I've read out there that the ratio between men and women on dating apps is pretty awfully skewed. The estimates I've read, from a variety of sources all claiming inside insight, put it somewhere at 10:3 men:women on the high end and about half as many women on the low end. Let me tell you, I sure do feel it. I've been using some combination of Tinder, Bumble, and Hinged on and off for more than half a decade now and I've had two dates total. The first one didn't have a second date because she sexually assaulted me, the other because she just didn't feel any chemistry. I can get maybe 5 matches in a month if I'm maxing out my free likes on two platforms every day. The chance they even respond to the first message is like 1/10. So on, so forth. I think I'm a decent catch. I take care of myself. I have a job, hobbies (even ones that aren't video games/TV!), open myself up to plenty of new experiences, try to listen to others, and was lucky to be born with some conventionally attractive features. Hasn't helped very much.
This all sucks, but this is nothing that anybody who has used a dating app could tell you. What really kills it all is A) the way this shitty feeling is monetized to sell $30/mo dating app subs that I will not buy on pain of death B) the white-knuckled grip half the women in the south (where I live) seem to have on outdated gender roles C) the lack of any alternatives
Elaborating on that last point, I live about an hour outside of the nearest city of any decent size. I'm in maximum old-white-people-exurb territory. There's basically nothing for me to meet people my own age, let alone women my age, without an hour's drive. All but three of my friends are guys, and they aren't really positioned to introduce me to anybody either. Out of my ~10 closest friends, only one of them has even been in a relationship in the past 5 or so years. I can't move because I'm at my parent's house right now and it feels super hard to justify moving out when you're making less than 50k/yr and have a stable family situation just because I'm sexually frustrated. It's been so long I feel like I wouldn't even know how to flirt or recognize flirting even if I landed in a miracle situation anyways.
What do yall think? Am I making too much out of it?
Am I making too much out of it?
No. We're in the :cool-zone: of relationships and dating. Dating apps are incentivized to keep you unmatched. Capitalism has centralized into several mega-hubs and drained the countryside of its young talent. Jobs demand college educations saddling entire generations with crushing debt. Housing is fucking expensive. Suburbs are ... yeah.
We live in hell. Don't beat yourself up for getting burned.
It's been so long I feel like I wouldn't even know how to flirt or recognize flirting even if I landed in a miracle situation anyways.
I am also part of the Hexbear school of dudes that can't flirt good, and want to do other things good too. Also don't beat yourself up. We all have an out: COVID threw everything for a loop and we're all still recovering. Probably the most important thing is to not stress yourself out.
I'm in maximum old-white-people-exurb territory.
Ok, hear me out: the hot new dating app is Grandma-Net. Lots of seniors need help around the house or yard, and having somebody local and reliable is a huge boon. Naturally they will ask about your dating life, and once you put out that your single your name will fly through Grandma-Net faster than gossip.
I'm only half-kidding too. Organizing your neighborhood, even for stuff like potlucks or yard work, builds community that also helps with your dating life. We live in a deeply atomized age, so we need to be the catalyst that creates social molecules in our neighborhoods, jobs, schools (both you and kids), churches, etc. Small fun stuff is great practice for organizing for larger political projects. It also builds your social network that allows you to organically meet potential romantic partners.
It also helps to know that previous generations in the 20th century reinvented romance many times. Imagine living during the Competitive Dating era of the 1930s. Take some solace knowing that things aren't set in stone and we can do something completely different. Don't pressure yourself to conform to an Ideal.
am also part of the Hexbear school of dudes that can't flirt good, and want to do other things good too. Also don't beat yourself up. We all have an out: COVID threw everything for a loop and we're all still recovering. Probably the most important thing is to not stress yourself out.
Mood to all this except being a dude, but (while maybe it's different- am trans tho so had arguably debatably something halfways akin to the experience prior to realizing was trans?) while obvs it hits different coming from a girl, there is definitely one trick to just about anything IMO... Fake confidence, or real confidence, or just swagger. If you're blunt and can be chill I think you'll find people who vibe with you out there eventually, or at least have fun bad-flirting where appropriate/people are receptive.
It's probably best to get off the dating apps for dudes, though. Or people in general. My experiences weren't bad myself but anything productive/meaningful has been through meeting people IRL.
I think you'll find people who vibe with you out there eventually
The question is out where? lol
The big reason I hype organizing is it has a duel dialectic:
- You are creating the where for yourself that you can go. You also create the where for others to go. You are creating a gravity that attracts others, both platonic and romantic.
- Inspiring others, they create their own where that you can go as well. This multiplies the number of places to go and things to do for everybody.
It's definitely hard to see, especially when you first get started, but so very many people yearn for exactly that 'community' they will latch on. Community also improves your social network and doubles as your reputation. Very literally you will expand your social circle one warm introduction at a time.
This, I must admit I don't organize politically IRL atm but even just when I am social (I go through phases of very social and very much not, probably/historically) this is how it is.
Yeah the death of public social spaces is a huge bummer. I was lucky that my spouse and I both radicalized at the same time, no idea how I would even try to find a partner in the current environment.
I have a coworker who managed to have some success in the dating app economy but he ended up broadening his net to include a major city nearly 3 hours away. Not sure how far you're willing to drive to see people.
Dating apps frighten me, to be frank. Ive tried a couple of them, and everything just feels like I’m being screened. It feels like Im being interviewed for work. Or that Im browsing applications myself to see if someone is right for the job. It feels very disconnected, and impersonal.
Beyond that the conversations I have had feel somewhat forced, like I need to have that hook that makes my app jump to the top of the stack of apps. That or its just fifth gear sexual innuendo from the jump, and Im just kind of whatever about that. Ive had two that I almost felt like they were just trying for some shit to post on r/tinder. I dont really feel like competing, so I just dont any more. I am not sexually active, its been a couple years since my last but its whatever. Ive never really been a casual fling type of guy, although I have had few through my life. I have two kids, and a very busy work schedule. I have hobbies, I go camping and trekking, and a couple friends both male and female that I spend time with when time allows. Im mostly satisfied except the occasional desire for a companion. Maybe Im a troglodyte. Maybe Im out of touch, in which case maybe I shouldnt be dating anyone anyway. I dont know any more. anyway, heres Wonderwall.
The real problem is that making friends is hard. I've always dated people who I was introduced to by friends. Never had a single date on an app in my life. Ask yourself how to befriend people before asking yourself how to get on dates
Ask yourself how to befriend people before asking yourself how to get on dates
travel back in time into a time when we all weren't so terribly alienated?
Yeah it's terrible, but there are always ways. There are people who really want to connect with you in that world
I mean its definitely still possible to make friends, but goddamn has it gotten hard, and to try to have a real friend group seems basically impossible. everyone is moving all the time, working too much, paying too much rent for tiny apartments too small to invite friends over or to have parties at.
There are people who really want to connect with you in that world
god I wish anyone wanted to connect with me but I don't think there is anyone even if I went out somewhere
Not with you in particular but they'd like to connect to someone who has something that you have
they'd like to connect to someone who has something that you have
I can't even think of anything I have that anyone would want to connect to me for
nah that's wack. i had an ltr for most of a decade, never had an irl friendship last longer than a year beyond whatever activity was driving the socializing, and the online-only friends have been (understandably) entirely useless at helping me get a date because that's not what they're for.
it's probably more impossible to make platonic friends past college-age than it is to get a date, even if i had money and wasn't completely atomized and isolated in a hostile uncaring society.
I've got plenty of friends. Roughly ~12 people I'd consider "close" friends and none of them really know anybody to introduce me to. All of the guys know almost only guys, because they don't have girlfriends, because their friends almost only know guys, etc.
Are you USian? Just curious, I heard once that USians didn't have mixed gender friends groups I'm European and I have a ton of female friends
Sure am. I had more women among my friends when I was in school. Mostly in that "friends but not close friends" layer that gets completely obliterated when you leave school.
Oh okay I understand. It's hard to keep friends from school, I have the same problem
I wish dating apps would just become a thing of the past already. Then people would go the fuck outside to try to meet other single people again.
Wholeheartedly agree, the brief relationships I managed from the apps felt fake. It truly felt the same as when I managed to get a job from indeed, which makes sense because it was exactly the same process (send in a ton of applications and hope you get a reply)
Capitalism already wrecked the job search AND job market, it’s now just a few steps away from destroying romance 😎
. I’m in maximum old-white-people-exurb territory. There’s basically nothing for me to meet people my own age, let alone women my age, without an hour’s drive
This is your main problem. The platonic ideal of a dating app is going to struggle if you live in a crap place.
The for-profit garbage apps (all of them) aren't going to do good, either.
I live in a city and as an older guy that doesn't date men can usually get a date a month without paying.
I'll second this - I live in a Midwestern college town and I can get about a date every two weeks if I put the effort in.
I will say that I do pay for one app at a time - the last one I used before my current relationship was Hinge - and the percentages of response do seem pretty accurate. Maybe 1/4 of matches message back, 3/4 of those just have boring uninteresting conversations that go nowhere, and about half you do make a date with will cancel/ghost before it happens. So all in all, maybe 5% of matches turn into dates.
And that's a big investment - if you want a date a week, you'll have to be sufficiently entertaining twenty matches, which is a big time commitment on top of the subscription charge.
pathetic sadness don't click CW: SA self harm etc.
it feels like some people are incapable of being loved and i'm one of them. its not like its never happened to me but thats not much comfort a year or more afterwards. i can notice the material conditions, the economic and social forces, the personal traumas shaping my habits and psychology, neurodivergent symptoms alienating me from swathes of the people around me, that lead to this constant loneliness but there's nothing apparent that i can personally, realistically, do about them. you can't even mention the fact that you have unmet sexual needs as a cis-passing AMAB without people understandably seeing it as an implied threat because of how fucked up our patriarchical society is. how can i hold a normal conversation with anyone let alone a date let alone literally any woman or vulnerable gender minority when my internal monologue is constantly telling me to kill myself and that no one will ever love me. every time i have a sexual urge, every time i think about sex, i want to kill myself. not that i will ever actually do it but its a constant intrusive thought and feeling i have. i'm the only driver where i live so i have to drive roommates on dates and stuff and it can be excruciating bottling up these kind of toxic thoughts and feelings i have, but i do it anyway - i save this pathetic whining for here, and its not like its their fault that i'm a pathetic unloveable loser. i want them to be happy, just because i can't be like them doesn't mean they should be as miserable as me. not that it is literally any consolation when dealing with this kind of impossible loneliness, but at least you have a job, no one will hire someone with the work history gap i have at my age. i have my own ultimately unsatisfying privileges though, i have like another 5 years of living rent free with my parents but no idea what i will do after that. i was too autistic (or something idfk i have a bs PTSD diagnosis for a weed medical card but i was legitimately sexually abused by other kids in grade school because they all knew what sex was before me so its probably ultimately legit) to make friends or relationships in school or college or to get jobs afterwards so now i'm just a pathetic 30 year old incel with receding hair (i look like several different wojaks at different times) and no future i guess, in addition to the fact that no one in my generation/economic class will ever own a house, lifelong untreated mental health issues and personal traumas combines with a complete lack of healthcare or mental health resources have made relationships impossible for me
Sounds like a bad situation to be in. I've heard the dating apps were heavily skewed, but I've only tried them a couple of times. Maybe try striking up a conversation with someone for practice the next time you're in town. From the sound of it, you might be better off expanding your search beyond your immediate area. Even if you did find someone, it sounds like you'd be pretty unhappy with those outdated gender roles anyway. Would you be OK with a long-distance thing? You might have better luck finding someone from a nearby city that is more your type.
Do you like bars, or is that something you've already tried?
Nah I think you're mostly right, shit really sucks. With two exceptions (started dating in college and became friends in college but started dating later), all of my friends that are currently in a relationship met through one app or another. I only ever tried out Tinder for like a month nearly a decade ago before burning out, and tbh I prefer being single to having to go through that again.
it's really cool to have the exact same problems and impossibilities with dating and getting a job.
i would rather be murdered than rejected
I'm not sure if it's true, but I have read sonewhere that the tinder algorithm deprioritses accounts that send a high number of likes, and it makes sense with capitalist logic that it would push people who aren't having much success into purchasing the premium super likes or whatever they have
Don't take this a infallible, but it could be helpfull to stop maxxing out and be more sparing with your likes for atleast a couple of weeks and see if you get more matches that's way
Yeah, I know about that. I max out on volume, but I don't think my "rate" is really all that bad. It's not like I'm swiping right on everybody I see. It depends on the day, but I'd say I'm swiping right somewhere between 1/4 and 1/8 times.
What ive realized talking to guys is that you just have to pay. The business is optimized to commodify success as an exchange value and so the unfortunate reality is that if you are trying to find that use value its blocked behind rent seeking. I think the best thing to do is to just pay for it and dont feel ripped off or anything cuz its a scam. Most things in capitalist society are including food itself
Its entirely possible you just wont find the type of person youre looking for on that app in particular too.
yeah this is the sad truth. if you use dating apps, you either constantly strike out, or you submit yourself to the humiliation of paying for attention from women. tbh i'd rather die than do the latter though, i could never live with myself if i paid for sex
Death to America
It's all fucked and I am sorry to tell you this, but living in a bigger city doesn't actually do anything besides making it so more people are on the apps.
Living in a big city can give you more opportunities to meet people outside of dating apps though.
theoretically definitley true, but with how expensive it is to go out and how much covid killed anyones drive to socialize with strangers, it definitely hasn't been the case in my practical experience. the stats definitely point towards people everywhere having less luck finding people in bars, clubs, etc.
covid killed anyones drive to socialize with strangers
Ah interesting, that's not been the case in my experience.
Do definitely agree about the cost though. It sucks that having a social life is often stuck behind a paywall.
Still, in general, big cities are going to have more opportunities than small towns, even if both are comparatively less social than in the past.
Ah interesting, that's not been the case in my experience.
what kind of state or city do you live in?
More people in the same radius, but they're all complete strangers with no mutuals, and paradoxically, they only find you if they're looking for you.
When the acquaintances of the people you know make up a substantial fraction of the town, and whenn there's a likelihood of seeing someone more than once, there's more of an opportunity to organically connect with someone.
I see what you mean, but personally I've found it easier to find real community in big cities, bound by shared interest rather than just geography.
When I lived in a small town, I knew all my neighbours but those relationships rarely went beyond a quick "hello" on the street. In my city now there's obviously a hundred anonymous strangers for every person I know, but I have a genuine culture and community in places and activities I frequent.
I'm in a large American city and, though I've tried it a few times, I'm refusing to use them from here on.
I've had a couple flings without it, since I moved here a bit over a year ago, but yeah I'm just accepting I'm not seeing as many people as I'd like to because it really sucks all romanticism out of a relationship entirely for me
I do not want to meet my wife through an "app"
