Online Dating: Observations from my first month

[palmsand]

I've seen an average-looking woman's account live and they are often overwhelmed by messages/likes. I don't blame them one bit for not responding to everyone.

 

I support online dating in general but it's kind of demoralizing to see countless guys show pop up with a wise opener and know that you're just another one of them on the other side of the screen. It's kind of amazing any of them respond.

[coolheadal]

Wow what a subject. It goes to show we all have our options in this matter. For me, in the way how I come across works with charm and grace. I see no mention of the players online

 

Still Married

Married and Seeing Others

Married and Dating

Seeing others and Dating

Never Been Married

Never Been Married but might want kids

Never Been Married but doesn't want kids

Has kids and doesn't want anymore

 

These are the worst one here on the list above the Married ones that like to fool around. Then you have the ones with kids but they don't want anymore if they have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or more kids already

 

Doesn't Smoke

Doesn't Drink

Doesn't do Drugs

 

I find them still smoke, drink and do drugs. I don't do any of that substance abuse. Most put down drink socially.

[coolheadal]

I had dinner with someone yesterday, and it shed light on not taking much at face value until you meet the person.

 

She had apparently slept around a lot in her "fling" phase a while back in OLD.

 

Nope. It was a fun dinner but I let her know via text afterward that it's a no go.

 

How do you know she slept around a lot? Did she come out and spill the beans in your lap?

[airborne3502]

Maybe I'm dumb, but what's a Chad? Lol.

 

That's funny.

 

When I was in Army basic training, it was Jody that was back home with your girl.

 

Now they have to worry about Chad...

[Titanll]

That's funny.

 

When I was in Army basic training, it was Jody that was back home with your girl.

 

Now they have to worry about Chad...

 

Just be a Chad yourself and no worries!

[Jammer25]

How do you know she slept around a lot? Did she come out and spill the beans in your lap?

 

Pretty much. Stories about Tinder, POF, etc. I don't know if she was nervous or just chatty.

 

That did it for me, but I didn't want to be abrupt about ending dinner because she seemed like the type who would cause a scene.

 

Ah well, on with the journey.

[Jammer25]

Second meet-up with someone else I met up with before. I actually like her a lot, and conversation is easy and we understand each other's humor. Tempering my expectations until I get to know her better, although I admit I'm hopeful if cautious.

 

Someone else invited me out to an event last minute, I was flattered and surprised to get the invite since we had only been texting for the most part.

[Jammer25]

Things fizzled out after a few dates with the previous women.

 

I don't know if it's coincidence or something, but an abnormal share of the women I've met from OLD have had abusive past relationships and were very guarded. (Which in a sense belies the purpose of being on OLD to me.)

 

I suppose one could expect baggage from OLD in some form, but it's just odd that the above has been super common in women I've met.

 

Anyone else had that experience? Or insight on if that's the case for a lot of women on OLD?

[CptInsano]

[...]

Interesting. I think until now I perceived OLD and IRL as separate buckets, their own worlds if you will. At first I got caught up in the initial excitement of possibility, I'll admit that. (I never did OLD before now.) I guess that's how they get you...

 

Of course, OLD is a business, and even free sites may want to upsell their services or want to keep you in the site for ad revenue. And very many guys have very well-deleloped competitive behavior patterns. It's a rather traditional marketing model in that regard.

 

Many guys measure their success in OLD in the number of responses or the number of dates. But is that really meaningful when you don't meet the woman you're looking for?

 

And yes, or course OLD is not another world. It's a different mode of communication, not a whole lot more.

[coolheadal]

OLD been on there and off again. Today anything goes on there the women are playing games with us men. Even if you get the chance to date and get serious they can flake out and say I am not interested in you and cut out dry. After you have spend time and money on them they pull that nonsense on you. OLD works for most because in all we're still strangers how are we suppose to meet and talk to these women. Can't do it on the street can we, nope they look and stare at you so weird if you do. OLD can be what you want it to be your in control of your advert which is your profile. You just need to know how to promote yourself to these women who have been hurt, damage, married over 20 years got cheated on, have kids but they come first and you don't. All sorts of wording. I find all this so confusing but yet I am still in this game for the true love of my life.. The End

[starrynight4321]

OLD is a complete waste of time and energy. OLD is 90% people who are just looking for a hookup under the pretense of looking for a relationship, 5% people who don't know what the hell they even want and just multidate their lives into oblivion, 4% socially awkward, bat**** crazy creeps, and 1% people who are actually really genuinely looking for a relationship.

 

I've met so many great, interesting, cool people with old-fashioned dating. OLD however, is just a game. People get ego boosts off matching up, send messages then don't respond, or don't respond to a message they receive. They talk for a week and never meet up. They go on 1 date and if the person isn't absolute perfection, they move on because there are literally 50 other matches online. Nothing of value or substance is built, save 1% of the time. OLD is a haven for commitment-phobes, players, and those who want to endlessly go on 1-2 dates before moving on to the next. It's not reality.

 

After giving it a try for a few weeks out of pure curiosity, I will never try it again.

[Shining One]

This really isn't fair! Not one woman who is both interested in a relationship and sane is going to bother with a man with a shirtless pic no matter how Chadly he is.

Please see Myth 3.

But, contrary to everything you read about profile pictures, if you’re a guy with a nice body, it’s actually better to take off your shirt than to leave it on.[/Quote]

[Phase_shift22]

Since this is a pretty interesting thread, I thought I'd share my research into this so that maybe it'll help someone else.

 

OLD is highly appearance driven- for both girls and guys. To co-opt a previous poster

 

About a year ago a buddy and I both opened OLD accounts as sort of a dare/bet. He's a year younger than I am (I was 40 at the time). We both shave our heads, have facial hair and are fit. He's leaner but I am bigger and stronger. I look ok but he looks like a friggin model. We posted our best pics and I took time to write a nice profile, he did not. We both posted one shirtless pic.

 

I recall just two women that we both contacted that turned him down or did not reply to his contact. Tons of women would not reply to me after he contacted them haha! I was doing ok until he came along!

 

Some things that we learned (in our experience)

 

-Several women stating that they were not looking for a hookup were, in fact, looking for a hookup.

-Women claiming that shirtless pics were a no no had no problem with our pics.

-Women that I had set a date with suddenly had something come up to break our date to be available for my buddy.

-If a woman is interested in you, she will get you off the site asap. She will give you her number and more than likely start sending you pics.

-If a woman is interested she will care less how nasty you talk to her (within reason)

-If a woman is not interested, you will get burned for saying something that can be misconstrued as sexual.

-If you are really good looking, you are going to get more attention (no surprise, right?)

-If you are decently good looking, you will get plenty of attention and possible better potential partners for a long term relationship (I have no actual proof of that fact, though)

-If you are not attractive at all? Who knows...you are probably out of luck for the most part.

-Women are not as courteous as you will probably be.

 

I'm not bashing women at all but, in my experience, they can be exactly like the men that they supposedly despise.

 

***My best advice for OLD is to shoot and scoot. That is, message her once and only again after she replies.

Keep shooting messages to other women in the mean time.

Short replies get either a short reply in return or no reply at all.

Stay on the offense at all times...even if you get a date.

Early on, even if you are "dating", keep in mind that she can dump you in a heartbeat if a Chad comes along and sweeps her off her feet.

 

The women that I have dated where we met IRL seemed to be more interested in long term and more "stable" in the relationship.

OLD=better for hookups

IRL=better for LT relationships

YMMV...

 

the key thing to take away is looks will over ride all. And I'm not talking about just for girls. For guys too. If you're an unattractive guy, OLD will let you know but your response rate.

 

I have found the A/B testing paradigm to be a good one in terms of improving one's OLD profile. Meaning, if you get really poor response rates, you can alliteratively compare yourself to profiles of the same gender (so if you're a guy, you'll look at other guy profiles) to see what they are doing and incorporate that into your own profile.

 

In general, I have found that OLD is a hyperbole of IRL dating. That is, it's a stretch and not exactly the same, and in many cases harsher.

 

It's interesting as I've heard a story from a man on another message board regarding online dating on POF. He said like most men, he gets ignored intially. There was this one woman that did this...he moved on, but in public he spotted her at a public event, approached her and chatted her up.

 

She immediately took to him, and after a few dates he revealed he had emailed her on POF some time ago, but she didn't answer.

 

She was rather flabbergasted as she said, "Woah! If I knew you were like you are now back when you contacted me, I would have responded!!"

 

It was like she regretted, in hindsight, that she didn't respond to him via his online only presence.

 

So people will pass up on someone on online dating they would NOT normally pass up in real life. This event, and many others like it, just proves that online dating is a crutch, a handicap.

 

This pretty much summs it up. IMHO, if you're a guy, you won't find great success in OLD unless you're in the top 20% in terms of looks. I would say that if you are able to get a reasonable percentage response rate, then you should be fine IRL. Conversely, if you can't get any responses at all, then you will probably have trouble with dating IRL.

 

Of course, OLD is a business, and even free sites may want to upsell their services or want to keep you in the site for ad revenue.

 

A good observation. Taking it a few steps further, a lot of these dating sites work like social networking in the sense they use the frequency of clicks to derive who is hot and who is not, and thus who to present to who in order to keep and attract more people for their lovely ad revenue. For example, in the case of OKC, one can derive how attractive they are by using their "special blend" match search filter, which is basically who OKC thinks you'd be the most compatible with. The fact that you list a bunch of interests in your profile, that you have a Master's or PhD, that you have no kids, don't smoke/do drugs etc is quite irrelevant. If you don't get those clicks, you will be matched up with people who never finished school, do drugs and clearly have no future. Hell, you will even get matched up with profiles that are obviously fake (i.e. no description and a trollface as the profile picture). Conversely, if you are attractive, you can get away with a lot more, though the smoking/drug thing is probably the two factors that can significantly hurt you.

 

As I see it, OLD companies operate like virus in the sense that, they want attractive people to be successful, because if they are, they will then tell their single friends about the site, which will then get them into it as well and continues the cycle. Conversely, as for unattracive people, they could care less since they are under the assumption that they are likely not the most socially popular and thus are not in a position to "tell a lot of people" about their trials and tribulations in the world of OLD. After all, if they are doing OLD and can't get any replies/clicks, then they are also likely not at the top of any social ladder.

 

Which brings me to my concluding thought. OLD is a zero sum gain- however attractive you are IRL is how attractive you will be in OLD world. The entire "OLD exposes you to a lot more girls" idea is a fallacy since, while more women will see your profile, they will also still judge you by IRL standards, if not more harshly since they can't meet you IRL and are just going by short OLD profile.

 

EDIT: Another big factor in OLD is race/ethnicity. But this has been well explained elsewhere. I'll leave it up to the interested reader to find articles on that through the Google Box.

Edited May 22, 2017 by Phase_shift22

[CptInsano]

@Phase_Shift

All good points. I would concede that OLD has advantages for some people, especially those who photograph and write well, tend to be competitive by nature, or look for something casual.

 

The key point for me is that OLD sites / applications want to keep you coming back, either for subscription or ad revenue. If your goal is a committed long-term relationship the conflict of interest on paid sites becomes inherent. Weather the sites knowingly exploit the infinite choice dilemma or their matching algorithms I cannot say, but I would be cautious.

 

But in the end these sites are just another way to establish an initial contact and nothing more. Everything else happens IRL, and this is also where many of the complaints about online dating being unfair fall apart. If you don't like it, you can simply walk away from it. There are many other ways ton meet somebody.