Some of this behavior seems self destructive.
I knew a woman who would be like “I have too many matches it’s overwhelming”. I’d be like “ok well stop swiping and clear out what you have.” She’d be like “no, swiping is fun.” Well, ok, but you’re not making progress towards your stated goal, and you’re wasting the other people’s time.
I just don’t think spending 2 weeks texting without meeting is going to give useful, accurate, information. The chemistry you’re measuring there isn’t what you’ll have in real life.
A couple dinners before you find out they’re not what you thought? The same is achieved with just talking for a couple weeks
Strong disagreement here. The same is not achieved by texting and fundamentally cannot be achieved. There is too much stuff in body language, voice, and such that you’re just not going to reveal over text. Plus other stuff like seeing how they interact with other people. Are they rude to the bartender? Do they road rage? There are whole worlds of information you can’t get without spending time with someone in person.
We have different takes about “pen pals”. I don’t want to message someone for weeks before meeting up. I do like
That’s it. All done. Meeting up for a drink is low cost and low risk, but very information dense. I can get a better feel for if I want to invest in them after an hour in person than I can with a week of texting.
This is written from the perspective of a man who doesn’t date men. I can’t speak authoritatively about other experiences, but second hand none of my women friends have enjoyed prolonged texting without meeting.
Maybe sometimes. Most modern apps you can only message if you’ve both signaled interest, so if you’re getting messages from people you’re not attracted to I’d ask why you swiped on them in the first place.
Secondly, if you get a message and aren’t interested, it’s better to just unmatch. If you don’t have time to respond fully now, then just don’t say anything. If you send a half-ass response, you look kind of bad and the other person might bail. Who wants to talk to someone who, based on all available evidence in this scenario, can’t hold a conversation? The main thing on these app is trying to make yourself look good. Making yourself look like someone who can’t compose a sentence isn’t doing yourself any favors.
Match group 100% should be broken up.
I think a lot of people, of all genders, are surprisingly bad at the skills needed to use a dating app successfully. People dead end conversations and then are like “why aren’t I having fun conversations?”
Like, a profile says “I love SomeBand”. You write “hey! SomeBand is my favorite. Did you see their new music video? I don’t know how they got those cats to act!” And then respond with “no”, end of message. I’m just like my friend, that is not how you use this tool. What do you think is going to happen next?
But yeah, women refusing to take initiative probably isn’t helping. But the roots of that are pretty deep in our sexist society, and I don’t see that changing any time soon.
I think the dating app model that’s currently popular kind of can’t work well for users. They’re all set up so they benefit from users paying a subscription for a long time, but users want to find a match and get out. Those are contradictory.
I think a match making model would be better. Pay a single fee and they try to set you up with someone. They already got your money so their incentive would be to set you up happily so they don’t have to work on you anymore. But users don’t want to pay for anything, so we’ll continue having garbage and garbage incentives.
I think feeld recently was revealed to have all of their information and apis public. Like anyone could find any message and photos, and do CRUD operations on them.
https://fortbridge.co.uk/research/feeld-dating-app-nudes-data-publicly-available/
Also the app kind of sucks, at least as a free user. It does the same bullshit as all the others where it doesn’t actually connect you with people. And some classes of users (eg: women) get bombarded with low quality content while others get nothing.
Hinge also kind of sucks for the same capitalism reasons, but it’s better than the others I tried.
Return to office mandates are some combination of management failure, class warfare, and maybe some real estate valuation nonsense. There’s no good reason for it.
I’d really like people to unionize so they can say “no” as a unified group.
A solid black.
This seems like obvious advice.
I mean, way back when Myspace was new (I’m old) I looked at it and thought “This is going to make me sad.” Like, if people post fun stuff without me I’m probably going to feel left out. If people post sad stuff about their life, I’m going to feel sad. If people don’t interact with me at all, I’m going to feel lonely. There’s such a narrow path forward on that kind of thing that’s a consistent, net positive.
People could keep in touch with email, or texts, or even ancient modes like phone calls and letters. Would probably be happier. The social media stuff is a black hole.
Also remember that time Facebook tried to see if they could just make people sad? And they could? And somehow no one went to jail or anything?
I set my dad up with Ubuntu some years ago. He wasn’t the worst windows user, but he had some troubles.
Now he’s a big Linux fan. Updates his OS himself sometimes. He’s not extremely savvy, but he gets by enough.
If there’s going to be fantasies about murder, can his whole posse go out?
I don’t disagree with anything here, really. As we both said, some responsibility remains on the user.
I do think Match is aggravating the situation. Men aren’t getting traction so they search for why. They find right wing MRA stuff saying that it’s women’s fault blah blah blah, but really part of why they’re not getting hits is because Match is hiding them unless you pay (and even then maybe).
Part of why may also be they’re creeps or bad at dating. It is not wholly the apps’ fault. But I do think they’re making it harder for people to connect, and that can be the top of the funnel for far right ideas.
And I do think a lot of people are on the apps when they aren’t really ready. People of all genders. But that’s a separate topic, probably.
Anyway. Good talk. Amusingly , I’m heading out to meet someone from a dating app. Here’s hoping they don’t think I’m a creep!
There was a meme the other day about how Aragorn from lotr is the kind of male role model men need. Kind, shows his emotions, strong without being cruel.
I was thinking the other day there’s probably a pretty straight line between Match group owning so many dating apps, men’s unhappiness, and violence.
Like the apps create the illusion that you can meet someone and be happy, but their primary goal is to make money. They don’t try very hard to introduce you to good matches. They also haven’t solved the experience from the woman’s point of view. So men feel like they’re just shouting into the void, that people don’t like them, etc etc. Some of those people likely go on to become incels or do violence.
This isn’t to say that violent men are not culpable. They are. They retain agency. But Match group (that’s tinder, okcupid, hinge, match, plenty of fish, and more) is making the problem worse.
It’s like if there was a food shortage, and someone bought up all the grocery stores. Then they made all of them mazes and had half the cereal boxes empty.
It’s important for them to see you as in-group. If they see you an an outsider they won’t really listen to anything you say. That’s something that afflicts all of us.
Facebook isn’t anonymous but people are still awful there.
Also your idea would be really bad for many classes of people. Young queer trying to learn about themselves in a place that doesn’t support it, for example, would be safer anonymous.
I’m going to guess erp doesn’t mean “erotic role play” here but maybe you had a niche job.
Usually when I record something like a band playing, I point the camera and then watch the stage with my eyes. I also make sure the camera is not visible to anyone behind me, because that’s annoying.
I (a guy) think I still have a small plastic off-brand Lego in my desk. I spent a weekend with my high school crush and we found a bunch of them and had goofy fun with them.
Last I heard she’d moved away, married a woman, and had a successful career in science. I doubt she thinks of me, but I’m glad she did well.