Current Events > EVERY man falls for the same trap on online dating sites

(+) Yeah! (+)

1. You join the site, realize there's a shit-ton of profiles with very little content, and don't know what to say to anyone.
2. You set your preferences for what you're looking for. 20 miles away, 20-25 years old, cute-looking.
3. You message 3-4 women with well, thought-out messaged based on their profile. You thorughly looked through each profile to see if you two are compatible or not.
4. After a week, you receive no responses. Out of frustration, you drop your preferences in hopes of finding more matches. 50 miles away, 20-30 years old, decent-looking.
5. You send 10-15 messages, hoping your odds of a reply back are higher. Your messages are still personalized, but lazier and not as well thought-out. You're starting to get burn out, and you're not spending as much time looking at their profile, but you're still trying to find someone to connect with.
6. You actually do receive one message. Out of excitement you reply back, but she never replies again.
7. Once again you're forced to drop your preferences. 100 miles away, 20-40 years old, below-average-looking.
8. This time you sent 20+ messages, all copy/pasted with no thought whatsoever. You're extremely burnt out, not looking at any profiles anymore. You realize at this point, that dating is a numbers game and your current strategy is the best way to go.
9. Sure enough, you do receive 3 or 4 replies with this strategy, but because of how burnt out you are, you no longer have the mental energy to continue talking to women, and your responses will usually become shitty as a result.
10. Rise and repeat.

An objection I expect to hear: "But Chunky, I found love on online dating, and I didn't treat online dating like a numbers game"

It sounds like you followed steps #1 and #2, and then on step #3 you DID get a response from a woman. I'm not saying you didn't earn that woman, but it's one of those "right place at the right time" moments. Had you not received that response, you would be following steps #4, #5, #6 and so on...

Nah, first message "up up down down left right left right B A start" works every time

get off of the dating apps and look for events where you can meet actual people

All this shit sounds really complicated.

Makes me glad I'm not interested in intimacy.

I had responses within hours (sometimes minutes) every time I did it and spoke to some of them at length eventually getting with my current gf

You doin something wrong

I met a woman who I thought was awesome. She waited a few months to reveal that she was unapologetically racist AF.

I had to end it and I've stopped looking out of frustration.

VampireCoyote posted...

get off of the dating apps and look for events where you can meet actual people

Stop hitting on people irl, it's annoying af?

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I think I'm very firmly in the "a bit above average" category

I thank ya tho

All the dating app topics on this board have me convinced that, while they do increase your odds of getting a date, you are worse off mentally 99% of the time.

Smackems posted...

I had responses within hours (sometimes minutes) every time I did it and spoke to some of them at length eventually getting with my current gf

You doin something wrong

There's a lot of context we're missing, like your location, what you look like, what app did you use, how long ago was this. These are rhetorical questions of course, just making a point. And yes, I don't deny I'm doing something wrong. If I weren't doing anything wrong, I would probably be successful.

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I'm not much of a looker, so that MIGHT have impact on why I haven't been successful.

Chunky posted...

I'm not much of a looker, so that MIGHT have impact on why I haven't been successful.

I'm gonna write you a prescription for some Bond tactical soap.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/9/8/7/AAeXcuAAD7tL.jpg

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I'm 30. Right now, I'm not, but at the time I was working out 3-4 days a week. I have a genetic condition that makes it VERY difficult to gain muscle. I was doing the same workout as an MMA fighter. Same reps, same heartrate, same diet, same everything, but my results were much worse than the MMA fighter. This is just science, if two people do the exact same workout, they will each have different results.

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This is actually some VERY good information. It actually ties in well with my post.

I'll play devil's advocate for a second. Maybe the reason I have trouble having shit to reply to is because some women have taken content off due to sexual messages. Maybe I don't get replies back very often because my messages are sandwiched between hundreds of other guys. Some of what you said explains the behaviors I noticed on online dating.

You have to get someone to take your photos. You need photos that demonstrate adventure. Online dating is tough its literally all and only about high quality good looking photos. Nobody gives a shit about the bio can you get a boat/surf board/snowboard/group of humans in your photos?

Bathroom selfies for a dude you better be tatted or jacked.

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Yeah I'm very skinny. I stopped working out for 3 reasons:

1. Laziness
2. Frustration because of the reasons I mentioned above. If I saw results I would have overcame my laziness.
3. I don't like working out. I don't feel good or enjoy it. It's difficult to keep doing it if you don't like it. It's like going to school for nursing when you don't want to be a nurse.

From my experience on dating sites I find that I have better chemistry with them online than irl.

Nasty_Nitro posted...

You have to get someone to take your photos. You need photos that demonstrate adventure. Online dating is tough its literally all and only about high quality good looking photos. Nobody gives a shit about the bio can you get a boat/surf board/snowboard/group of humans in your photos?

Bathroom selfies for a dude you better be tatted or jacked.

You sure about this? This seems like one of those stereotype opinions on what guys THINK women want to see, but in reality not all women are the same, and many of them would hate this.

I'd agree with you if you said some men, but not EVERY man.

TC, if these are problems that you're having, my suggestion would be to change what apps you're using. The majority of the time when I see complaints like this, it's on Tinder. Drop that app and try Hinge, Bumble, Coffee Meets Bagel, etc. From there, make sure you profile actually has plenty of details about yourself and stick with the well thought out replies and you'll eventually match with women that are interested.

It's not completely hopeless out there.

Dating sites are supposed to supplement your dating pool, not be the entire damn thing

Chunky posted...

2. You set your preferences for what you're looking for. 20 miles away, 20-25 years old, cute-looking.

Completely your fault for wanting women super young and super attractive, giving that precedence over personality and compatibility. To think that you have to lower your standards just to start considering "average" looking women, or women who aren't just out of high school... yikes!

idk what site youre using but your profile, not just your pics (but those too) was always way more important than people who make posts like this seem to think

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I have hobbies but they're all male-dominated. I'm a computer guy, like fixing shit. I don't have many other interests. I describe myself as "laid back" which is generally not something I consider desirable, but that's who I am. I'm in a weird situation where I dunno if I should go outside of my comfort zone and try things I generally don't like doing. I appreciate the help btw.

Makio posted...

Completely your fault for wanting women super young and super attractive, giving that precedence over personality and compatibility. To think that you have to lower your standards just to start considering "average" looking women, or women who aren't just out of high school... yikes!

Shouldn't I be going for women I'm attracted to? What reason would I not do that? Anyway, those were just hypothetical, not actually the settings I put in. I don't think you can set "cute" as a setting anyway lol.

I was really worried about online dating before doing it.

I had heard so much about how awful it was and I had been in a relationship for so long that the idea of doing it all online as a 35 year old seemed very daunting.

Ive got to say, it was fine. Yeah, I got messaged by several weirdos and yeah, some of the girls I messaged didnt get back to me. However, it took hardly any time at all to start to get some promising prospects despite being open about not even being in the country at the time.

I met one girl the day I landed and had a few others lined up that I didnt end up committing to a date with because the first one went really well. Im still with her now.

I was on Hinge and HER all of two weeks before meeting my now-GF on the former. Her profile was a little sparse, but she had dramatic bangs, a picture of herself dressed as Beetlejuice for Halloween, and a potato rock, so I touched on all of those things in a zany way and my humor vibed with her.

NoxObscuras posted...

I'd agree with you if you said some men, but not EVERY man.

TC, if these are problems that you're having, my suggestion would be to change what apps you're using. The majority of the time when I see complaints like this, it's on Tinder. Drop that app and try Hinge, Bumble, Coffee Meets Bagel, etc. From there, make sure you profile actually has plenty of details about yourself and stick with the well thought out replies and you'll eventually match with women that are interested.

It's not completely hopeless out there.

I was mainly talking about Tinder and OkCupid.

Hinge - Tried it. Same issues as Tinder. Not sure why people recommend this app, it's owned by Tinder, so it's just another one of those apps.
Coffee Meets Bagel - Tried it. This one seems nice, but it's super inactive. Not enough people on this one.
Bumble - Tried it. Super overrated. I like the idea of women messaging first, but it just results in no one matching with you lol.

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Lots of women like skinny dudes.

I used many different sites and always quit after a week and went back to meeting people in real life because it was a lot like you are describing here. It just wasn't worth it. You could meet better looking people in real life with less effort, it didn't make sense to use a site. Then when I moved to Japan I couldn't meet anyone in person. I hadn't gone on a date in months. So I try an online dating site and all of a sudden everything is backwards. I am getting blasted with messages. At first I reply to all of them and I even went as far as dating multiple women at once, but it was unsustainable. Eventually I met my now wife, but I can't believe how absolutely awful the online dating experience was in America and how much better it was in Japan.

EDIT: And I lift weights and am in good shape, but it didn't matter for shit in the US. I could meet women offline, but online was useless.

I never message first unless I got something reeeeeeeeallly clever and concise based on their profile. I feel like just another lame adding to their backlog if I don't.

I'm fortunate enough to get a ton that message me first tho.

I have gotten some weird hook up offers before but I never followed up with them because they were so direct it's like this person is going to shank me and steal my kidneys kind of suspicious

MedeaLysistrata posted...

Stop hitting on people irl, it's annoying af?

@MedeaLysistrata cant tell if youre joking Im talking about events tailored to meeting new people or for singles to get to know others

theres tons of them

Just try Facebook Dating as it's free!

I'm overweight, short, bald, and not especially good looking.

On the short time I tried apps I had like 5 women I was having conversations with... I never went through with anything but online chats though.

create decent profile
sign in once per day, do nothing
switch profile picture every now and then
go on with life, wait to get messaged first
get messaged first
???
profit

that was my strategy on when i was actually dating

I've only done steps 1, 2, 4, and 7... Can't do the other steps because I never get any messages...

I've been on Eharmony since August and I've gotten a grand total of one reply and that was a girl who immediately rejected me because I have 2 first names.

I tried it once, telling myself that I'm deleting this shit once it starts to make me feel bad about myself.

I lasted about 3 weeks and that's having been able to go on two dates with two women (neither were really compatible so didn't bother to pursue any further).

Haven't felt like trying again tbh.

No, I had lots of dates from it.

1. I used multiple apps (all free)

2. I spent time on my profile and pictures, made it clear I was active, social and geeky. I was also honest I had kids. I had others check the profile and ideally have women look at it.

3. I gave people a chance and wasn't too picky just based on pics (people can be a lot more attractive in person and when using speech and mannerisms and such)

4. But don't swipe right on everyone as the algorithm will kill you

5. When you have a match. Message enthusiasticly with something on their profile, ask a question and tease your own answer (but don't completely answer your own answer). If they like traveling:

"Hi Anna! (always start with their name) What is your favorite place you have ever traveled to? Last year, I went on a European River Cruise which was a lot of fun." (I didn't say where or if my favorite)

6. Hopefully she responds (admittedly like 50/50 for me). If she responds, ask a question at the end of every single message. I never said anything sexual during any of this. (according to @Gladius_ this probably helped me)

7. After just like 5 or 6 messages each, ask her out: "I am really enjoying chatting with you and would like to continue the conversation. Are you available to meet for happy hour after work next week? I am open Monday, Tuesday and Thursday."

This is somewhat specific but allows some options on her side so she can't just say no to a specific time or place. I never received a "no" from this. Probably reached that point about 25 times on and off over the course of a year so I know it works.

I had a couple two month relationships in there due to this, lots of casual things, and ultimately a 2 year relationship. It unfortunately didn't work out though.

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You don't need to be that tall (I'm 5'10") or even that muscular. No one needs to be 10/10 to get dates. Don't set ridiculously high bars.