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Thinking about jumping into the world wide online dating scene


carag73

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Hey everyone, I know it's 2018 and everyone and their mother seems to be doing online dating. I'm thinking about getting involved and have never really tried it before. I feel like I am too old to be on Tinder as it seems like something only for teenagers. If it any of you have any experience with online dating including sites, general advice etc. that would be very helpful. I guess I first need to take a few good pictures of myself haha. It seems like the sites for adults are something like eHarmony or match so maybe I will start there unless you guys have better recommendations. I hope to hear from all of you.

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These are good choices for going for long term relationships. You should indeed pick good photos, that simultaneously show your best, show your personality, and are not too pretty that the lady will be unimpressed when she sees you in person.

 

Write something that entices a woman to be excited to chat with you and meet you. Women, if they are any degree of successful, get piles of messages. You need to stand out.

 

Welcome aboard.

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Just giving you the heads up, online dating is not a magic bullet. If you have trouble getting a date, or don't receive positive outcome dating irl, online dating won't be much better.

 

 

 

Get yourself set up and come back here for further advice...you will be looking for it.

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Hey everyone, I know it's 2018 and everyone and their mother seems to be doing online dating. I'm thinking about getting involved and have never really tried it before. I feel like I am too old to be on Tinder as it seems like something only for teenagers. If it any of you have any experience with online dating including sites, general advice etc. that would be very helpful. I guess I first need to take a few good pictures of myself haha. It seems like the sites for adults are something like eHarmony or match so maybe I will start there unless you guys have better recommendations. I hope to hear from all of you.

 

Rewind ... play ...

 

Context: I am a 64 y/o male. My first online dating (OLD) anniversary is coming up - tomorrow I think - but I'd have to check some old emails to be sure and I'm too lazy to do so. Looking for an LTR with a physically active (rock scrambling, hiking, ballroom dancing, downhill skiing) woman. Met about a dozen but no LTR yet. Not dating any of them now but pretty confident several of them would date me again for free meals and movie tickets. I think I'm about the most positive LSer about OLD but at this point even I'm getting jaded.

 

Also: a fan of speed-dating but at my age the events are few and far between - last one was in April and none scheduled out to December.

 

Overview: I think the most important features of the various OLD sites are a) whether you can search for your own targets b) how many targets there are and c) how much information you get about your targets just from what's on the site. My opinions that follow are mostly based on these features. Nevertheless within any OLD site any one woman may have provided a lot of information about themselves or not much. And as House MD said, 'Everyone lies'.

 

Opinions:

eharmony SUX - you pay. they pick for you from a ridiculously small population of users. their picks suk. you can't pick on your own. I started a thread here a while back and most others agreed that eharmony sux.

match my personal preference - you need to pay to send messages. you get a list of 'matches' every day. the list is just okay. also there are lots of ways to search on your own. the largest population of women but many of the profiles are zombies. I'm getting 25% response and at least half of the women I've actually met have been from match. profiles are open ended so you can learn a lot about your 'target' before you even meet her

POF my second choice - you don't have to pay but the premium features are cheap and worth the money. lots of ways to search. good population. I'm getting maybe 40% response. lots of information in profiles. humorous spoofs and phishing but they are deleted just about immediately

OKCupid a distance third - used to be better but last winter they changed the messaging rules and now it's almost impossible to keep track of women you've tried to contact but didn't reply, arguably something you don't need to know but with all the same women on all the sites I find it useful. don't pay - you can message into the black hole of no response and no record and the premium features suk. search is okay. population a couple of steps down from match and POF. I can't track response rate any more with the new messaging rules but I did meet one women from here. best profiles for information content.

zoosk requires you link your FB or Twitter - that's an 'identity theft' deal-breaker for me.

elite ditto eharmony

ourtime SUX - you pay a LOT. same women as on match and POF. but the profiles are so sparse that it's almost impossible to tell if you're going to get along with them

 

It's been said over and over on LS that OLD is a numbers game. I totally agree.

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Wow thanks a lot for all of the detailed advice everyone. Is definitely true that I need to work on myself and not just try to rely on online dating. I definitely need to take some new recent pictures as I don't want to be lying to anybody on the dating website that I choose.

 

I hear a lot of mixed opinions when it comes to eHarmony and you are not the first person to say that it sucks. I also know some couples that have been married for quite some time that met on eHarmony. One of the things that was a pain in the butt is I cannot find reasonable pricing for some of the big websites. For example the pricing cannot be found anywhere on the eHarmony website. This article talks about the pricing of eHarmony but after going all the way to the checkout screen on eHarmony I realized that the prices were not nearly as low as were stated from that site.

 

I do not want to pay an arm and a leg and that sentencing at seven dollars per month which it definitely is not. Anyways I think I'm going to try to check out match like you guys recommended because I do like the idea that I can search for the person instead of having somebody sent to my inbox everyday. I tried plenty of fish a while back and it seemed like I kept on getting spammed. Maybe it's worth its try again though :) Talk to you all soon.

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Take what I have to say with a grain of salt since I'm in my 50's and OLD is different today than it was when I used it but I met my wife on match.com.. been married 11 years.

 

If I was single today I would not hesitate to get on there and find someone. I had many relationships from OLD and would have many more..

I would of course have to learn the lay of the land as it were but I'd bet it wasn't that different since people haven't changed and they are looking for the same thing they were when I used it.

 

I say jump in it, but don't let anything spoil your attitude, just correct and roll with the punches till you figure it out.

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Anyways I think I'm going to try to check out match like you guys recommended because I do like the idea that I can search for the person instead of having somebody sent to my inbox everyday. I tried plenty of fish a while back and it seemed like I kept on getting spammed. Maybe it's worth its try again though :) Talk to you all soon.

 

Current (I'm logged on as I write) match.com 'Basic plan' per month pricing: $19.99 if you sign up for 3 months, $17.99 for six months, $15.99 for twelve. You can search and receive daily matches for free but you can't communicate with the ladies you like unless you pay (or the unlikely circumstance that SHE pays extra to let men send messages to her).

 

Unless you live in an area with LOTS of people, don't expect 'somebody' 'everyday' from eharmony. I am still an unpaid subscriber so I get the matches without being able to communicate with them. I currently have 46 matches there. The oldest is from last April - clearly NOT one everyday. Most of these matches fall outside my specified age and distance settings. Only ten of the 46 are tagged as 'Compatible' (whatever that means).

 

I keep getting spammed on POF, too. That's what I was referring to when I mentioned humorous spoofs and phishing. Unlike match and eharmony, users can send messages for free so it's cheap to spam. However I have yet to be scammed or spammed by a woman I contacted after identifying her in a search.

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I keep getting spammed on POF, too. That's what I was referring to when I mentioned humorous spoofs and phishing.

 

When I was on match...(maybe 2001 you could send email but you had to pay to read it) one of the spammers I had to figure out were the prostitutes and call girls..normally somewhere in the conversation they would send you a link that explained their services and you were able to figure out the pattern those profiles fit...

 

I would bet they are still using OLD for their business model

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