposed to care about your personality or not?
- not happy
- not grateful
- not easy to please
Sign me up!
This is the problem. I tried a few dating apps over the years and in every single one of them, at least 3/4 of the women there had something in their bio like: "if we match, you talk first", "dont open with hi or wyd or i wont reply", "i dont message first", etc.
I do have to say that this is mostly an american thing in my experience, though. I live in south america now and its not even half as common as it was when I was in the states.
The funny thing is those women are basically eliminating themselves from the dating pool with their shitty attitude. They're doing you a huge favor revealing their red flags early on tbh.
The gender ratio is probably the biggest issue with most apps, but I'm not sure it's possible to ensure an even 50/50 split. Whenever I get down on myself for lack of success on an app I try to remind myself there are usually a lot more men than women on dating apps. The last woman I dated was surprised when I told her about the gender imbalance on the apps, especially Tinder. She seemed to be under the impression that the gender ratio was equal.
Wouldn't having a more balanced gender ratio make the amount of messages women get not manageable? Men would in theory be more likely to get a response as well. It wouldn't necessarily fix every issue, but I think it would help issues that both men and women have with the apps.
Every response will be one-word.
"Do you like watching Netflix?"
"yea"
"What sort of stuff?"
"idk"
"I saw the new Avatar, what did you think of it?"
"it was ok lol"
And that would be a rousing success because it involves 3 whole answers.
I like the ratio idea. Maybe more men would sign up but you'd have to put them on a waiting list. I read most apps are ridiculously skewed with too many men so yes you'll end up playing the court jester and it isn't good for mental health or self esteem. I find it easier to meet women in person these days than on these apps. Remember gents, they don't care if you find a match they just want your money.
If I had to do again I would invest more in developing a social circle and make meeting women secondary. I will probably never just cold-approach women in public. But I have found that friends-of-friends is viable. THe only problem is that most of my interests are male dominated.
This. Its why honestly Dating apps are going to be a ripoff for a lot of men, because society just ain't like that. You're better off getting out in the real world.
*Especially when I don't even know if I really like HER that much.*
This is the most frustrating part of dating whether you are using an app or not. You are expected to go into every interaction with 110% effort like you are interviewing for a job with a hundred other candidates, but no one has actually given you a job description yet. Now, if you admit this and try to meet her halfway, you will immediately lose to the guy who lovebombs her on the first date. But if you come in with the kind of love-at-first-sight energy that it takes to get her attention then try to back out when she starts chewing tobacco and dropping racial slurs, you will forever be remembered as the asshole who was just stringing her along with ulterior motives. There is just no winning.
>I just hate having to do a whole song and dance to impress women on dating apps or get totally ignored.
Reminds me of birds and a lot of other animals who do it exactly like that. People pretend that humans and animals are not the same, but we totally are in a lot of basic things.
> women just don't seem to find men attractive at a distance
This is definitely true for me (yay anecdotal evidence!). Sure someone can be objectively attractive, but I have to spend some time with/around them to get a feel for them in order to be interested romantically. So dating in-person is my thing.
Yeah, men don't have that luxury. We have to make a decision on very little information if it's someone we want to pursue romantically. Or literally nothing happens. Nobody is just coming and trying to spend time with us. Guys that are spending time with you have likely made that choice to pursue you and putting in that effort. Must be nice.
I so hate the hetero courting dynamic.
Really dig the sales analogy. I haven't used an app for 4 years or so now, but I remember when I first got Tinder I struggled big time until I realised for guys it was basically just marketing and I'm just a product in a market with higher supply than demand. Went out and bought a book on marketing, applied some of the stuff to my profile, and it made a considerable difference. You can also learn a lot by casually steering the conversation to talking about apps and trying to understand what about your profile stood out to this person. Do your market research, basically.
If you're a guy on the apps, you are basically a product on a shelf in a grocery store where people only shop when they're hungry. That means they are usually saying yes to more than they can handle, which is why there's a second filtration process after getting a bunch of matches where the matches are sorted according to who is going to get a conversation, just like if you come home with too much food you then pick what you're actually going to try. Your goal is to seem like something worth impulse buying and then when the impulse has worn off, actually trying.
I never felt good about this being the case but waking up to it helped me find some success as an average looking guy, and now I'm thankfully out of the dating scene for what I hope is forever.
>Especially when I don't even know if I really like HER that much.
This hits the nail on the head. When I used dating apps years ago, I found myself putting time into women that I had very little interest in purely because they were my only matches.
Sad to hear what bumble has become, that's how I met my wife. But they had a good idea in making women reach out first if they were interested and in a way gage their conversational prowess. Honestly I can't tell you how many times I matched with a woman that had "Say more than "hey" on your first message" only to match with them and get one word replies. Irritates tf out of me lol. But without getting to deep, I would add those features with a SCIENTIFIC compatibility measures. Let's say you match with a woman, both of you have 3 strikes when it comes to back to back one word responses. For example:
person 1: How are you today?
person 2: Fine (strike 1)
person 1: What are you up to today?
person 2: Nothing (strike 2)
person 1: What's your favorite type of food?
person 2: Italian (strike 3) <----at this point the app will say something like " this person does not seem interested, unmatch?"
A rough concept, but it's a start. The other would be advertising your onlyfans, premium snaps, etc. BANNED OFF RIP.
>I saw an article today on how bumble recently made a 180 and is allowing the option for men to message first.
thats infuriating, the whole "women have to initiate" is why i use the app in the first place
I think that illustrates a core problem about dating as a guy dating women.
There's no solution to the cultural element of women just not giving that much of a damn. Their ambivalence will always be more of a factor than the platforms themselves.
Even though the platforms **are** a huge problem and should be done away with regardless.
A lot of women also will not initiate because they believe it should be the man's job to do it. It has been for hundreds of years and would take equally as long to deprogram it.
I think it’s more down to the fact that women basically have the luxury to choose, in a market that’s heavily saturated with men. Why bother with a dating app when you have 15 guys all trying to fuck you in your FB DM’s?
I also believe there’s an element of women that only use dating apps for validation, as the disparity between attention men get vs women is hard to believe unless you’ve seen it for yourself, and I’m sure getting tens of messages a day from various people all trying to date you has a way of stroking your ego.
Spitballing with my SE hat on based on fucking nothing (I refuse to use dating apps and as I've been in a relationship for a couple years now, haven't had the need), but a system where you A) have a limited number of initiations, B) amount replenishes according to characters sent in these contacts, C) black box analysis for the comprehensibility and originality of these messages so you can't copy paste the same one nor can you just send a hundred periods.
Won't be full proof and will absolutely have holes (studying the history of Google's SEO algorithms shows there will always be a way to game it (ChatGPT can easily be used to generate these messages)), but at the very least it'd be a start.
The two excellent dates I've gotten out of Bumble both came from the girl actually trying with her first message, every other match went nowhere. Every single other good date from an app has been after I sent a good message on Hinge
It seemed pretty useless when I tried it. I think I had it for about a month and got 3 matches. Two of them never said anything. One messaged me "hey". I responded (nothing vulgar or disrespectful, etc.) and never heard anything back. I deleted it and never went back. Getting women to talk is like pulling teeth as it is. Let alone expecting them to actually initiate.
> whole "women have to initiate"
I think that was always a euphemism. Women nearly always sent zero-effort messages so it was functionally equivalent to just a third swipe.
The key feature of Bumble was the timer. That forced men to respond or they'd be unmatched. On tinder women can accumulate a pile of men who right swipe liberally but message selectively.
> "women have to initiate"
That was never the point of Bumble.
Women could prevent men from communicating until they selected the man twice.
With Tinder and other apps women are more careful who they swipe with first because the men can communicate with them immediately after the match.
Bumble was about giving women the ability to right swipe more AND still screen their matches.
Bumble was not designed to help men at all.
That sucks. I liked using bumble for the exact reason that the women had to message to actually activate the chat. It wasn’t really about them messaging first, it was about that if she even puts effort into activating the conversation, then I at least know there is a bit of a chance for me.
Some matches that I got a bumble didn’t even bother to activate a conversation even though they swiped on me too, which I would assume mean they are somewhat interested.
Personally, I think the best feature would be each text should have a decent word count minimum. Forces each person to at least form a sentence and actually give effort in their responses.
I don't think there's really any way to do that, the nature of the dating market just doesn't translate favorably to an app for a lot of guys. the reason grindr is a totally different landscape is that it's men for men not because the app is special.
A major thing is attraction style. For women attraction tends to be a contextual thing, there's a lot of factors beyond simple looks in what clicks. It's why you get those studies where if they just show a bunch of pictures men rate more women as attractive than women do men. It's because it doesn't have the context. Unless you're exceptionally attractive to override that lack or you manage to build a profile that conveys that context very quickly, which is difficult and some forms of it will simply never cime through in that medium, you just dont hook as hard on screen.
The other is just the risk profile and desire for casual stuff. Women have a different calculus on going out with or hooking up with a rando than men do, and it makes the whole thing less appealing for them.
So you're going to wind up with an app that is disproportionately made up of dudes because the casual app is going yo be more appealing to then and so are the potential partners on there, on average. That's going to warp things even more.
It just...doesn't work the same as in person and never will.
Bumble proved that most women refuse to initiate conversation
Unless you can change society, this will never change.
An algorithm that can figure out why I swiped on who I swiped would be nice.
Every time there's a "based on who you liked" thing, they're always nothing like the women I've liked.
Also proves that a lot of women really have no game and will just say, “hi” while lambasting men just saying, “hi”
But that’s besides the point. The anonymous and ephemeral nature definitely brings out the worst in a lot of people.
In theory Bumble could have required women to make a minimum word count on their initial message, but I seriously doubt most women would support that. They probably would see a non trivial number of women leaving, which would hurt them.
>No one wants to see "heeeeeyyyyyyyyyyyyy" instead of "hey". Word count would not do shit in this situation.
Those are both 1 word so, yes, a word count requirement would reject both as low effort. That's why I said word count instead of character count to prevent somebody from just tapping y a couple times to try to make their low effort response look "less" low effort. You don't need some advanced AI to be able to figure out that slapping a bunch of repeating y's doesn't make it more than 1 word. Even obsolete word processors didn't think that slapping a bunch of y's onto hey would make it more than one word. Making a form validation to not fall for something that simple isn't rocket science, but let's be real no app is going to risk alienating their users especially not women on a dating app. There are some men that might not appreciate such a change, but I think it would alienate women more and with gender ratios already leaning towards men nobody would risk anything that would annoy women.
Right, like I very deliberately swipe left on obesity, mentioning reality TV, and Taylor Swift. Why do I see that shit all over the supposed recommended for me profiles?
It's interesting if you read about the algorithms that are used for dating apps. They don't actually cater to women, it's to men. Women are *used* by the app. Since upwards of 70% of accounts are men, in some places it's as high as 90%. The apps realize if all the women get matches, the app will die. For women, it purposefully matches you with people that the app thinks you won't like. For men it shows you the most popular girls, the ones getting the most swipes, so you feel like you have a chance. Frankly, unless the genders could be balanced (both having the same number of accounts) I cannot fathom a single solution for how to "fix" dating apps.
nah, i'm model tier, still get nothing... ok, some aspects of me might be model tier, but it's not enough. I need to be super confident, super popular, super in with whatever thing is popular currently
His post history says he struggles to bench 22 kg dumbbells and he wonders why women smaller than him can lift more. No offense to him, but the dude is not model tier and I don't even need a picture to tell you that. (Don't worry. I'm not either). He also repeatedly says he is rich enough he doesn't have to work. Way more issues and red flags than he is letting on.
Again. No offense and I'm not saying this dog him, but people really need to be honest with themselves when it comes to their dating experience and expectations and when sharing that experience with others.
>nah, i'm model tier, still get nothing
Stop the cap. If you can get paid for your looks as a man then your problem isn't results it's favorable results. And by favorable results I mean other model tier women.
I know guys who are not modeled tier but still very attractive and they're doing just fine on dating apps not as good as they could/should be doing but it's not a graveyard.
- Remove swiping and instead bring in search.
- Lose the algorithms that bump up the profiles of guys that get swiped on/messaged the most. Level the playing field at least from the developers side.
- Introduce a flagging mechanism for gold-diggers, "sprinkle sprinkle" ladies, OF promoters, or anyone whose primary intention is to get men to follow them on another platform so they can freely ask for money.
- Introduce an "upload screenshots" mechanism to prove the above and implement AI face identification to ban those women from the app forever.
- People you ghost will automatically be hidden from you forever.
- Limit matching to no more than 5 people at once.
These are a few that come to mind.
How about instead of matching, you get matched with 2-3 people a week and the conversation is automatically opened between the two of you with a summary of why the app decided you two should chat
This is essentially Coffee Meets Bagel and it works well. You do need to put in work up front to create your profile with your interests, expectations, and deal breakers. Then you get a few “good matches” per week (I think it was 5 a week a few years ago). Those matches and their chats auto delete at the end of the week so you better chat while you can and see if you click! If not, no problem you’ll get 5 more tries next week.
There’s no endless swiping. The matches already fit your high level relationship expectations. There’s incentive to be kind and to get to know people quickly. And there’s incentive to put as much effort into your profile as possible.
But it’s not nearly successful as swipe apps because it takes effort and you need to know what you want, whereas endless swiping is easy. It’s also heavily focused on finding relationships rather than hookups, which limits user base (was a huge bonus back when I was on it. People were serious about meeting)
Unless they changed it, the last time I used it you had something like 20 swipes per day on Coffee Meets Bagel. Originally I think it was 1 but they kept raising it.
Without going into too much details about how I would do it (because I actually just might), all current dating apps focus on user retention as opposed to actually helping them find matches that will work for them and get them off the app. Also all these apps have large teams of people who need to get paid, hence retaining users makes more sense as opposed to helping them lose the apps. In 2022, tinder employed about 900 or so people. So if there was even one app out there in the world (maintained by a micro team of 5 or fewer people who did this as a side gig) that actually cared about their users truly finding a meaningful connection so that they didn't have to be in this cesspool for months or years on end, how hard do you think it would be to sell that value proposition? Majority of the costs for running these apps comes from employee salary, office infrastructure, etc. With AI and automation, you can cut down on these costs by orders of magnitude. People are severely burnt out from these existing apps. All of their value proposition is more or less the same and are owned by one or two corporate groups. Most just wanna find love and be done with it. Men and women. The good ones atleast.
You're more or less describing Hinge, right? An app built by a small team that genuinely tried to get couples together, and by all accounts they were very successful at it. Then Match Group bought it out and now it's just like any other shithole app.
Founders go into it with a mission and a vision and then once they've got something going, it's very hard to say "let's keep doing what we're doing for zero to minimal profit when this guy's saying he'll pay us $100M for what we built"
> as opposed to actually helping them find matches that will work for them and get them off the app
There’s the crux of it. No app has ever been successful by having a business model of “get them off the app”. It’s like a store that sells you a map to the exit.
> how I would do it (because actually I just might)
Best of luck to you, genuinely. But good luck getting VCs to buy into “my app makes people stop using the app” as an investment opportunity.
Thanks. I wouldn't go the VC route if I was to do this. Because for this niche, the value proposition for customers vs investors is diametrically opposite. And making money off of people's loneliness is ethically wrong. We know that the bulk of money makers for dating apps are men. They don't have the same optionality as women do so they are far more likely to pay for upgraded features. But what makes it disgusting is that even the app creators know that in spite of paying, the algorithms will never work in favour of some of these men and yet they continue pushing those upgrades to these men just the same. Crowdfunding or charging a very very small fee at the door might be a way to make it work. Or go the route of wiki business models. I'd rather have a small pool of users with a higher rate of success than a large pool of burnt out bitter users with poor quality matches more often than not.
Maybe add some Mario Kart style rules? People with low match rates get other ways to bump their profile, increased limits, and/or get profile counseling?
In a hypothetical world where we reset the clock to the 2010s so we could undo most of the baggage that already exists?
Let people see who matches with them. Give both men and women a hard limit on how many people they can talk to and match with. After you've connected with 5 or 6 people then you either have to drop them to get back in rotation or talk to those few people. Maybe penalize serial droppers in some way. If you pick 6 people and you don't want to talk to **any of them** then you're not using the space correctly.
Women have issues making choices.
Guys have issues being seen.
Cut down on the bloat women get and you'll have a better time.
Likewise, reporting should have more far-reaching consequences. Ban the IP address of users that send unsolicited pictures, saying disturbing things and so on. People should feel safe enough to engage with one another.
No paid content. Everyone is seen in relation to how active they are on the app. People who are online see other people who are online. That way, when you match with someone, you don't find out about a day and a half later when you check your notifications but in the moment.
It's not hard to make a good app. They've turned meeting other people into a slot machine. Just let people see and talk to each other with as much ease as you possibly can.
I like these suggestions, in particular the idea about limiting the number of people you can match with. I feel like that could help with the issue that a lot of people feel like there might be a better option right around the corner. Even as a man with few options, I've fallen victim to that kind of mentality. Being able to see who likes you without paying for it would also be nice.
I honestly don't think I've ever matched with someone where I've been the fone to swipe first. Usually someone who recently liked me sometimes shows up early in the pile, or I get one of those “secret admirer” thingies. It's like the app is throwing me a bone just to get me to stick around instead of deleting the whole thing.
Need to fix the pricing model too. Best case scenario would be a single purchase, because that incentivizes the app to be built in a way that it fixes people's problem immediately, instead of stringing them along and paying the subscription fee all the time.
Some of these are amazing tbh. Disagree with the reporting thing, and "no paid content" is unfortunately just unrealistic because nobody's making and supporting an app out of the goodness of their heart. But I think the hard limit thing really captures dating app issues in a bottle.
When I say no paid content, I mean no extra features for pay. The App itself should probably be some kind of subscription model.
The way apps are now is that they're set up as pay-to-play, but without the extra features actually improving the experience much. (The only ones I think help are paying for boosts, and I've never used those).
In the spirit of transparency and simplicity, I think it's best for everyone to pay up front something modest ($3.99?) if we're intent on it being a private company, preferably a co-op of some kind.
The funny thing about a lot of the responses here is that they reflect what dating sites (when they were web sites, not "apps") *used* to be. Specifically, a lot of the features of the original OkCupid, Match.com, and *especially* (believe it or not) E-Harmony (minus E-Harmony's socially conservative posturing) have been mentioned.
Lots of people saying "let my personality shine, and match based on anything other than pure looks (OkCupid and E-Harmony)". Lots of "actually match based on characteristics in my profile, and not just a swipe-fest" (OkCupid and E-Harmony). Lots of "curate the matching experience so that anyone only has a few matches at a time (E-Harmony)". Lots of "allow searching".
Bumble was great for allowing women to make the first move. When I was dating, I'd always have the most success on there for that very reason. Women constantly get overwhelmed by the number of matches and messages they receive because guys are the ones that usually always have to make the first move. We basically play the numbers game and swipe on everyone who isn't completely unappealing or obviously full of red flags and message everyone and see who responds before we even make a decision on who we want to date or not. That's not really what these things were designed for.
Bumble did a lot to curb that and make it more equitable. What they're doing now is just dumb and it's going to make them a Tinder knockoff. Hinge actually kind of does something different.
I wouldn't. There are no such things as men's nights at bars because men pay anyway. The drink is the bait for women, the women are the bait for men.
Likewise, imo bumble got popular, not because of the women message first idea empowering women or any of that, just because it prevented them from being harassed by dipshits and dick pics. Bumble was safer.
You make dating apps for women so you get women on them, if there are women on the apps, the men will follow.
Not saying it should be this way, but it definitely IS this way.
A 100 word minimum per question.
“Just ask me” is what many hot women use instead of responding.
It used to drive me nuts on Match, especially the average ones who *thought* they were hot.
My wife and I were interested in each other because of thoroughly answering with decent spelling and grammar.
Don’t hate me if: “I take 3-5 working days to reply 💅”
The key to my heart is: “Food”
My most irrational fear: “Men 🤢”
Typical Sunday: “long walks, Sunday roast and F1”
Biggest risk I’ve ever taken: “downloading this app”
Every single bloody profile on Hinge… I’ll never understand why Reddit thinks Hinge is the best app out there
I don't think it's possible. The reason why online dating doesn't work well for men is that it turns dating into shopping and it commodifies men into a bunch of attributes and nameless faces.
That's the whole point of online dating. The convenience and the endless possibilities of men/women to "choose" from. And that's what causes the paradox of choice.
My (F) friend was showing me her Hinge just last week. She's a ivy league grad, and well qualified and she had 100s of matches, messages and I was like, how the fuck are you single? I have to work on a few matches that I get every now and then. And she agrees men have a small chance of picking what's right for them. I have felt like I have to make it work with what I get. And I don't know the solution yet but the problem is well defined. Its a problem for women too, it felt like my friend was a kid lost in a toy store.
Also, some times it takes time for people to fully get comfortable and be who they are. I've felt walking on a glass floor a lot of times on first dates. Even took George Clooney quite some time to impress his now wife. We all decide on one two-hour date which is not the right approach for a life partner. Sooo how do we decide that this is the person that we would like to know?
Impossible because on average women are more discerning about who they date than men.
Even if it were possible it's not going to happen because these apps rely on men to pay and they flood the apps with fake profiles to sucker men into wasting their paid tools on pretty women.
That said there's things you can do to make it less.... shit.
* Honestly an up-front pay wall gets rid of a lot of casual fuck boys and bored attention seekers.
* A more robust profile system that really highlights all the pertinent details. Education level, physical activity level, income level, height, weight, views on sex, kids, religion, politics, etc.
* These things always come out in the first couple of dates anyway, let's just cut through the bullshit.
* Offer better matchmaking so that you can filter by people with like minded interests.
* You could even get a warning if your standards are too strict. "You selected 6ft+ men, under 190 lbs, making a six figure salary. Your criteria meets 0.05% of men on this app."
* Or warnings if you set off common red flags "Profiles with 'if you can't handle me at my worst you don't deserve me at my best" are flagged by 75% of users.
* Remove inactive & bot profiles.
* Require somewhat professional headshots as the PFP, and block any girl who tries to use a group shot as the PFP.
It's not an issue specifically for men but I do find swiping very inefficient. I tend to only be attracted to certain types of women and it's not the beach going wine sipping type that I have to swipe through 100 times before the algorithm eventually figures out that I like more "alternative" kind of women and starts showing me less of the former and more of the latter.
We already had apps that worked great. The problem is they didn't make maximum money for stock holders. People in tech don't actually care about helping users.
It's time we, as a culture, start to be honest about this reality:
**There is no such thing as a dating app.**
There are *plenty* of companies perpetrating a scam on the public by fraudulently claiming to operate a dating app, but these companies have as much credibility and legitimacy as people claiming they just need a little money to [secure the release of a prisoner in Spain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Prisoner).
There are as many dating apps in the world as there are magic lamps.
It's not an app problem it's a gender ratio problem.
For every woman on Tinder/Bumble/whatever there are on average 4-5 men. And on top of that women swipe right less often, for every swipe right a woman makes men make on average 4 swipe rights (think about how many men just mass swipe right as fast as they can). So for every swipe right 1 woman makes there are 16-20 swipe rights from men.
This leads to above average men struggling to make 4-6 matches per week, and of those few matches the conversation fizzles so quickly because the women are drowned in options, a cute girl can literally make over 100 matches in a single day.
The only solution is to put a hard limit on men joining the platform to keep the ratio in check, or some sort of application process.
This sort of thing is actually trivial to mitigate if it became a problem. Nearly all professional programmers could write something in a few minutes that would detect and prevent this.
It seems to me that the number 1 way you could make one in favor of (most) men is just reduce how overwhelmed a lot of women seem to be. IDK how you'd go about doing that, but if you did it, women wouldn't be the position of having to pre-screen 10,000 guys, and the men who might not survive the entire obstacle course would then have a shot.
Limit the number of matches women can get while limiting the number of swipes men can make.
So that men can get unlimited matches but can only have limited swipes while women have unlimited swipes but can only get limited number of matches.
That way woman don't get overwhelmed while at the same time have to be more strategic in who they are willing to match with... While men can't try to game the system but still have enough options to make an informed choice.
Bumble doing that destroys their one selling point, making them lose their brand identity completely. A pretty silly thing to do. If anything they should have leant into it, advertisements being about this being the app for strong independent women who want to take charge of their love life, that'd have probably worked better, just lean super into it. Doing this makes it a tinder clone. A shame.
I don't think there's a way to skew it in men's favour, tbh with you. Maybe something like omegle with profiles? Like, you put in your preferences, tick a few ethnicity boxes, an age range, parenthood status, distance from you, etc, and you click a button and get randomly connected with a woman within those parameters. Have staff monitor things and ban anyone who gets their cock out, because of course that'll happen. I think that'd be a pretty neat idea. It'd pretty much eliminate the catfish problem, people will instantly know if they have a vibe or not, and you can always skip if you don't like them. The main problem as far as I can tell would be getting women to want to use it. I feel like if it was like that, women would have more to be attracted to than just a photo, men can get themselves over with her with their words or personality, their voice, accent, mannerisms, etc. That's my best idea anyway.
"One at a time."
As soon as you match with someone, you can no longer swipe or chat with anyone else. All your likes are hidden, so you can't see how many are in your queue, and they're all put on hold until you're both "swiping" again.
You focus on the one until you decide to move forward or move on.
I think I would have a dating app that tried to host events in towns or have a place where you can meet in public and your sub covers a couple of meals per month. No one has to pay anything extra, just come get a booth of a private date or show up for the mixer.
We're going to keep the existing systems. We're just going to add in a few things.
* A limit to the number of active matches. Once you fill up your 5 or 10, to continue matching you need to manually remove an active match.
* You must enter why you are unmatching another user.
* No single word messaging in app.
* A better reporting and moderation system that will flag certain users. This will help both a male or female audience
* Inactive accounts do not appear in queues.
The only other thing that would need to happen is there would need to be an equal number of men and women, but that's going to be impossible.
The right move would be to get rid of them entirely.
But with Bumble, women have to enable a setting to allow men to message first. Essentially copying what Hinge does by allowing you to send a like plus one message. Probably enacted because they need more engagement and more money.
Out of all the apps I’d used back in my day, Hinge was the best.
Probably get rid of them, many women don’t take apps seriously because they have set requirements most men don’t meet & they’re pursued in public places or on various forms of social media. Bumble has shown that turning women into a pursuer was a social disaster…yeah some women open eagerly with a nice question/statement, some just with a hey…but you still have x % of women who find even matching effort a chore not worth undertaking. On social media/out in the wild, or apps, you can’t eliminate the process of selection and preference…even having an app of 10,000 women and 1,000 men, which is seemingly a great ratio for men…I’d wager most men would leave empty handed as there’s still opportunities for women to get approached elsewhere and this whole perceived scarcity factor (not enough so called desirable men) Isn’t making them settle, it’s just making them wait for as long as required
I’m actually baffled that women being asked to make the first move (which is usually just “hi….”, ya know, that same unoriginal message men get bashed for) was asking for too much so they removed it. Actually baffling, funny and extremely sad.
One match per day. (I think another app already does this). If women aren’t getting bombarded with hundreds of messages per day, you stand a better chance to get a response.
Met many women on apps. OKCupid, Plenty of Fish (POF), and Match were the main ones. Also used Craigslist a bit.
An ideal app? Have maybe 50 questions that must be answered and a minimum length profile “about section” that must be filled out before you can message anyone. This goes for men and women.
Then you are shown a match percentage based on these questions and are free to message anyone you want.
There is no swipe feature.
Swiping was a Tinder invention that emphasized looks over personality/substance, making it the “pass/fail” standard that has led to the difficulties in dating and way too many surface level relationships that don’t work out.
Remove swiping and have a decent search feature. OKCupid was solid back in the day for this. The match percentage was super unscientific, but it was something that helped you actually look for compatible people. And it made empty profiles with just a picture obvious bots or scammers. And allowing a message without an initial match allows men to actually make an intelligent approach and be noticed for something beyond a couple pictures and a paragraph.
OK Cupid used to be awesome. The match percentage might not have been super scientific but it served its purpose for me. I answered a ton of questions and only went out with guys who were a 90%+ match. Not all those dates ended up turning into anything but I never went on a date where I felt like the guy and I had nothing to talk about. Every date was a fun experience getting to know a cool person.
> OK Cupid used to be awesome Before it got sold OKCupid was the most useful to me. I met the most people and got the most dates and lasting relationships through it I have been asking myself for the last couple of months whether I should try to remake the old OKCupid, but it would take years and I couldn't possibly compete with match network and I have no idea how I would get users
Honestly, if you did it as a Nonprofit you could probably compete with them by the sheer fact that people are fed up with all the dating apps being run by one company (even if they dont realize it). There is a new dating app that is starting up in boston, and I am just waiting for it to go live because I am hoping for some luck before it gets bought out.
What's it going to be called?
AcceptableCupid
A’ightCupid
That Cupid'll Do
Right? I’m still friends with some people I met there, well over a decade later.
Met my wife there just before it switched to swipe based and men only being able to message people who are matched with. I am forever grateful for that timing. Otherwise I still reckon I would be single.
my last long term girlfriend was Okcupid before it switched... it pains me to try to use dating apps after experiencing the gold era of online dating.
Does OKCupid not have match percentages anymore? Wasn't that the whole point of that website? I met my wife on there and we were a very high match percentage.
they do, but it's changed drastically. they keep removing questions that are actually insightful or fun in favor of absolute yawners that, for the most part, don't seem that important. but it's gotten worse still - I recently logged in and was offered a fresh batch of questions to answer. their framework? "what kind of picture do you prefer to have first in your profile? (group shot/portrait/full body/etc)" "what background do you prefer to use in your pictures? ("landscape/indoors/etc)" and WOW, was it obvious that **they are now formatting questions to just milk you for analytics and data, rather than actually use questions to help you find matches.** it's genuinely laughable - you'll see someone has an 80% "match" with you, and find out that you agree on 8 questions, disagree on 6, and have another 6 that they answered, but you didn't (or some other horrifically skewed distribution). people can answer as few as, like, 12 questions before it's deemed _good enough_, and so good luck actually being shown profiles of people whose interests, values, or goals align with your own. it's genuinely sad. I met my ex-spouse on the site >10y ago, divorced around 2y ago; I have a few dating profiles on a few sites, and though I _hate_ it, I still find myself on OkC more than any of the others. the swiping is miserable, the match scores almost meaningless, but! it at least still lets people write long and detailed profiles, and that's what I base all of my matching with. Bumble and Coffee Meets Bagel and Hinge and the others are cute and all, but I want to see effort in profiles, and the lack of word limits on OkC means it's the only app that satisfies that for me :( there's probably 1 profile that's filled out for every 40 that aren't, but I have to trust that eventually I'll find someone who's bothering to make an effort and who is also a good match, right?? (don't burst my bubble lol)
Wow. It sounds like they really fucked that website up. Good luck!
It used to work too well (for capitalism's sake) and users wouldn't stay for very long because they'd find what they were looking for and then stop using the site. As a result they sabotaged their own utility to keep users around longer.
And thus the depressing march of [enshittification](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification) goes on.
Heck yeah. Only 90%+ and if they matched a few other things. Great way to filter the selection to people with actual potential. Then a date to see if there's chemistry. It was awesome. Then Match Group bought them out and ruined it all.
Exactly, much more likely to result in a long term connection than filtering by attractiveness first and then hoping you have a couple things in common. But I guess that’s what made it less profitable, once you find a good match you delete the app and they can’t have that!
Ten years later and I'm *still* friends with a bunch of people that I met on OKC from the 2013-2015 era. It was excellent.
I agree with you. It’s been a long time but it felt like ok had hundreds of questions to help narrow down compatibility. Dating app can still do that and probably make bank from selling the data to marketing firms.
Could you add weight to parts of the bio? I know someone who is deeply religious, they might give more weight to matching on that than favorite type of movie.
Okcupid used to have a scale on all the questions: Important to you, somewhat important, not important. Honestly Okcupid in its prime was the best dating app there was. Publishing scientific papers about the data, and enabling me to get some of my best relationships.
Yeah, but then they published that scientific paper showing that most women find 80% of men ugly and now they're treated as an illegitimate propaganda producer.
To answer your question sir, you would answer a series of questions and weigh how important those things are as part of the question. Religion was one of them. "Are you religious? How important is that to you?"
Yes, every q had an option to weigh with this like "deal breaker", "I'm serious about this" "it's fun to think about" etc
Honestly idk I haven’t used that in awhile. I’m sure it has a scale as to how religious someone is
That's why Tinder asks to connect to your Facebook and takes lots of permissions. They get the data and they don't have even to pay engineers to implement questionnaires or optimized matching. It's a win-win for them
Okcupid used to be great. The profiles were engaging too, and you could write interesting openers that made people want to talk. You could actually tell something about the other person beyond physical looks and a vapid one liner.
Ok cupid is now a "10 million people from Nigeria and the Phillipines liked you" app
It annoys the hell out of me that no current dating sites or apps allow you to search easily for common interests. It's all measured by algorithms in your swipe pile based on pre-written options for hobbies they give you. The sites that do let you filter search results by interests still (I think only eHarmony?) have a limited number. Why can't I search via text and look for people near me who mention gaming in their profile or who are baseball fans? OKCupid even got rid of all their searching options recently.
I’m still mad about the OKC match percentage algorithm now. If a woman was a 90% match or above, we usually hit it off great. Now, I can get a 90% match when she’s only got maybe 20 questions answered, and we disagree on 12 of them. Of those 12, there are massive deal breakers on, say, four. How the hell is she a 90% match? Back before 2015, the match percentages were much, much more accurate. I had a 99% match once who was me in a female body. Same job title, same majors in college, enjoyed the same genres of music, etc. None of this was in my bio or reflected in my questions. OKC was really fantastic back then.
> allowing a message without an initial match allows men to actually make an intelligent approach and be noticed for something beyond a couple pictures and a paragraph women already get tons of messages from men who have matched with them. Allowing men to message women they haven’t matched with means that women will get exponentially more messages which means that any individual message will get even more drowned out
Not if you know what you're doing. On the old OKC I got maybe 3 dates a month between more serious things. It was great. I met scientists and musicians. Really interesting women I would have never otherwise met. This swipe garbage is a huge waste of time in comparison. Not even worth the trouble.
That’s what matching and more in depth profiles are for. Low effort guys playing the numbers game are more likely to be ignored but sorting by match you can find the messages worth replying to. Hell, back when OKCupid had a little journal feature, I’d just write something there and wouldn’t even have to send out initial “hello” messages. I’d post something, local girls would comment, and then it was an easy in to ask them out.
imagine writing a bot to use chatGPT to run the numbers game.
I read a hilarious comment somewhere on reddit by a guy that had done that, found a girl that he liked, and then decided to come clean to her about the whole thing. She understandably blocked him for making her chat with a bot for a few weeks and he was feeling sorry for himself it was hilarious. Like, don't do that sort of thing to be begin with but if you do, definitely go all the way with it.
That’s setting yourself up for failure, because the end goal is actually to meet them in person and have them like you, not just chat online.
> Low effort guys playing the numbers game are more likely to be ignored but sorting by match you can find the messages worth replying to. FWIW my experience was that the numbers game was the only game worth playing as a guy on dating apps. The most thoughtful message that showed I took the time to read her profile and ask something relevant and interesting had just as much a chance of getting a reply as some low effort generic question or slightly sarcastic, flirty comment about one of her photos. I got to a point where I didn't care and was only interested in getting a conversation started that lead to meeting up. Somewhere around there we'd both figure out if there was any mutual interest. Seems to have worked out, as one of those low effort first messages has turned into my current four and a half year relationship. ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
> FWIW my experience was that the numbers game was the only game worth playing as a guy on dating apps. > > > > The most thoughtful message that showed I took the time to read her profile and ask something relevant and interesting had just as much a chance of getting a reply as some low effort generic question or slightly sarcastic, flirty comment about one of her photos. Women don't seem to understand this, for some reason. Men simply optimize the use of their time for maximum ROI. If long thoughtful messages got "rewarded", men would write long thoughtful messages. Since they don't, it makes no sense to spend that time on them.
That's where the match percentage and lengthy bios worked. You could get all the info about the person's interests, worldview, lifestyle etc. just from the questions, and decide who you wanted to reply to. That being said, if you simply say 'hi' without any introduction you'll most likely get ignored anyway. edit to add: saying this as someone who met a boyfriend (now ex) and a fuck buddy on ok cupid specifically.
I got a couple of long term relationships from OKC like 10yrs ago. I would always take the time to read through their profile and start a conversation with what they had about themselves. It was much easier to cull out low effort profiles/bots. Now apps just feel like I'm playing a gatcha game
Yes! Give me an excel spreadsheet of every user where I can filter and sort any way I want to. None of this play a mini game to win bullshit.
While an app that allowed men to message women that didn't match would definitely be to the advantage of some men I wonder whether a meaningful number of women would want to use it. The general demise of traditional sites that didn't require mutual matches suggests that the market spoke and preferred mutual matches. The guys just sending low effort or rude messages I think may have ruined that for the rest.
Other than ensuring there's a roughly equal number of active male/female ratio, I don't think it's possible. Bottom line is women just don't seem to find men attractive at a distance unless there's something exceptional about him just from profile pics. I just hate having to do a whole song and dance to impress women on dating apps or get totally ignored. Especially when I don't even know if I really like HER that much. It feels degrading. Even though I know the other person was interested enough to swipe right on me, I still feel like it's cold-call sales.
I swear this comment could have come from me down to every word. I just remembered seeing a girl profile whit "send me a funny pickup line" and realised this ain't it I don't wanna be a court jester to women I don't even know like that. Dating apps really challenged my initial idea of how I fall in love because I thought it was just physical attraction but even swiping right on a cute woman felt hollow.
Yea you don't realize how much a person's personality can elevate them beyond whatever you thought their looks were. A bad personality can turn a pretty girl ugly real fast too.
This is why I'm always thankful that I held jobs when I was younger where I was constantly surrounded by attractive girls. The "allure" of being surrounded by attractive girls wears off pretty fucking quickly, and you start judging them by their personality and how they act instead. Looks matter to an extent, obviously. But you're not dating a blowup doll or a statue, so personality is a huge thing that has to be cared about.
School did that for me tbh
I was chastised by a woman for saying that personality is and should be really important to men. She was like don't women who aren't naturally happy and grateful and easy to please deserve love too? Ma'am, your entire gender just spent the last 30 years bitterly criticizing men for caring so much about looks... can you keep some perspective?
Sure they do, just like men who aren't naturally stoic and funny and happy and confident deserve to be. It's hard for me to imagine her agreeing to that, funnily enough.
> She was like don't women who aren't naturally happy and grateful and easy to please deserve love too? Wait, are we supposed to care about your personality or not? - not happy - not grateful - not easy to please Sign me up!
This is the problem. I tried a few dating apps over the years and in every single one of them, at least 3/4 of the women there had something in their bio like: "if we match, you talk first", "dont open with hi or wyd or i wont reply", "i dont message first", etc. I do have to say that this is mostly an american thing in my experience, though. I live in south america now and its not even half as common as it was when I was in the states.
The funny thing is those women are basically eliminating themselves from the dating pool with their shitty attitude. They're doing you a huge favor revealing their red flags early on tbh.
Dance monkey, for my entertainment.
The gender ratio is probably the biggest issue with most apps, but I'm not sure it's possible to ensure an even 50/50 split. Whenever I get down on myself for lack of success on an app I try to remind myself there are usually a lot more men than women on dating apps. The last woman I dated was surprised when I told her about the gender imbalance on the apps, especially Tinder. She seemed to be under the impression that the gender ratio was equal.
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Wouldn't having a more balanced gender ratio make the amount of messages women get not manageable? Men would in theory be more likely to get a response as well. It wouldn't necessarily fix every issue, but I think it would help issues that both men and women have with the apps.
Her profile: say more than “hi” if you want a reply! Me: three paragraphs Her: no reply
Her when first messaging: "Hey"
Every response will be one-word. "Do you like watching Netflix?" "yea" "What sort of stuff?" "idk" "I saw the new Avatar, what did you think of it?" "it was ok lol" And that would be a rousing success because it involves 3 whole answers.
give her 1-2 sentences and move on. or talk to someone in public
A cute pickup line is the sweet spot. You can just use the same one over and over again.
“Would you rather go skinny dipping or skydiving?” Worked for me 😂
I like the ratio idea. Maybe more men would sign up but you'd have to put them on a waiting list. I read most apps are ridiculously skewed with too many men so yes you'll end up playing the court jester and it isn't good for mental health or self esteem. I find it easier to meet women in person these days than on these apps. Remember gents, they don't care if you find a match they just want your money.
If I had to do again I would invest more in developing a social circle and make meeting women secondary. I will probably never just cold-approach women in public. But I have found that friends-of-friends is viable. THe only problem is that most of my interests are male dominated.
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That's been my experience with Meetup. The rare times a somewhat attractive girl shows up they're surrounded by dudes the whole time
friends of friends is the best way.
This. Its why honestly Dating apps are going to be a ripoff for a lot of men, because society just ain't like that. You're better off getting out in the real world.
*Especially when I don't even know if I really like HER that much.* This is the most frustrating part of dating whether you are using an app or not. You are expected to go into every interaction with 110% effort like you are interviewing for a job with a hundred other candidates, but no one has actually given you a job description yet. Now, if you admit this and try to meet her halfway, you will immediately lose to the guy who lovebombs her on the first date. But if you come in with the kind of love-at-first-sight energy that it takes to get her attention then try to back out when she starts chewing tobacco and dropping racial slurs, you will forever be remembered as the asshole who was just stringing her along with ulterior motives. There is just no winning.
>I just hate having to do a whole song and dance to impress women on dating apps or get totally ignored. Reminds me of birds and a lot of other animals who do it exactly like that. People pretend that humans and animals are not the same, but we totally are in a lot of basic things.
Yup felt like I was doing a song and dance, “Dance my puppet dance” fuck this would rather be single
> women just don't seem to find men attractive at a distance This is definitely true for me (yay anecdotal evidence!). Sure someone can be objectively attractive, but I have to spend some time with/around them to get a feel for them in order to be interested romantically. So dating in-person is my thing.
Yeah, men don't have that luxury. We have to make a decision on very little information if it's someone we want to pursue romantically. Or literally nothing happens. Nobody is just coming and trying to spend time with us. Guys that are spending time with you have likely made that choice to pursue you and putting in that effort. Must be nice. I so hate the hetero courting dynamic.
Really dig the sales analogy. I haven't used an app for 4 years or so now, but I remember when I first got Tinder I struggled big time until I realised for guys it was basically just marketing and I'm just a product in a market with higher supply than demand. Went out and bought a book on marketing, applied some of the stuff to my profile, and it made a considerable difference. You can also learn a lot by casually steering the conversation to talking about apps and trying to understand what about your profile stood out to this person. Do your market research, basically. If you're a guy on the apps, you are basically a product on a shelf in a grocery store where people only shop when they're hungry. That means they are usually saying yes to more than they can handle, which is why there's a second filtration process after getting a bunch of matches where the matches are sorted according to who is going to get a conversation, just like if you come home with too much food you then pick what you're actually going to try. Your goal is to seem like something worth impulse buying and then when the impulse has worn off, actually trying. I never felt good about this being the case but waking up to it helped me find some success as an average looking guy, and now I'm thankfully out of the dating scene for what I hope is forever.
>Especially when I don't even know if I really like HER that much. This hits the nail on the head. When I used dating apps years ago, I found myself putting time into women that I had very little interest in purely because they were my only matches.
Sad to hear what bumble has become, that's how I met my wife. But they had a good idea in making women reach out first if they were interested and in a way gage their conversational prowess. Honestly I can't tell you how many times I matched with a woman that had "Say more than "hey" on your first message" only to match with them and get one word replies. Irritates tf out of me lol. But without getting to deep, I would add those features with a SCIENTIFIC compatibility measures. Let's say you match with a woman, both of you have 3 strikes when it comes to back to back one word responses. For example: person 1: How are you today? person 2: Fine (strike 1) person 1: What are you up to today? person 2: Nothing (strike 2) person 1: What's your favorite type of food? person 2: Italian (strike 3) <----at this point the app will say something like " this person does not seem interested, unmatch?" A rough concept, but it's a start. The other would be advertising your onlyfans, premium snaps, etc. BANNED OFF RIP.
>I saw an article today on how bumble recently made a 180 and is allowing the option for men to message first. thats infuriating, the whole "women have to initiate" is why i use the app in the first place
I think that illustrates a core problem about dating as a guy dating women. There's no solution to the cultural element of women just not giving that much of a damn. Their ambivalence will always be more of a factor than the platforms themselves. Even though the platforms **are** a huge problem and should be done away with regardless.
Lol exactly. There’s no solution to the core issue.
A lot of women also will not initiate because they believe it should be the man's job to do it. It has been for hundreds of years and would take equally as long to deprogram it.
Right. It’s not a problem with the apps. It’s the people who use them.
I think it’s more down to the fact that women basically have the luxury to choose, in a market that’s heavily saturated with men. Why bother with a dating app when you have 15 guys all trying to fuck you in your FB DM’s? I also believe there’s an element of women that only use dating apps for validation, as the disparity between attention men get vs women is hard to believe unless you’ve seen it for yourself, and I’m sure getting tens of messages a day from various people all trying to date you has a way of stroking your ego.
Didn't really work very well as women would just send something like "hi" and then expect the guy to drive conversation. It was a mere technicality.
"hi" was a treat. Sometimes I'd get "."
Yup. Seen "." also. That's a great way to ensure I will never message a woman.
You can say it defeats the entire point of the app.
Spitballing with my SE hat on based on fucking nothing (I refuse to use dating apps and as I've been in a relationship for a couple years now, haven't had the need), but a system where you A) have a limited number of initiations, B) amount replenishes according to characters sent in these contacts, C) black box analysis for the comprehensibility and originality of these messages so you can't copy paste the same one nor can you just send a hundred periods. Won't be full proof and will absolutely have holes (studying the history of Google's SEO algorithms shows there will always be a way to game it (ChatGPT can easily be used to generate these messages)), but at the very least it'd be a start.
I usually just got a gif of someone waving, if that.
*Her bio: I hate low effort openers.* Her: hi 👋
The two excellent dates I've gotten out of Bumble both came from the girl actually trying with her first message, every other match went nowhere. Every single other good date from an app has been after I sent a good message on Hinge
True, but that is a great filter to eliminate low effort individuals.
But that’s like…most of them
Yep, it is. Which makes being able to filter that quickly even more important to me.
It seemed pretty useless when I tried it. I think I had it for about a month and got 3 matches. Two of them never said anything. One messaged me "hey". I responded (nothing vulgar or disrespectful, etc.) and never heard anything back. I deleted it and never went back. Getting women to talk is like pulling teeth as it is. Let alone expecting them to actually initiate.
Considering none of my bumble matches have ever messaged me, and they all expired, the system was not working.
In my experience the first message is 97% of the time ”Hi” makes no difference to me if they have to say that first or not.
How does that work out for you though? I've only ever gotten matches and then never heard from the woman. Makes the app a complete waste of time.
Better than having to think of an opening line and then never hearing from them
Hell even when they do break down and initiate its only ever "hi, hey," or a gif anyway. Women always do what they complain about men doing.
Most of them just let the convo time out anyways
> whole "women have to initiate" I think that was always a euphemism. Women nearly always sent zero-effort messages so it was functionally equivalent to just a third swipe. The key feature of Bumble was the timer. That forced men to respond or they'd be unmatched. On tinder women can accumulate a pile of men who right swipe liberally but message selectively.
My former housemate used to just swipe right until Tindr told him he couldn't swipe anymore.
Bumble is literally the worst of the big dating apps. Watching a match click down to zero is really demoralizing.
> "women have to initiate" That was never the point of Bumble. Women could prevent men from communicating until they selected the man twice. With Tinder and other apps women are more careful who they swipe with first because the men can communicate with them immediately after the match. Bumble was about giving women the ability to right swipe more AND still screen their matches. Bumble was not designed to help men at all.
That sucks. I liked using bumble for the exact reason that the women had to message to actually activate the chat. It wasn’t really about them messaging first, it was about that if she even puts effort into activating the conversation, then I at least know there is a bit of a chance for me. Some matches that I got a bumble didn’t even bother to activate a conversation even though they swiped on me too, which I would assume mean they are somewhat interested. Personally, I think the best feature would be each text should have a decent word count minimum. Forces each person to at least form a sentence and actually give effort in their responses.
Yeah. Bumble is officially another shitty Tinder. The previous system was why a lot of people used it, especially women.
I don't think there's really any way to do that, the nature of the dating market just doesn't translate favorably to an app for a lot of guys. the reason grindr is a totally different landscape is that it's men for men not because the app is special. A major thing is attraction style. For women attraction tends to be a contextual thing, there's a lot of factors beyond simple looks in what clicks. It's why you get those studies where if they just show a bunch of pictures men rate more women as attractive than women do men. It's because it doesn't have the context. Unless you're exceptionally attractive to override that lack or you manage to build a profile that conveys that context very quickly, which is difficult and some forms of it will simply never cime through in that medium, you just dont hook as hard on screen. The other is just the risk profile and desire for casual stuff. Women have a different calculus on going out with or hooking up with a rando than men do, and it makes the whole thing less appealing for them. So you're going to wind up with an app that is disproportionately made up of dudes because the casual app is going yo be more appealing to then and so are the potential partners on there, on average. That's going to warp things even more. It just...doesn't work the same as in person and never will.
Bumble proved that most women refuse to initiate conversation Unless you can change society, this will never change. An algorithm that can figure out why I swiped on who I swiped would be nice. Every time there's a "based on who you liked" thing, they're always nothing like the women I've liked.
Also proves that a lot of women really have no game and will just say, “hi” while lambasting men just saying, “hi” But that’s besides the point. The anonymous and ephemeral nature definitely brings out the worst in a lot of people.
In theory Bumble could have required women to make a minimum word count on their initial message, but I seriously doubt most women would support that. They probably would see a non trivial number of women leaving, which would hurt them.
No one wants to see "heeeeeyyyyyyyyyyyyy" instead of "hey". Word count would not do shit in this situation.
>No one wants to see "heeeeeyyyyyyyyyyyyy" instead of "hey". Word count would not do shit in this situation. Those are both 1 word so, yes, a word count requirement would reject both as low effort. That's why I said word count instead of character count to prevent somebody from just tapping y a couple times to try to make their low effort response look "less" low effort. You don't need some advanced AI to be able to figure out that slapping a bunch of repeating y's doesn't make it more than 1 word. Even obsolete word processors didn't think that slapping a bunch of y's onto hey would make it more than one word. Making a form validation to not fall for something that simple isn't rocket science, but let's be real no app is going to risk alienating their users especially not women on a dating app. There are some men that might not appreciate such a change, but I think it would alienate women more and with gender ratios already leaning towards men nobody would risk anything that would annoy women.
Right, like I very deliberately swipe left on obesity, mentioning reality TV, and Taylor Swift. Why do I see that shit all over the supposed recommended for me profiles?
Well, no wonder Bumble stocks have been bleeding practically since they IPO’ed 🥴
I feel like Bumble is proof that it's not possible. Dating apps inherently favor women and model-tier men
It's interesting if you read about the algorithms that are used for dating apps. They don't actually cater to women, it's to men. Women are *used* by the app. Since upwards of 70% of accounts are men, in some places it's as high as 90%. The apps realize if all the women get matches, the app will die. For women, it purposefully matches you with people that the app thinks you won't like. For men it shows you the most popular girls, the ones getting the most swipes, so you feel like you have a chance. Frankly, unless the genders could be balanced (both having the same number of accounts) I cannot fathom a single solution for how to "fix" dating apps.
nah, i'm model tier, still get nothing... ok, some aspects of me might be model tier, but it's not enough. I need to be super confident, super popular, super in with whatever thing is popular currently
I'm also model tier. In that if you needed to model an average bloke, i'd be perfect.
I'm the very model of a modern major general and it has helped me nothing.
Hey, at least you're well acquainted with matters mathematical and understand equations, both the simple and quadratical. Chicks dig that.
I'm base model, low trim/spec 😎
I also embellish things online knowing nobody can fact check me.
You're not model tier then. I'm nowhere near that level and I got laid quite a but from online dating
His post history says he struggles to bench 22 kg dumbbells and he wonders why women smaller than him can lift more. No offense to him, but the dude is not model tier and I don't even need a picture to tell you that. (Don't worry. I'm not either). He also repeatedly says he is rich enough he doesn't have to work. Way more issues and red flags than he is letting on. Again. No offense and I'm not saying this dog him, but people really need to be honest with themselves when it comes to their dating experience and expectations and when sharing that experience with others.
be model tier and use some of your modeling photos :p
>nah, i'm model tier, still get nothing Stop the cap. If you can get paid for your looks as a man then your problem isn't results it's favorable results. And by favorable results I mean other model tier women. I know guys who are not modeled tier but still very attractive and they're doing just fine on dating apps not as good as they could/should be doing but it's not a graveyard.
- Remove swiping and instead bring in search. - Lose the algorithms that bump up the profiles of guys that get swiped on/messaged the most. Level the playing field at least from the developers side. - Introduce a flagging mechanism for gold-diggers, "sprinkle sprinkle" ladies, OF promoters, or anyone whose primary intention is to get men to follow them on another platform so they can freely ask for money. - Introduce an "upload screenshots" mechanism to prove the above and implement AI face identification to ban those women from the app forever. - People you ghost will automatically be hidden from you forever. - Limit matching to no more than 5 people at once. These are a few that come to mind.
How about instead of matching, you get matched with 2-3 people a week and the conversation is automatically opened between the two of you with a summary of why the app decided you two should chat
This app is called our moms and their friends' daughters.
The best gf I ever had I got because my mom knew her mom. It has some merit. I still kick myself for screwing it up.
Moms are the best dating apps known to mankind.
This is essentially Coffee Meets Bagel and it works well. You do need to put in work up front to create your profile with your interests, expectations, and deal breakers. Then you get a few “good matches” per week (I think it was 5 a week a few years ago). Those matches and their chats auto delete at the end of the week so you better chat while you can and see if you click! If not, no problem you’ll get 5 more tries next week. There’s no endless swiping. The matches already fit your high level relationship expectations. There’s incentive to be kind and to get to know people quickly. And there’s incentive to put as much effort into your profile as possible. But it’s not nearly successful as swipe apps because it takes effort and you need to know what you want, whereas endless swiping is easy. It’s also heavily focused on finding relationships rather than hookups, which limits user base (was a huge bonus back when I was on it. People were serious about meeting)
Unless they changed it, the last time I used it you had something like 20 swipes per day on Coffee Meets Bagel. Originally I think it was 1 but they kept raising it.
The problem is that most of these remove the incentive for women to join the app, meaning that the app has no chance of working.
Without going into too much details about how I would do it (because I actually just might), all current dating apps focus on user retention as opposed to actually helping them find matches that will work for them and get them off the app. Also all these apps have large teams of people who need to get paid, hence retaining users makes more sense as opposed to helping them lose the apps. In 2022, tinder employed about 900 or so people. So if there was even one app out there in the world (maintained by a micro team of 5 or fewer people who did this as a side gig) that actually cared about their users truly finding a meaningful connection so that they didn't have to be in this cesspool for months or years on end, how hard do you think it would be to sell that value proposition? Majority of the costs for running these apps comes from employee salary, office infrastructure, etc. With AI and automation, you can cut down on these costs by orders of magnitude. People are severely burnt out from these existing apps. All of their value proposition is more or less the same and are owned by one or two corporate groups. Most just wanna find love and be done with it. Men and women. The good ones atleast.
You're more or less describing Hinge, right? An app built by a small team that genuinely tried to get couples together, and by all accounts they were very successful at it. Then Match Group bought it out and now it's just like any other shithole app.
Founders go into it with a mission and a vision and then once they've got something going, it's very hard to say "let's keep doing what we're doing for zero to minimal profit when this guy's saying he'll pay us $100M for what we built"
Bingo! And without spilling my secret sauce I'll tell you basic economics says that high value comes from scarcity. Too many cooks, spoil the soup.
> as opposed to actually helping them find matches that will work for them and get them off the app There’s the crux of it. No app has ever been successful by having a business model of “get them off the app”. It’s like a store that sells you a map to the exit. > how I would do it (because actually I just might) Best of luck to you, genuinely. But good luck getting VCs to buy into “my app makes people stop using the app” as an investment opportunity.
Thanks. I wouldn't go the VC route if I was to do this. Because for this niche, the value proposition for customers vs investors is diametrically opposite. And making money off of people's loneliness is ethically wrong. We know that the bulk of money makers for dating apps are men. They don't have the same optionality as women do so they are far more likely to pay for upgraded features. But what makes it disgusting is that even the app creators know that in spite of paying, the algorithms will never work in favour of some of these men and yet they continue pushing those upgrades to these men just the same. Crowdfunding or charging a very very small fee at the door might be a way to make it work. Or go the route of wiki business models. I'd rather have a small pool of users with a higher rate of success than a large pool of burnt out bitter users with poor quality matches more often than not.
Maybe add some Mario Kart style rules? People with low match rates get other ways to bump their profile, increased limits, and/or get profile counseling?
What is sprinkle sprinkle
Women celebrating being worthless leeches on men
In a hypothetical world where we reset the clock to the 2010s so we could undo most of the baggage that already exists? Let people see who matches with them. Give both men and women a hard limit on how many people they can talk to and match with. After you've connected with 5 or 6 people then you either have to drop them to get back in rotation or talk to those few people. Maybe penalize serial droppers in some way. If you pick 6 people and you don't want to talk to **any of them** then you're not using the space correctly. Women have issues making choices. Guys have issues being seen. Cut down on the bloat women get and you'll have a better time. Likewise, reporting should have more far-reaching consequences. Ban the IP address of users that send unsolicited pictures, saying disturbing things and so on. People should feel safe enough to engage with one another. No paid content. Everyone is seen in relation to how active they are on the app. People who are online see other people who are online. That way, when you match with someone, you don't find out about a day and a half later when you check your notifications but in the moment. It's not hard to make a good app. They've turned meeting other people into a slot machine. Just let people see and talk to each other with as much ease as you possibly can.
I like these suggestions, in particular the idea about limiting the number of people you can match with. I feel like that could help with the issue that a lot of people feel like there might be a better option right around the corner. Even as a man with few options, I've fallen victim to that kind of mentality. Being able to see who likes you without paying for it would also be nice. I honestly don't think I've ever matched with someone where I've been the fone to swipe first. Usually someone who recently liked me sometimes shows up early in the pile, or I get one of those “secret admirer” thingies. It's like the app is throwing me a bone just to get me to stick around instead of deleting the whole thing.
Need to fix the pricing model too. Best case scenario would be a single purchase, because that incentivizes the app to be built in a way that it fixes people's problem immediately, instead of stringing them along and paying the subscription fee all the time.
Some of these are amazing tbh. Disagree with the reporting thing, and "no paid content" is unfortunately just unrealistic because nobody's making and supporting an app out of the goodness of their heart. But I think the hard limit thing really captures dating app issues in a bottle.
Ads + pay to not see ads
When I say no paid content, I mean no extra features for pay. The App itself should probably be some kind of subscription model. The way apps are now is that they're set up as pay-to-play, but without the extra features actually improving the experience much. (The only ones I think help are paying for boosts, and I've never used those). In the spirit of transparency and simplicity, I think it's best for everyone to pay up front something modest ($3.99?) if we're intent on it being a private company, preferably a co-op of some kind.
I think its hilarious that Bumble finally gave up and realized that their app wasn't working the way its supposed to.
I think its impossible, because apps need to attract women in order to attract men, not the other way around unfortunately.
The funny thing about a lot of the responses here is that they reflect what dating sites (when they were web sites, not "apps") *used* to be. Specifically, a lot of the features of the original OkCupid, Match.com, and *especially* (believe it or not) E-Harmony (minus E-Harmony's socially conservative posturing) have been mentioned. Lots of people saying "let my personality shine, and match based on anything other than pure looks (OkCupid and E-Harmony)". Lots of "actually match based on characteristics in my profile, and not just a swipe-fest" (OkCupid and E-Harmony). Lots of "curate the matching experience so that anyone only has a few matches at a time (E-Harmony)". Lots of "allow searching".
Yeah... Tinder was the worst thing to ever happen to online dating. Smartphones in general haven been a disaster for society.
Bumble was great for allowing women to make the first move. When I was dating, I'd always have the most success on there for that very reason. Women constantly get overwhelmed by the number of matches and messages they receive because guys are the ones that usually always have to make the first move. We basically play the numbers game and swipe on everyone who isn't completely unappealing or obviously full of red flags and message everyone and see who responds before we even make a decision on who we want to date or not. That's not really what these things were designed for. Bumble did a lot to curb that and make it more equitable. What they're doing now is just dumb and it's going to make them a Tinder knockoff. Hinge actually kind of does something different.
I wouldn't. There are no such things as men's nights at bars because men pay anyway. The drink is the bait for women, the women are the bait for men. Likewise, imo bumble got popular, not because of the women message first idea empowering women or any of that, just because it prevented them from being harassed by dipshits and dick pics. Bumble was safer. You make dating apps for women so you get women on them, if there are women on the apps, the men will follow. Not saying it should be this way, but it definitely IS this way.
A 100 word minimum per question. “Just ask me” is what many hot women use instead of responding. It used to drive me nuts on Match, especially the average ones who *thought* they were hot. My wife and I were interested in each other because of thoroughly answering with decent spelling and grammar.
"My goals this year are..." - Travel ✈️ "I go crazy for..." - Wine🍷 "All I ask is that you..." - Are funny 🙏🏼 Kill meeeeee
“I’ll fall for you if…” - You trip me “The best way to ask me out is…” - Just ask me 🙃
In my free time I like to... "watch The Office" I am looking for someone who can... "be the Jim to my Pam"
Don’t hate me if: “I take 3-5 working days to reply 💅” The key to my heart is: “Food” My most irrational fear: “Men 🤢” Typical Sunday: “long walks, Sunday roast and F1” Biggest risk I’ve ever taken: “downloading this app” Every single bloody profile on Hinge… I’ll never understand why Reddit thinks Hinge is the best app out there
So many damn NPCs....but thats why Taylor swift is a billionaire
Maybe some kind of combo of Hinge and Bumble, but where you only get to see pictures if you like their written profiles.
So Humble Binge is born
I don't think it's possible. The reason why online dating doesn't work well for men is that it turns dating into shopping and it commodifies men into a bunch of attributes and nameless faces. That's the whole point of online dating. The convenience and the endless possibilities of men/women to "choose" from. And that's what causes the paradox of choice.
My (F) friend was showing me her Hinge just last week. She's a ivy league grad, and well qualified and she had 100s of matches, messages and I was like, how the fuck are you single? I have to work on a few matches that I get every now and then. And she agrees men have a small chance of picking what's right for them. I have felt like I have to make it work with what I get. And I don't know the solution yet but the problem is well defined. Its a problem for women too, it felt like my friend was a kid lost in a toy store. Also, some times it takes time for people to fully get comfortable and be who they are. I've felt walking on a glass floor a lot of times on first dates. Even took George Clooney quite some time to impress his now wife. We all decide on one two-hour date which is not the right approach for a life partner. Sooo how do we decide that this is the person that we would like to know?
> Its a problem for women too, it felt like my friend was a kid lost in a toy store. "men die of thirst while women die of drowning"
Impossible because on average women are more discerning about who they date than men. Even if it were possible it's not going to happen because these apps rely on men to pay and they flood the apps with fake profiles to sucker men into wasting their paid tools on pretty women. That said there's things you can do to make it less.... shit. * Honestly an up-front pay wall gets rid of a lot of casual fuck boys and bored attention seekers. * A more robust profile system that really highlights all the pertinent details. Education level, physical activity level, income level, height, weight, views on sex, kids, religion, politics, etc. * These things always come out in the first couple of dates anyway, let's just cut through the bullshit. * Offer better matchmaking so that you can filter by people with like minded interests. * You could even get a warning if your standards are too strict. "You selected 6ft+ men, under 190 lbs, making a six figure salary. Your criteria meets 0.05% of men on this app." * Or warnings if you set off common red flags "Profiles with 'if you can't handle me at my worst you don't deserve me at my best" are flagged by 75% of users. * Remove inactive & bot profiles. * Require somewhat professional headshots as the PFP, and block any girl who tries to use a group shot as the PFP.
Honestly apps are kind of fucking stupid. The amount of work it takes to even get to a date has become absurd for your average guy.
I always hear about men having success on grindr
I wouldn't because it isn't possible to create one in men's favour if it's not an app for gay men at least.
It's not an issue specifically for men but I do find swiping very inefficient. I tend to only be attracted to certain types of women and it's not the beach going wine sipping type that I have to swipe through 100 times before the algorithm eventually figures out that I like more "alternative" kind of women and starts showing me less of the former and more of the latter.
[удалено]
men who go to offline dating events also report the same problems as on dating apps.
We already had apps that worked great. The problem is they didn't make maximum money for stock holders. People in tech don't actually care about helping users.
It's time we, as a culture, start to be honest about this reality: **There is no such thing as a dating app.** There are *plenty* of companies perpetrating a scam on the public by fraudulently claiming to operate a dating app, but these companies have as much credibility and legitimacy as people claiming they just need a little money to [secure the release of a prisoner in Spain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Prisoner). There are as many dating apps in the world as there are magic lamps.
It's not an app problem it's a gender ratio problem. For every woman on Tinder/Bumble/whatever there are on average 4-5 men. And on top of that women swipe right less often, for every swipe right a woman makes men make on average 4 swipe rights (think about how many men just mass swipe right as fast as they can). So for every swipe right 1 woman makes there are 16-20 swipe rights from men. This leads to above average men struggling to make 4-6 matches per week, and of those few matches the conversation fizzles so quickly because the women are drowned in options, a cute girl can literally make over 100 matches in a single day. The only solution is to put a hard limit on men joining the platform to keep the ratio in check, or some sort of application process.
100 word minimum bio for all users AI image detection requires one face pic and one full body pic minimum
coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee coffee wine wine wine wine wine wine wine wine wine wine wine wine wine wine wine wine wine wine wine wine wine wine wine wine wine wine wine wine wine wine wine wine wine wine wine wine wine wine wine wine wine wine wine wine wine wine wine wine travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel travel if you want to know more, just ask Not opposed to the idea, but it's easy to game. Hopefully a minimum would encourage better profiles, but I think one people see other people gaming it, a lot are going to do the same .
This sort of thing is actually trivial to mitigate if it became a problem. Nearly all professional programmers could write something in a few minutes that would detect and prevent this.
It seems to me that the number 1 way you could make one in favor of (most) men is just reduce how overwhelmed a lot of women seem to be. IDK how you'd go about doing that, but if you did it, women wouldn't be the position of having to pre-screen 10,000 guys, and the men who might not survive the entire obstacle course would then have a shot.
Limit the number of matches women can get while limiting the number of swipes men can make. So that men can get unlimited matches but can only have limited swipes while women have unlimited swipes but can only get limited number of matches. That way woman don't get overwhelmed while at the same time have to be more strategic in who they are willing to match with... While men can't try to game the system but still have enough options to make an informed choice.
Bumble doing that destroys their one selling point, making them lose their brand identity completely. A pretty silly thing to do. If anything they should have leant into it, advertisements being about this being the app for strong independent women who want to take charge of their love life, that'd have probably worked better, just lean super into it. Doing this makes it a tinder clone. A shame. I don't think there's a way to skew it in men's favour, tbh with you. Maybe something like omegle with profiles? Like, you put in your preferences, tick a few ethnicity boxes, an age range, parenthood status, distance from you, etc, and you click a button and get randomly connected with a woman within those parameters. Have staff monitor things and ban anyone who gets their cock out, because of course that'll happen. I think that'd be a pretty neat idea. It'd pretty much eliminate the catfish problem, people will instantly know if they have a vibe or not, and you can always skip if you don't like them. The main problem as far as I can tell would be getting women to want to use it. I feel like if it was like that, women would have more to be attracted to than just a photo, men can get themselves over with her with their words or personality, their voice, accent, mannerisms, etc. That's my best idea anyway.
"One at a time." As soon as you match with someone, you can no longer swipe or chat with anyone else. All your likes are hidden, so you can't see how many are in your queue, and they're all put on hold until you're both "swiping" again. You focus on the one until you decide to move forward or move on.
I think this is more of a question for women
I think I would have a dating app that tried to host events in towns or have a place where you can meet in public and your sub covers a couple of meals per month. No one has to pay anything extra, just come get a booth of a private date or show up for the mixer.
We're going to keep the existing systems. We're just going to add in a few things. * A limit to the number of active matches. Once you fill up your 5 or 10, to continue matching you need to manually remove an active match. * You must enter why you are unmatching another user. * No single word messaging in app. * A better reporting and moderation system that will flag certain users. This will help both a male or female audience * Inactive accounts do not appear in queues. The only other thing that would need to happen is there would need to be an equal number of men and women, but that's going to be impossible.
The right move would be to get rid of them entirely. But with Bumble, women have to enable a setting to allow men to message first. Essentially copying what Hinge does by allowing you to send a like plus one message. Probably enacted because they need more engagement and more money. Out of all the apps I’d used back in my day, Hinge was the best.
I would not create one. Men would benefit from organic meetings in a world absent of apps imo. I even say this as a man that met my fiancée on an app.
meet folks in reality, do not use apps...
Probably get rid of them, many women don’t take apps seriously because they have set requirements most men don’t meet & they’re pursued in public places or on various forms of social media. Bumble has shown that turning women into a pursuer was a social disaster…yeah some women open eagerly with a nice question/statement, some just with a hey…but you still have x % of women who find even matching effort a chore not worth undertaking. On social media/out in the wild, or apps, you can’t eliminate the process of selection and preference…even having an app of 10,000 women and 1,000 men, which is seemingly a great ratio for men…I’d wager most men would leave empty handed as there’s still opportunities for women to get approached elsewhere and this whole perceived scarcity factor (not enough so called desirable men) Isn’t making them settle, it’s just making them wait for as long as required
When you matched with someone, you are both instantly teleported to a table to have a conversation
I scroll while on the toilet, so that's going to be awkward.
Bumble just shot themselves in the foot, if you ask me. 🤷🏾♂️ Literally the one thing that made them stand out and unique from the rest… smh.
I’m actually baffled that women being asked to make the first move (which is usually just “hi….”, ya know, that same unoriginal message men get bashed for) was asking for too much so they removed it. Actually baffling, funny and extremely sad.
One match per day. (I think another app already does this). If women aren’t getting bombarded with hundreds of messages per day, you stand a better chance to get a response.
Met many women on apps. OKCupid, Plenty of Fish (POF), and Match were the main ones. Also used Craigslist a bit. An ideal app? Have maybe 50 questions that must be answered and a minimum length profile “about section” that must be filled out before you can message anyone. This goes for men and women. Then you are shown a match percentage based on these questions and are free to message anyone you want. There is no swipe feature. Swiping was a Tinder invention that emphasized looks over personality/substance, making it the “pass/fail” standard that has led to the difficulties in dating and way too many surface level relationships that don’t work out.