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Welp seeing as how garbage dating apps are due to being optimized to keep you using them instead of actually finding a longterm partner, and all being owned by about 2 or 3 different holding companies…
Might as well shoot my shot here:
36 m, opinionated autist seeking female autist within … i dunno, +/- 5 my age.
(trans fem ok, ambi gender ok, just please don’t be a fully advanced, PHD level bedroom = pigsty goblin)
For more details, see my comment history.
Brave that you’re using your Lemmy profile for your dating profile and that you’re willing to tie those comments to who who actually are in the real world.
Right? I’m using my real name for my BlueSky account and I end up having to delete almost every comment I make for the same reason. It’s a little paralyzing to have yourself on display like that.
It’s strange to admit that now, because I went to college in 2004 when Facebook was just getting big and literally everyone was on it. I miss those days. It’s hard to believe now with what an absolute shit show it has become, but early Facebook was wonderful. It genuinely made it easier to have a social life.
Early Facebook was cool, and then all our parents joined.
I nuked mine… a decade ago? Around when the Cambridge Analytica story broke.
If you can figure out who I am based on my Lemmy profile, I’ll be extremely impressed.
Yep, even giving out as much personal info as I have in my comment history.
I do not exist on any other social media sites.
Pretty sure I’ve never uploaded an image to lemmy that has any useful exif data, just download and repost memes.
I would also be impressed if even a mod or admin could geolocate me based on IP to an accuracy of better than a 100 mile radius.
Were I to theoretically find someone who wanted to move beyond messaging on lemmy… we’d be moving to signal.
Not saying its impossible, just saying I’d be impressed.
Okay MacGoober, my point was if you ever did meet anyone as a result of your post here, you’d be tying your profile to who you are IRL.
Only if the person I met decided to basically dox me.
But hey, that’s how trust works in a relationship, eh?
Gotta take that chance.
… I guess this all serves as a neat little illustration of how much I value privacy, haha.
I’d very much prefer someone similar, who isn’t attention/validation seeking on social media all the time, isn’t an ‘influencer’… isn’t really any kind of a public figure.
I’ve had too much drama in my life already thus far, and would ideally like someone who is also rather private and discreet.
This makes me feel glad to be old.
The 17yo… at work?? I wonder what’s the minimum working age in memeland.
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When did you start working? Here in the states its pretty normal to have teenagers work part time after school. I did so I would have money to spend on doing stupid stuff with friends haha
Minimum here is 18, so 18.
Yeah i get the temp crappy jobs kids get, but still, 18.
Maybe if you work at your parents’ small shop or something you could pull it off, but they could get in trouble.Oh that’s kinda crazy. The minimum age here is like 14, albeit with a huge amount of restrictions. I think it got my first job at 15
But I was working in my parents restaurant since i was like 6 or 7. Its “technically” not allowed but people mostly turn a blind eye to parents using their kids as labor, unless its otherwise abusive/neglectful
It was 14 for me. But I wouldn’t wish it on anyone else, kids shouldn’t be laborers and it was mostly a very bad experience.
I was 13 when I had my first job (paper round) and then 15 when I worked in a pub kitchen. The pub job was a great laugh! They definitely made me appreciate the value of money and work.
I started at 15 so i could afford a car.
This was one of the “culture shocks” for me too so I will explain.
It’s pretty much the norm for highschoolers to be working part-time during school days. One fo the main arguments against increasing minimum wage is “I don’t want a highschooler making as much money.”
Middleschoolers also often have jobs tho it’s usually either working for a relative or simply not on paper.
Not on paper ones also often pay less than minimum wage, in my case I was working in a warehouse at 13 for $5/hr.
This is for Texas, idk what other states do.
What the fuck is a 17 year old doing at a job?
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.
I hear ya there. I had a blast 10+ years ago with online dating, mostly okcupid. I’ve heard that it’s went to shit and I just don’t even have the energy to trudge through the apps.
I’m recently single and had ok results with ok Cupid in the past so I signed back up. Absolutely everything is hidden behind a subscription now. I deleted it right away. I knew it was going to be bad when match bought them years ago, but I’m not paying $30/mo for the morale destroying thing that online dating is.
I’m just in my 40s and single. Everyone I’d be in to is shacked up or dead at this point.
keep going, i heard hospice dates are going up in the last few years /s
If I ended up single again at my age, I don’t think I would try again. Not due to difficulty, but just apathy. Been there, done that, got the T-Shirt. I’m my own human now, doing my own stuff.
It would definitely suck to be single again, and I’d mourn what I lost, but there’s more to life
Yeah same. For one thing the odds - what am I, Roy Sullivan? - but real talk, I only had lightning strike that time by not dating, having a multi-year dry spell in my twenties, and only pursuing someone I knew was special and spending ages talking to them. If that’s going to ever happen again, it won’t be because I forced anything.
wow, that’s a relevant user name if ever saw one lmao.
I play to type
I’m in IT who generally is tech oriented. I’ve never even thought of touching dating apps. The idea itself of meeting digitally first, when there are so many women around in real life, is somewhat absurd to me. I feel like the apps might be used mostly by the ones who fail to make contact in real life, which already makes you questionable
I met my now wife through myspace back when i was 19.
I went out and always managed to find some cute girl no matter where i went, but they all lacked depth and interests. Even then, i can’t even imagine what women are like now…they probably look like a phone brand logo 24/7.
We started talking because of a friend of hers, that lasted about a year until i was finally able to meet her for the first time…turns out she wasn’t acting about who she was and had been genuine all the time.
Easiest decision i ever made.
Can someone explain this to me? Are all of the men just setting their age range really low, or is it a matter of all the “good” people being paired up by that age?
You missed the point I think. It’s about dating apps being bad, not options being rare or picky.
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.
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.
It’s hard for weirdos to find other weirdos because all weirdos have some level of social anxiety. Ask me how I know.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.*
Looking forward to getting back on dating apps at 38
You can do it!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
“App” and “genuine engagement” are 2 things that don’t go together.
Honestly, 90% of the need for dating apps would vanish if people had more free time away from work and well-kept public spaces for entertainment that didn’t expect you to purchase anything.
So rather than a government-run dating app, how about a government-sanctioned 4 day work week and well kept public parks?
I don’t know if I buy that. I think people simply like hiding behind a screen for many interactions these days - including dating.
Not that Im against your idea but maybe just the 90% part seems inflated.
Perhaps, but we would need to put the idea in practice to determine what’s the cause/effect relationship here.
Are people more addicted to their screens because the real world became hostile, or is the real world becoming hostile because people are glued to their screens?
I’d bet on the first option, but I could be wrong.
Real relationships require a vulnerability that dating apps can not provide
I love my screen time but if there was free ping pong somewhere outside or something I’d go there a lot. Same for rock climbing, board game spaces… I’d get out for a lot. Screen time is a cheap substitute for this real stuff.
Yet again, low-density exclusionary zoning causing car-dependency (which is why the “third spaces” you’re talking about have all-but disappeared) is revealed as the root cause of almost every problem we have.
But who makes the profit in your silly goose scenario? Somebody has to be making money or it’s a terrible idea!
This is what we call long-term investment a taxman wins once you have kids
You said capitalism and summoned your resident anticapitalist. How can I be of assistance, comrade. :D
Looking for an anticapitalist on lemmy is like looking for a lesbian at a Teagan and Sara concert. It’s not everybody, but it’s not a difficult search
meh, I dont think thats accurate. I would say “opportunist” is a better fit. Anticapitalists understand how profit extractions works and have a very different view on society. Mostly one that does not work on .world because of the capitalist propaganda machine running in the west.
I run a social club for gay men, and we’ve talked about coming up with an app that’s run by a non-profit, with social workers on the board, that’s designed to actually connect people, not keep them glued to the app. Friendship, dates, activity partners, whatever.
I don’t know why no one has come up with the non-profit model here but if I can get enough steam, we’re doing it.
But even non-profits need to pay for operating costs like salary and cloud fees. Where would you get the funding for that?
The app doesn’t need to be free, and the revenue stream won’t dry up if it actually works because people break up, and there are so many fucking people that even in a zero sum scenario it would take forever to reach saturation.
Sorry if I come off like a butthole but I’m both curious yet dubious of the idea. I feel like people probably have thought about it but they probably ran into the same problems you’ll run into.
You didn’t quite answer my question. Where are you getting revenue? Eg. Subscription, one-time fees for X, grants, investments, etc?
Duallingo started like a non-profit but even their revenue with its massive userbase couldn’t cover their expenses so they had to compromise hard to keep the lights on. The same happened to Coffee Meets Bagel. Hinge started with the same premise of “this app is meant to be deleted” but they also had to compromise and eventually sold to Match Group.
Also, I feel like gay men are a unique demographic that has higher that average engagement so Grindr is probably in a uniquely advantaged position to resist enshitification.
I guess I’m just saying it’s probably in practice a cost center like city infrastructure or schools or research, so it might only work without heavy compromises if it’s also funded by taxes.
It’s almost as if men are a little bit hornier than women…
That’s an outdated, lazy, and inaccurate generalization.
Women are just as horny as men but straight women experience higher risks engaging in dating than gay men experience resulting in more caution and selectivity engagement.
Straight women who are able to have as much sex as they want tend to be those who are in stable, long-term relationships. The bottleneck is safety as a hard requirement for sex.
I mean, maybe we need to define horny, this may be a semantics issue,
But no, you’re very wrong. In general men are way more horny, but we may be looking for different things to solve the horniness issue…
Men’s sex drive is not only consistently higher than women’s, but it is more consistent over time and more consistent across individuals as well
Where are we getting the funds for Lemmy and its instances?
Donations and many self hosted volunteers, helped by the unique nature of the fediverse architecture also distributing burdens, fewer users, and lower computation/storage/availability requirements (compared to a more centralized service like a dating app).
I can’t wait for TRUMPDate. Make America Date Again. Can’t go wrong.
But the date is August 2, 1934
yes, and women will be required to use it and have babies with the incels on it.
Its that or prison, ladies!
Someone tried this with a dating app for right-wingers only called “The Right Stuff”, which has faced significant criticism for lacking female users.
Enter the colour of your skin:
Whoops, no matches for you!
National Lampoon had an article once called ‘Girls of the Soviet Block’. When you said government run dating app, it made me think how hilarious that turned out.
Might not be a great idea, tbh.
This isn’t what was suggested here at all.
That’s how it’ll end up though.
Although with all the Nazism going on in Silicon Valley, there’s a good chance that’s what they’ve been attempting all along.
I’m always surprised to hear people unimpressed with others on dating apps. A couple of my friends have shared their “feeds” and I was struck by how many good-looking people are out there. But they would swipe away from just the smallest turn-offs becoming deal breakers. Like if I saw these people in real life, I would think of them as average looking at worst, many being remarkably attractive. This is in the 20s to mid 30s range like the tweet. I definitely understand deciding you’re incompatible based on politics or religion or culture but most of the time it would be for minor quirks. It felt like they were spoiled for choice in my eyes.
But then again, they’re in serious long term relationships with conventionally attractive and supportive partners now so maybe being picky pays off. At the time, their reluctance to settle was a very frustrating experience for them.
Reluctant to settle, spoiled for choice, great ways of describing the situation.
the apparently-bottomless firehose of faces that makes you desensitized, the anonymous dismissal of them makes you callous.
The apps are just another dopamine slot machine, so the companies don’t care and in fact would rather keep people in their app.
Any dating app that was any good at its stated aim wouldn’t be able to make enough money to survive.
By definition dating apps don’t want you to meet a partner, they want you addicted to swiping and tapping and almost finding a partner. If you hook up a few times along the way then that’s just a secondary benefit and keeps that carrot dangling in front of you.
Yeah, if you actually find someone app usage will drop for at least some people, maybe even most people. The more exclusive some/many folks are the less they’ll open the app. Up to finding someone(s) that fully satisfy them for at least a while, and for that while that user may even be completely off the app. Maybe they even delete it. Certainly they won’t compulsively be using it the same way they are when they are trying to connect.
For many (not all) users, successfully finding connections is detrimental to engagement, advertising, active user stats, etc. The incentives for the company are not geared towards helping users connect, and are geared towards always having users continually trying to connect.
‘Look at all these people that think I’m pretty, who I could have if I wanted to.’’
It’s the mirror from Snow White, but it lies better the more you pay it, the more time you spend staring at it.
Skinner box.
Wire the rat up to stimulate its pleasure receptors if it pushes button.
Rat will push button untill it dies of dehydration.
There’s definitely a lot of people who overestimate what they bring to a relationship, and I think women are more prone to it than men because they’re typically the ones being pursued.
It’s quite illuminating, sometimes, to see how other people live. And to see how very different things look if you’re taking a different person’s perspective.
k
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Mikasa?
I’ll be honest. I developed more engaging relationships through sugar daddy websites than I ever had through dating sites. And I didn’t spend any money on the sugar babies. I would let my personality carry the relationship and it worked out for a while. Then I made fun of someone trying to do what seemed like. A set up to mug me for money. That got me banned from the site. Miss those days.
Just make a new account
It’s a bit harder than that. They have your POS info and block from that.
Pretty sure Tinder shadow banned me for some reason. I saw the same people constantly.
All dating apps suck, but Hinge sucked less for me. I actually found someone with similar interests that wasn’t just looking for a free dinner.
apps centered on polyamory tend to be far less hostile to its users. I assume it’s because a user getting one or two good relationships out of the app doesn’t lose them those users.
Are there such apps? Hinge at least lets you set that as your goal without paying money, but after a while I ran out of users. It literally said like “There’s no one left”. I live in NYC.
I set it back to “poly or mono” and got dates again, but mostly mono people. (I’m a very average ~40 y/o guy who doesn’t date men)
check out https://www.truublue.com/
dating for progressive singles. And check out the ginger lady at the bottom of the front page-- I couldnt say no after seeing that.
