You must log in or register to comment.
What the fuck is a 17 year old doing at a job?
I’ve been curious if a government-run dating app could do better - if its goal is to achieve genuine engagement, not cycles of frustration that boost subscription rates.
This is one of many subjects where capitalist concern ruins the product (and that’s not even something I say as often as others on Lenny)
I am forklift certified. I do not need this.
I think we should make dating apps even worse, and just let humanity die out naturally.
Here’s a concept: women over 29 years old don’t view Tinder as a good option for finding decent men. Therefore only the most desperate are the ones who sign up to display themselves on the digital meat market.
In my 50s and I don’t bother anymore. It’s just not worth the hassle. In my 30s I would have had to send out 100 messages to get 1 date. It’s so much worse in my 50s.
Ha!
As a middle aged man you think its great for us? You think all the hot, sane, independent women in their 30s and 40s are strugging for options? If you’re on there theres a 80% chance that you’re no catch either.
Last time my dude showed me a bunch of profiles it was easily 50% “applications to be a stepdad” and 25% women with a checklist (6 foot tall, good living, own house, etc.) Like 6 foot tall athletic lawyers who own their own home are having trouble meeting women.
You think all the hot, sane, independent women in their 30s and 40s are strugging for options?
You’d be surprised… My wife is in a professional dance company full of single ladies ranging in age from 20s to late 30’s. Most of them are on the struggle bus when it comes to finding a decent partner who isn’t a lazy bum or a rampant misogynist.
Tbh most of the dudes in long term relationships with the dancers are just regular everyday dudes. Imo the bar is pretty low nowadays considering that like 1/3 of dudes have been brain poisoned by Joe Rogan/Jordan Peterson.
Married dude here who has a lot of single dude friends. 1/3 is accurate.
And if it’s not Rogan, it’s some other right-adjacent influencer. It’s fucking weird too. They’re regular dudes, helping old ladies on the street and supporting a neighbor. Then suddenly, they crack and share how terrible women are.
Then you got women who are on the other side, complaining about how terrible men are.
I don’t understand it.
I mean, when there’s less cross-interaction nowadays and everyone’s in their own bubbles prevent a challenge their preconceptions, it makes sense.
This is affecting all facets of society, politics even.
Also there’s survivor bias: there is also the fact that on these platforms, the impact of assholes in the dating pool is much greater then the good ones, because it’s the same assholes being cycle through the system, whereas the good ones have already reached the terminal state and found their partner.
And if it’s not Rogan, it’s some other right-adjacent influencer. It’s fucking weird too. They’re regular dudes, helping old ladies on the street and supporting a neighbor. Then suddenly, they crack and share how terrible women are.
Yeah… Idk what it’s all about. A lot of the girls in the company have issues with dudes who like the idea of hooking up with a dancer, then as soon as they get in a committed relationship they want them to quit because they get insanely jealous of other people watching them dance.
The younger crowd of men seem to be super possessive and simultaneously believe that girls only have sex to get things they want and at the same time are massive sluts who can’t be trusted not to cheat…
then as soon as they get in a committed relationship they want them to quit because they get insanely jealous of other people watching them dance.
I think a lot of people are really bad at managing their emotions, especially jealousy.
A friend was telling me about her friend and that friend’s boyfriend. They’d go to concerts together, and the guy would get like super raging jealous that she was dancing in the crowd. Like, grow fucking up. She’s super into you, why are you destroying this relationship? Let her fucking dance.
Honestly, some of the women I see have profiles that are basically demanding an incredible amount of labor from their potential partners.
No coffee dates, no walks. They want something planned out multiple days a week and in exchange they’ll put up with you grunting on top of them.
They want something planned out multiple days a week and in exchange they’ll put up with you grunting on top of them.
Lol, women enjoy sex as well my dude. With an opinion like that it kinda sounds like you may be stepping on your own feet there.
I’m referring to these particular women, not women as a whole.
There’s a type of woman who are essentially asexual, never masturbates, says they don’t really need sex, but still wants to be in a heterosexual relationship from either societal expectations or because they think a boyfriend is useful in other aspects of their life.
And there are some dudes who only want sex and aren’t willing to put any work into building an actual relationship outside the bedroom. My point being is that there are lots of different attitudes out there, but the vast majority of people are just normal people wanting healthy relationships.
I think social media has really segregated people from reality and has warped people’s interpretation of others. It feels as if everyone believes they are the last “normal” person in society and everyone else is just intrinsically antagonistic.
The bar isn’t low. Not being a lazy bum or misogonyst is the bare minimum (as it should be). The real bar is multiple bars in form of a 110 meters hurdles. You have to jump over all of them. Everything below that and the other person will feel as if they are settling.
Not being a lazy bum or misogonyst is the bare minimum (as it should be).
Idk, just judging by any post containing gender discourse on Lemmy…seems to be a pretty big hurdle for a lot of dudes.
You have to jump over all of them. Everything below that and the other person will feel as if they are settling.
That may just be a product of being younger. By the time you get to my age both men and women seem to be wanting to settle down and are more likely to compromise with the idea of an imperfect partnership.
That may just be a product of being younger. By the time you get to my age both men and women seem to be wanting to settle down and are more likely to compromise with the idea of an imperfect partnership.
I dealt with my share of toxic relationships. Happened in my late teens and early twenties. Late 20s and early 30s is when I and all my friends met good people we wanted sticking around and all got married.
Social media is raising expectations to unrealistic levels. As if Hollywood wasn’t bad enough for past generations.
A confounding issue is the apps themselves have gotten worse over time. Like, old okcupid you could search. You could type in like “final fantasy” or “the Mets” and find people who liked those things enough to put them on their profile.
Now you’re limited to whatever the app decides to give you. Well, the app doesn’t want you to leave so that incentive doesn’t line up.
A lot of the more popular ones, okcupid included, all got bought up by Match Group and almost immediately started trending anti-consumer in their updates or removal of features. They want you paying, they don’t give a shit about success.
100%. Match group should be broken up.
It’s an especially insidious type of monopoly to me because it deals with relationships, they can manipulate millions of people, affecting the creation of their families and kids.
Surprised that the religious right haven’t put them in their sites.
Close, they actively fight success. Legally obligated to, even. It’s their fiduciary responsibility to keep you using the app.
So capitalism is incompatible with dating apps. Who woulda thunk?
That’s not really how that works.
I’d love for you to be right. Please elaborate.
You don’t have a fiduciary responsibility to maximize profit, or anything like that. You have a responsibility to act in accordance to company rules and guidelines, and to act in the company’s interest, not your own.
There is no requirement to burn to company down to maximize short-term profits, like some people think. That’s usually at the expense of long-term profits anyway, so it could be better for profits to do something better for the customer.
You’re only required to act “ethically” and keep the company’s interests above your own.
If the company has a goal to make more money every year, then you can justify a lot of actions in that pursuit. And once they have a monopoly you kinda don’t have many options, so they can push more.
Saying they have a responsibility to keep you on the app may sound silly, but app user churn is most likely measured and has some goal around it. And if a goal is set around that churn then they very much have an obligation to keep you on there as long as possible.
There’s the alternative of trying to obtain more users, or also to retain users by being a better service (although it has to appeal to a different demographic than those trying to leave for this though).
They have a pretty universally bad name now, so obtaining new users only gets harder, and a lot of people leave even without finding a long term match because the service is shit. They can optimize for these factors without burning the place down.
They have no requirement to grow year over year either. That has nothing to do with fiduciary responsibility. It just keeps stock value growing. Prioritizing long term health at the expense of short term gains is perfectly fine a legal.
You also had decent profiles where you could write more texts about you. That could give you an idea of who that person is. There is a difference between “Tea or Coffee? - Tea.” and “Tea or Coffee? - I like green teas but also some black teas like assam. I sometimes bake scones to eat with the tea.” A lit of modern apps don’t even give you the option to show your personality more.
I met my husband on Plenty of Fish 7/8 years ago. This baffles me, they don’t let you type your own content to show your personality? How are you supposed to get a feel for someone then?
OkCupid used to actually work rather well at finding compatible people who were actually honest about what they were looking for.
Then it got bigger, got acquired, and the matching model of the whole industry was intentionally modified to be more monetizable, and to keep giving matches that are close, but not close enough to be truely long term compatible.
You aren’t using the app/website anymore if it works and gets you a successful long term match.
You are using the app for a longer time if you keep getting close but just missing the mark.
…
Do people not think their dating app is tracking… how many matches and text exchanges they have?
How much time elapses between you matching, chatting, leaving… and then going back to swiping?
And then multidimensional matrix comparing that to every other definable variable about you?
Including whether or not you say you’re looking for something long term, or serious… but you actually keep cycling through people?
These algos, these things… they know exactly to what extent you lie to yourself and others, and they weaponize that to keep people in a sort of optimal (for the app, not you), constant disappointment loop.
…
Everything digital is now way beyond ‘if its free, you are the product’.
The model is now entirely attention, addiction based, and manipulating your emotions in as close to real time as possible is absolutely integral to all this.
People forget that over a decade ago, Zuckerberg said his dream was to be able to predict with high accuracy what any given Facebook user would post next.
Nearly a decade ago, Netflix CEO or some such stated ‘our primary competitor is sleep’.
People largely do not realize the extent to which these corpo fucks have been running highly precise and targeted manipulation of every aspect of human behavior… all to drive goddamn ad revenue and market share, ie, entrench themselves as institutions the modern world is no longer imaginable without.
I’m just confused as to how there isn’t a dating app that is better.
short answer:
Dating Apps/Sites are basically social media sites, they only really work via the network effect, by being so huge that they necessitate significant financial investment.
…
long answer:
A dating app is only broadly, mass appeal successful if it can scale to have a wide selection of people, users, ideally, in as many places as possible.
This requires a large amount of servers.
A large amount of servers requires a large amount of money.
A large amount of money requires investors.
Investors require as much profit as possible.
…
A conventional dating site/app, as we think of the big ones today… its a social media platform.
Just with a different, more constrained feature set, a different UI… but roughly similar levels of network infrastructure and overhead.
…
You could actually make a reasonable argument for running a non profit, or … some kind of collectively owned and operated dating service that is restricted to say a city or small region, or maybe a neighborhood in a larger city.
(Indeed, many of the older ones kind of began this way, pitched more like a … a club that you join and pay membership dues for, thats how they were marketed in the late 90s / early 00s… though these of course were largely actually privately owned, but the marketing angle was that of ‘exclusive community’)
The technicals of exactly how to do that, legally and financially, might end up being impractical though… and if the government is directly involved, well… 10, 20 years ago I would say thats a rather serious privacy problem, but at least in the US right now, I am sure Tinder will sell your info to a data broker who sells it to the FBI if they want to investigate you, so… yeah.
The other obvious problem is that the best dating app is the one you use the least… so… some kind of unconventional payment structure would have to be figured out, to counteract this massive and glaring incentive conflict between app and user.
Maybe high upfront fixed costs to the user, but if you don’t find a good match after a year, 75% gets refunded to you?
Not sure. Could be legal nightmare.
…
Other than that, privately owned and operated dating communities can work fairly well without huge server overhead… if they are precisely targeted at a pretty specific kind of people, be it a religion, or a bdsm community, or a specific ethnicity, who knows… those can at least theoretically work at a larger geographic scale, because that kind of scale doesn’t also massively ramp up user count.
But there’s nothing stopping them from being bought out if they get too big.
…
Bonus!
Job application / recruiting sites are also basically dating apps/sites.
Its just person vs job instead of person vs person.
Broadly, guys on dating sites have been flooding women with match requests for years now, women have been overwhelmed by the volume and believe they can be very picky.
Now replace ‘guys’ with ‘job seekers’, ‘match requests’ with ‘applications’ and ‘women’ with ‘companies’.
Both scenarios result in wasteful amounts of energy going into ‘match-making’, which is horrendously inefficient.
Wow, that’s an incredibly insightful answer. I suppose I never considered the scale of it. Most are fairly bare bones, but you are right, there are so many users and repeat users that it would scale very poorly.
You’re also right on the social media part of it. There kindof needs to be secondary engagement thing to attract and support the community.
Always felt that dating apps were a little too ?accesible? That is to say that they are exceedingly easily flooded by no or low effort profiles, abandoned and duplicate profiles. Especially by desperate men who are completely undiscerning and undereducated (consent, sex, sexuality, etc…).
I feel like there should be engagement/social/education tiers that grant more access to more features. Like literally give points if you can pass tests on consent, relationships, kink, whatever. Get social points from good engagement and behavior. These don’t show your profile more or less, but like if the medium has NSFW features, forums, criteria/location filtering it gives access to them based on community trust and such. Maybe offer a paid shortcut, but have that declared on their profile somehow.
Could be nice. But I’d also probably have the swiping style app be accessory to a more traditional forum.
I feel like there should be engagement/social/education tiers that grant more access to more features. Like literally give points if you can pass tests on consent, relationships, kink, whatever. Get social points from good engagement and behavior. These don’t show your profile more or less, but like if the medium has NSFW features, forums, criteria/location filtering it gives access to them based on community trust and such. Maybe offer a paid shortcut, but have that declared on their profile somehow.
I like this line of thinking.
I more or less used to use OkCupid in this way… it has so many questions you can answer that basicsally, if you have your own set of hard red flags… just look through their answers to questions.
…
You could theorerically do a paid shortcut for some things, but not others.
…
With my gamer brain, the first thing that comes to mind is pay to win games:
You can design a game such that… you can reasonably progress through the game, get good items, level up reasonably quickly… without having to spend any more real world money.
Warframe is arguably a good example of this.
You can just play a fleshed out and enjoyable game and progress at a reasonable rate without spending any real world money, everything in the game is obtainable without more money if you’re good at the game… but if you just have cash to burn, you csn just outright buy some high level gear, basically, to say, join up with some friends who’ve been playing for a long time, without playing for 50 or 100 hours to be on their level.
…
But you can also make it just an absolutely hellish slog to progress through the game, such that you finally get tired of grinding and have that ‘fuck it!’ moment, and just pay to progress… and then you at first find those payments are rather cheap actually… but if you keep playing, the actual money costs ramp up faster and faster, alongside your time devoted to the game, so now you’ve got sunk cost and your brain sunk cost fallacy’s you into just still playing and spending.
This is pretty much how WarThunder is designed.
…
But uh yeah, ramble ramble… I like your basic framework here, but again the problem with monetization is thag is has to be reasonable and apparent to everyone, your idea of badges that show everyone this is I think good.
I am just very worried that if this whole app is privately owned… it will inevitably enshittify and subvert itseld to being an evil money draining skinner box as it attracts more investors or gets new owners or goes public or whatever.
…
EDIT:
oh right
Wow, that’s an incredibly insightful answer.
Thank you! =D
Fetlife is like that too. “Find people with the same interests as you!”… select an interest: 120K people! Okay, let me filter by location? No. Filter by age? No. Filter by sex? Guess what, also No. So instead you have to hand scroll through all the entries. I don’t want to spend a lot of time connecting with someone with a common interest if they’re on the other side of the world.
I just got so sick of using the apps and their crappy interface. I can never remember if left is good, or right is good. Who designed that was a good idea?
The interface literally tells you as you do it which is which…
They are making a mentally ill frankenspecies.
Fuck me that’s bad, last I used it was in 2019, and even then it wasn’t fantastic.
I’m so glad I’ve never had to date officially. My first two girlfriends I met at school the latter of which I was in a relationship after school, which was good. My current partner is, strangely, also related to the school I’ve been to as we’ve met via a common acquaintance. Getting to know each other happened mostly via texts and then through meetings - unofficial dates, I guess - and the rest is history.
I can’t imagine the stress of using these dating platforms constantly. Putting yourself out the over and over again, meeting all kinds of people for a shred of possible companionship. Must be so exhausting. Don’t even wanna think about what the experience must be for women* and female-presenting people
I still remember when bumble had to change their entire premise and business model because as it turns out women are worse at starting conversations than men lmao.
I wholeheartedly believe that the Internet and smart phones have been the biggest double edge swords in human history. We have the entire globes collected knowledge at our fingertips with the ability to connect with any other person on the planet instantly and it has caused the largest shift in loneliness and depression ever.
Humans simply are not wired for social media and the Internet. Seeing every single person you know posting themselves beautiful and dressed up doing the coolest things 24/7 will make anyone feel ugly and like they aren’t doing anything with their lives. It takes real focused effort to remember that people (generally) only post when they are doing something special and what you don’t see are the days or weeks between posts that show they live the same boring life you live.
I’m ranting for no reason. I think when we lost in person social gatherings as the primary method of meeting new people is when society kicked that concrete block off the cliff. Right now we are just waiting for the rope to snap taught and drag us all into the abyss.
Every starting conversation on Bumble was like:
“Hey”
A couple times I asked people directly if that opener worked for them.
One of them said, “I used to write more thoughtful first messages, but I didn’t get good results so I don’t bother anymore.” I told her that writing a bad opener is likely turning away whole classes of people, likely the more thoughtful and interesting ones, but she didn’t care. I said we weren’t a good match and moved on.
Another one said, “But you responded so it worked!”. Her profile was also largely blank. I said yeah, but it didn’t make me want to date you. It was a bad first impression that made me think you’re a half-asser. Rude, I know. The conversation ended shortly after.
I think communication is a skill that requires practice and feedback. Writing messages on dating apps is a more specialized form of that skill. I have years of practice now (sad, but here we are). A 30 year old woman downloading bumble for the first time, asked to write first messages? That’s kind of like putting someone on the baseball field who’s never played before. They probably know most of the rules intellectually, and in other parts of life they’ve done all the little pieces like throwing, running, and catching, but doing it all together at the right time? Not likely to go well at first.
If that happend, it triggered me so hard. Its like the insanest thing ever. Why are you even on bumble then.
Why are you expecting conversations to be otherworldly?
How many conversations in real life with people you like start with something akin to “hey”? I’m gunna bet most but I suppose I could be wrong.
There is a whole universe of possibilities between “hey” and a conversation so good it is otherworldly.
Most of these apps, the user has a profile. If they’re not fucking it up, the profile has topics to talk about.
“Hey! Your profile says you love the mets. Do you go to a lot of games? I used to go with my pop, but he just watches the game on TV now” isn’t stellar but it’s significantly better.
If the other person responds with “Nah [end of communication]” then they’re doing a bad job. I’d see that all the time and it drove me crazy.
You both seem to ignore the fact that conversation is two way and that conversations from nothing ie. Small talk is extremely off-putting.
How am I ignoring that conversation is two way? I specifically mentioned it’s a bad job when one person engages and the other half-asses it with one word responses.
I don’t see what small talk being off-putting has to do with anything. I don’t know if I even consider talking about your interests small talk, but okay. How else do you expect it to work?
From what I saw, it wasn’t just “hey”. Hey was the yellow flag.
It was all the one word responses. To everything. It was the job of the guy to be entertaining on the app to barely any response.
That takes its toll on men, especially when there were women who used it as a source of free entertainment.
I would expect something else then one word if you select the Dating platform where the big difference is that you have to write first as a women. It seems odd to me.
But probably tinder or the other dating platforms are just (as) shitty and it didn’t have any deeper thought about joining bumble.
In my experience the bot and scam scripts have become refined enough to seem exactly like a pretty disengaged or disenchanted user, or someone not confident in what they’re doing. It’s led to some awkward moments when I suddenly send “BOT CHECK”
This was eloquently written and I enjoyed reading your insights. I found your closing metaphor particularly apt!
Taut*
Humans simply are not wired for social media and the Internet. Seeing every single person you know posting themselves beautiful and dressed up doing the coolest things 24/7 will make anyone feel ugly and like they aren’t doing anything with their lives. It takes real focused effort to remember that people (generally) only post when they are doing something special and what you don’t see are the days or weeks between posts that show they live the same boring life you live.
I’ve never seen a friend post on social media about something and then felt sad. I’ve instead thought “That looks awesome! Good for them! I can’t wait to do something like that too, I’m inspired!”
I think when we lost in person social gatherings as the primary method of meeting new people
This is something only chronically online people say. Most people form almost all of their relationships offline. This is still extremely true of platonic relationships. Online dating has increased in popularity, but mostly this is among people with niche tastes or in remote locations, where finding a match is more difficult due to the rarity of finding potential partners in real life. Tons of people still date primarily via their social circle or community gatherings, and most people use a mix of all their options.
if you are presenting yourself to the world at large would you not want to showcase your best self?
“no let me show myself in my skivvies talking to my therapist!” doesn’t seem like a lure for attracting a partner. just my two cents. And I am of the opinion that online dating is awkward, but that is about it.
Given who runs “online”, that’s kind of worrying.
who runs
With these knees? I’m known to promenade gingerly online.
This is something only chronically online people say. Most people form almost all of their relationships offline. This is still extremely true of platonic relationships.
Where are you meeting these people, magic real life wizard?
Of the 5 I currently have in my roster, 2 came from online, 2 were friends of friends, 1 I introduced myself to at a rock climbing crag.
I also seek out partners at my job, at the climbing gym, at various meetups like for acroyoga or fire spinning or pickup ultimate Frisbee, at social bars or concerts or festivals, or just when I’m walking around in the park near my house. Importantly, I’m not just going up to every attractive woman I see and saying “nice tits, wanna bang?” - even though this is my truth in my heart of hearts. Instead what I do is show up, have fun, meet people, joke around, and just be a normal person. But then if someone is cute, I’ll do a little eyebrow wiggle or some shit during a break in the conversation, and if she eyebrow wiggles back, I escalate - like by tickling the back of her elbow or telling her that she’s, like, literally the worst why am I even talking to her. And then at the end of the night I say “hey, I think you’re cute - wanna hang out alone sometime and maybe do some smoochin’?” And then she says yes or no, I give her a high five either way, and I’m on my merry way.
Edit: I’ll point out that the number of partners I have from online is mostly because I have a good profile, so getting matches is pretty easy for me. Most people don’t have as high of a sex drive as me, and so won’t want to put in the effort. Going through social networks (real life social networks) or social hobbies is far more likely to net you compatible partners, since the choices you make in these arenas are likely to attract people with similar values and dispositions.
Well, that was a lot more than I bargained for. Also, gross.
Millennial here. Have recently dabbled with the apps. Honestly the guys I was shown were not objectively bad looking. Many of them were pretty attractive. But not my type at all. My interests were books and video games and nerdy sweetness…and it kept recommending me muscle gym divorced military dads. So I gave up.
Which app? Cause I can’t find the nerdy girls.
The algorithm just pushes all these women who are wanting someone who will house them and take them on worldly vacations.
I tried bumble and hinge, got the ick, and gave up. Yeah, I’ve heard people saying something similar; going on about women looking to be housed. It’s such a huge turnoff and it makes me consider their financial insecurity, to be honest.
Most people seem to accept living on debt or handouts. It’s strange. I see everyone around me (both sexes) acting the same. So it’s not even a dating app issue, I think it’s a people issue. Offer nothing and expect everything in return. Maybe it’s an American thing?
I don’t want to be grouped into incel mentality, but is there a dating app to meet people from another country?
I don’t know, it could be your immediate environment. I certainly noticed this behavior in some friend groups, but not others. I don’t think you need to go that far to avoid the behavior. Just be vigilant and expect reciprocity.
Most likely, this is because the nerds who know how to present themselves have already gotten nabbed by some girl. Nerds who are unable to present themselves well are relegated to the bottom of the pile, since nearly all women will swipe left on them. Jacked, divorced military dads are at least jacked, which is something many women find appealing, so they end up higher on the stack.
Yeah, I think you make a great point here. Most of my gamer friends are couples with children. Unfortunately, I have no interest in jacked dudes at all, but I think most people probably do lean into that on dating sites. I figure at this point and age if I meet someone, great. If not, I’ll be fine.
Yeah at first it is. The algorithm learns about you over time and it gets a little better with regular use. It still has a bit of a blind spot around nerd/geek culture.
Literally fuck algorithms. Anything that has one is dead to me, if at all possible.
Yes, they literally are fuck algorithms. 🤣
Not a fan of how corporations make them work myself but understanding a little about them can make things like this a little less frustrating.
I would argue that the existence of an algorithm isn’t inherently evil, they just ruin things when they’re designed to maximize profit.
Is it really in the apps interest to find your perfect partner or just ones that bring you back to the app again and again?
I’m not convinced they’re looking out for your best interests.
It may be more profitable to have regular success stories getting churned. The algo looks out for the best interests of the company’s profit. Sometimes things line up.
A fair point, so it’s in its favour to help maybe a tiny percentage find a tiny bit of success and then promote that success while everyone else pays.
Yeah. It’s just profit, whatever makes line be as up as possible. I doubt there’s any regard, good or bad, for the user’s experience beyond that.
I wondered about that too. I certainly didn’t see any profiles to match my interests. I wondered if “my type” just didn’t use the apps at all.
It’s all conjecture. I suspect the algorithm puts it towards the bottom of the stack because there’s more money in casting a conventional net.
I don’t blame you. The algorithm is gonna force you to look at what people your demographic like despite whatever input you give it. At least it seems this way with how algorithms in general seem to work on social media. The amount of dick pill ads I get is way to high.
Isn’t society like that in general?
What kind of nerd stuff? You like Pokemon? 3D printers? D&D?
After the third/fourth gen of Pokémon I kinda lost interest. Whenever it was they started being jet skis.
Add tower defense and sim games to the list though. DnD based games, although I’ve played tabletop from time to time, just too much of an introvert to join a random group.
Anyways, when you’re swiping in my age range there aren’t a lot of folks with these interests in my area. Maybe I’m too old and get shown whatever.
I think a lot of nerdy people need to just start going outside and doing stuff. Like, if you enjoy DND roll up to the local hobby store and start hanging out, even if you arent playing.
None of this is targeted directly at you, just as good a spot as any to rant… lol
I think more people would be surprised that the horror stories are the minority. At my local game story I go to a painting night once a month mostly to hang out and chat. There are a pretty even split of women/men.
Point is I think this a safe spot to make friends and making friends is the only way to get into a relationship you’ll actually enjoy.
I met my girlfriend doing Star wars rp. My friend met his girl playing magic l. All my single friends have something in common. They don’t make time for their hobbies and don’t hang out with like minded people in that space.
Just a side note I’m not saying that everyone should go harass people at their FLGS or use it as a dating service, but rather, going out and hanging out with like minded people opens up a lot of options that aren’t on dating apps.
I’m pretty introverted too but when people are into whatever my hyper focus is it’s much easier to open up. Go out there! Be uncomfortable! Not a cure all but it’s something.
For me, the biggest impediment is really having to work a full time job. And being in my late 30s, a lot of these activities are described to be for 20-30s in the meetups app. I agree though, I’ve met some nice people at gaming stores when I was younger and had the energy. So this is good advice.
Freaking Star Wars RP. Spectacular!
Let’s see, I’m in an entire server where people your age are playing pokemon tabletop. Ok, it’s not even funny anymore. I wanted to make a joke about how I’m single and into those things, but it really is like that.
I’d be interested in the server. Why are you making the joke? It’s okay to be single.
The joke is well we are pretty much the same, but complain about not being able to find partners. Reality: because we don’t want to. Lemmy users are not so different from Reddit users.
Ah yes, both big dumb pandas. At least were fluffy…? :)
I’m lean and short 🤣
Barely any tummy.
I’d be interested on the server as well, depending on if you guys play around evening time in my timezone (GMT).
Here you go\2
muscle gym divorced military dads
I know a bunch of these dudes, and most of them are into books and video games.
Something about the RPG grind mechanic in certain video games and a typical strength/barbell progression program scratch the same itch, so people who tend to be into one are also into the other.
That’s very interesting…I’ll have to take your word for it. My ex was in the military and my experience was…not that. I’m sure some are wonderful people.
Pretty sure Tinder shadow banned me for some reason. I saw the same people constantly.
Dating is hard for everyone in one way or another, and, speaking as one, several ways for those who look pretty dead average but have trouble socializing and really only go between home and work. I don’t even feel like I’m that picky; no cigarettes, no kids, yes empathy, and a complementary flavor of weird/neurodivergence.
It’s hard for weirdos to find other weirdos because all weirdos have some level of social anxiety. Ask me how I know.
How do you know?
Make a lemmy community for dating.
I wouldn’t want to meet other Lemmy users in person, let alone date them.
Hot! 🔥🔥 Check your dms!
The last DM I got was Nicole, sadly.
Being a Lemmy person isn’t a great point of connection but it would be nice to see how they interact with other users in other Lemmy communities.
l mean, yea, weird, but not that weird.
I would, but you’d be too anxious to respond! (yes whoosh, I get it)
Pokemon Go will probably net you 2 of those at least.
Your weirdo will appear.
Survivorship bias.
:(
I am putting it out there for him. It’s all circumstance and luck.
I read this first as “it’s all circumcision and luck”. lmao
Free circumcison for the first guy to date! 🥳
Sounds like the basis for a musical number.
Sometimes the no kids thing, can be a huge red flag, a lot of the incel / women hating types put no kids. There’s a lot of them out there and they’re really extreme, you might be limiting your dating pool by wanting someone who doesn’t have kids but then if you’re into never having kids, that’s a different thing, entirely.
I never wanted to have kids, so that makes me an incel? We’ve lost the plot here, that’s fucking crazy, only women are allowed to be childfree now? And also I have heard if a guy likes children it’s also a red flag? So I’m either a child molester or an incel? I’ll take incel I guess, interesting “would you rather.”
I think you might just be wrong on this one, it’s entirely possible that men too don’t feel like bringing a kid into *gestures vaguely at everything.*
first thing I tell my gf’s is I dont is don’t want kids. one was of agreement and now we have been together 10 years and got all sorts of money to spend to travel and pursue expensive dreams. Plus what if I had a ugly child I’d have to hug it? (just kidding)
It’s not necessarily a billboard I put up stating that I don’t want kids. I made the decision long ago, partially based on my upbringing and now the current world situation, to never have children, so I checked the boxes saying I don’t have, and don’t want, children. That’s it.
Looking forward to getting back on dating apps at 38
Look, I did it at 47. Take the time to make a good profile, ask for help on pics and be an authentic you. It’s a mess out there, for those that never try.
ask for help on pics
I would like to second this point, especially if you’re not practiced at taking selfies. I’ve seen some fine looking men IRL whose profile pictures looked like potato.
It doesn’t have to be this way. People like to help, and most would be happy to see you meet someone special. Might as well ask.
I may or may not be one of these people that suck at selfies. But damn if my profile pics weren’t top amateur talent from my sister. I may not have had dating life partner success(yet), but I’ve had a good number of dates that went some distance.
I repeat for those not listening: Effort pays off.
Thirded. People like to think that their match will be deep enough to look past something superficial like a bad photo, but that’s not how most of us work. People see a decent photo and then check the rest.
You don’t have to be a model or movie star. Good lighting. Clothes that fit. A background that’s not, like, a dingy bathroom or your car.
The pics part is weird because it’s like… I’m supposed to have other people’s photos of me? I don’t have photos of me. Why would I take a photo of the same thing I see every morning like I’m just trying to say hello to the world, like I’m an actually happy, well-adjusted person who wants to update all of his friends on his day… oh, that’s, ok. I get it now. That’s why.
Yep. It takes a minute to break that mindset. Worse is remembering on trips, like on my last one I forgot to take a pic while walking the amazing vineyard.
Feels like a meat market, but the effort helps.
If they aren’t divorced they are probably crazy.
Target the divorced MILFs. That’s your best bet. This also applies if you’re a cis-het woman.
You can do it!
I ended up marrying a girl 17 years younger than me 🤷♂️
17 years younger than me is 23, I cannot image that amount of energy.
I have serious questions about a 23-year-old that wanted anything to do with me.
They have questions too. Like what level of life insurance do you have? Are beneficiaries easy to add? And what kind of food is your favorite?
When you’re 21 and he’s 30+, the sex is the best you’ll ever have.
Maybe for you . …
A few months back there was some post about female inmates looking for pen pals. I remember one profile describing herself as submissive and looking for a daddy. I did some research and saw she was in the slammer for diddling with a 12 year old girl. Not sure if that leaves many questions open.
How do young people meet new people these days? I met my husband while at work. Became official via Facebook status.
Here’s the great part; you don’t! (I am American and only going outside for vital activities anymore)
Same. And you can’t meet women (according to women) at any of those vital places. The general consensus seems to be don’t ask them out at the store, the gym, a restaurant, whether they’re working there or customers, any hobbies where they just want to be able to live their lifr without being hit on etc. To add, the only things I actually do still leave the house for? Walking on trails where they’d rather run into a bear than a guy on his way to a secluded spot near the creek with a joint and a book, so that seems like a bad way to meet people too now, and where I may have once talked to fellow trail walkers now I just keep to myself there too. I could still go to a bar, but like, I don’t want to, and the last few women I met were pretty bad alcoholics whereas I just drink a little bit sometimes. And even if a woman did approach me at one of those vital places or on the trail, I wouldn’t act on the hints because I’m absolutely positive they’re just being nice and they’re not into me, without them directly stating their intent using clear language.
It’s great!
Talking to aomeone might get you mugged
I’m British, trying the apps but yea other than that there aren’t really any other options for me.
Increasingly, they aren’t.
“that’s the neat part! they don’t!”
I suspect that ordinary avenues for meeting friends in one’s 30’s is also available for meeting partners, only you have to acknowledge that most of the people you meet aren’t going to be single/interested.
I’m an extrovert. I talk to strangers in certain settings, especially where waiting around is normal. One of my best friends, I met in line waiting to get into a standup comedy show. I’ve met other friends in line for concerts and sporting events, too. I’ve also met friends sitting at the bar or some kind of communal table of a restaurant, and connected over the food itself. It just takes the boldness of asking for contact information and then texting “it was nice to meet you today, great talking to you” and then sometimes that becomes a friendship.
But pure strangers are hard to connect with in one interaction. Most of the friends I made after 30 were from repeated interactions over time: neighbors you see regularly, other regulars at the dog park/coffee shop, etc.
And once you’re in a mode where you can make friends, if some of them happen to be single and compatible, maybe you try going out on a date.
And yes, this means that sometimes you’ll meet people at the gym, or at their place of work, or other circumstances where it’s frowned upon to hit on strangers. But making the friendship bridge first can give you that read on the situation of whether they’re actually open to dating.
Interesting.
Is it just that younger people experience more social anxiety or that it’s now frowned upon to be hit on? I used to be hit on a lot between the ages of 19 and 25; it felt gross sometimes but it was the norm. There seems to be more anxiety these days to meet people face to face. I wonder if social media has anything to do with it.
it’s now frowned upon to be hit on?
It’s frowned upon to hit on someone who doesn’t have an exit from the situation: a customer talking to a retail/hospitality worker whose job includes not pissing off customers, colleagues who need to continue working with each other (or worse, a superior-subordinate relationship), etc.
I don’t know what 20-somethings are doing these days, but navigating that transition from school to young independent adulthood was something difficult every generation had to do. It’s just that this generation may have had their social skills development stilted during COVID or the smartphone era so that they’re less equipped to make that jump, and that gap is leaving a greater proportion of that population behind.
I got out of the game right before tinder became a thing. I’m just as lost as you
