Used hinge, tinder, okcupid, and maybe a couple others. I’m a guy who doesn’t date men, 30s, in a large urban area, average looks and fitness.

I found I could get about a date a week if I put in effort. Most people aren’t putting in effort. Most of your effort is going to go into the void. You just have to accept that most people kind of suck and aren’t going to respond. But just reading their profile and sending a message like a normal person puts you well above average.

Many people seem to just half ass it and I don’t understand why. Like, their profile says they love NK Jemisen. You write that you love her books and ask if they read her latest. They write back with “no”, and of message, no follow up. Like how do you expect that to work out favorably? If you don’t have time, don’t respond. If you’re not interested, unmatch. A dead end reply just wastes everyone’s time.

The apps themselves are not focused on good outcomes. They want money. That doesn’t always mean giving you the best match right away. But sometimes it works out anyway.

Got one or two matches but never actually met up with anyone. Not my sort of thing I guess. They’re just built to get you to pay for premium services.

Perspective of Average looking guy in his 30s.

No. Did not find, got one date once.

Used for years on and off.

It was horrible.

One match a month at most that was not a bot.

Biggest problem: lopsided demand for male vs females.

Terrible way to meet people.

Used it in an attempt to find a girlfriend.

Ok, ill bite.

Was reluctantly on Hinge a while back (was 31M at the time). My sibilings twisted my arm to make a profile and helped design it (I dont take pictures of myself so it was challanging to make). Overall expirence was negative to neutral, over ~2 years of minimal useage just to the profile active, threw 15$ at the app to see if it changed the algorithm (it does). IIRC ~12 replies, 3 first dates/meet-ups and 0 second dates. Cant say I put a ton of effort It so I wont lose sleep over anything.

The shocking part of the whole thing was compairing results with my sister. She functionally did not need to go to the default feed, dozens if not hundreds of contact requests… We had a joke back when she was in college that if she felt like it, she would never have to pay for a dinner (obviosuly that would be a dick move, and she never took advantage of anyone, but the data was there).

Once it became obvious that the platform was full of bots, dumby accounts, and was noticably trying to prey on desperate people with credit cards, I just moved on. Over all advice, if you find an app thats very new and not owned by match group, go for it, you will likely meet people earnestly trying to make connections. Otherwise, dont bother, go find a date the old fashioned way, outside.

Used tinder, got married, been married for a few years now. 9/10, the app deserves a 3, but it worked.

Used OKCupid from ~2008 to 2016. Maybe 10 or so 1-2 month relationships in that time. Plenty of first dates. Then met my wife. Married in '23.

I’ve heard it’s a fucking nightmare now though. OKCupid used to be all about the profiles and questions, but soon after we stopped using it, it turned into a Tinder clone with just photos. Add in a healthy dose of AI, and I’m sure it’s a very unpleasant time.

I have met several people - and eventually my wife - via apps. I’d describe the process as painful, possibly soul-sucking. I would not consider myself attractive, but am not super ugly either. It took a lot of effort though, and was generally highly depressing. I guess it worked, but I feel like there have to be better ways.

Found my now-husband on Hinge. I was on the app a while (a year and change) before we matched, but he told me that I was his first match on it. There were a lot of duds and a few first dates that led nowhere, but I didn’t have any interaction with people I felt where dangerous or anything like that. Hinge also didn’t feel like it had anything that felt overtly monetized compared to other dating apps (like bumble). This was back in 2020 so I have no idea what it’s like now.

I tried tinder once 8 years ago when I moved to a new city. Quickly deleted it. Basically every swipe was a match but then the men would not answer, eventually unmatched without ever answering or immediately text something sexual. Oh and so many “my profile says X but actually…” I think I met with three guys over the course of three month or so and they all tried to pressure me into having sex on the first or second date. One even mocked me for thinking any man would look for anything other than quick sex on tinder.

So it was pretty horrible and I felt mostly unsafe with the guys I met so I quickly stopped using it. I think it’s a horrible way to meet people.

Haven’t used them in about 10 years so can’t speak to recent experience but before that used them on and off. Experience was okay, a few good dates and a few one off dates where we didn’t really match in real life. Nothing long term.

Overall don’t like those apps, as a hetero short guy I figured I get filtered out of most searches so it takes a long time to find someone willing to meet up for a date, seems easier to talk to ppl in real life (IMO). You sort of know there might be a connection if you can get someone to smile face to face, or you know they are trying to do the same with you, that’s not something you do over an app.

Every time I used tinder it was a success. Got many few night stands and 2 girlfriends from it. I attribute my success to 2 things:

• city size. At around 1.5M is the ideal size. More than that, and it’s hard to be seen. Less than that, there may not be enough people.
• Learn how to make a good profile and understand it’s a numbers game.

I’m super picky and not very good looking, so my “swipe right” rate is less than 1%.

I used OkCupid a while back. Found myself in a relationship for about six years. Eventually we decided to kinda’ go our separate ways.

Used it again. Got back into a relationship. It’s been ten years.

My one regret is that when I was first using the site about 15 years ago I sent them 5 bitcoin to turn off ads for six months.

Used OkCupid about 9 years ago (mid 30s male). I tried it for a few weeks, liked what it was at the time, and did the 3 month cheap trial premium it whatever it was to get some additional data basically.

There were 3 girls I talked to repeatedly, and a bunch of one and done conversations.

Girl 1 seemed fun and had what seemed like good energy. We were supposed to talk on the phone and set up a date, I believe the situation was, but I was hanging out at my bandmate’s house and lost track of time and she started flipping out on text for not calling. It seemed pretty excessive for us never having met or anything yet, so I called it quits on that one.

Girl 2 was quieter and a little bit reserved, but I really enjoyed talking to her. I really wanted to meet her, but she never got over her nerves or whatever it was to call or hang out, and she would go a few days without being online to chat, so I didn’t know if it would lead anywhere.

Girl 3 was very conversational and outgoing. I feel we talked a week or so on the online chat and then we talked on the phone. We were supposed to meet up, but I didn’t hear from her. She had ended up falling asleep after work and was apologetic about it. We ended up hanging out later and hit it off very well.

We’ve been together almost every day since and got married this November.

So it took about a month for me to have success. My story seems to be an outlier. She had many bad experiences before meeting me. I feel bad that I hear they trashed the app though. I really enjoyed the experience and thought the matching process was pretty nice.

The sad truth is, these apps are not great for minorities, so I never had much luck on them. OkCupid’s articles and statistics further proved this. I miss when they used to release their in depth info, before Match bought them out.

I used them about 10yrs ago. Right when Tinder was starting to pick up in popularity I was thankfully able to get off of them.

Tried one for the first time about a year ago, but only for a few days. Bi poly woman, looking for any poly individuals of any gender. (Not interested in being a unicorn for bicurious couples.)

I figured Feeld would be a good choice since its kink/queer-friendly.

• within one day I had over 70 likes. Despite living in a small town and setting <20km range. Almost every single one was from a (gender declared as) man that hadn’t bothered to fill out their profiles with anything at all. Maybe a third didn’t even have a picture (not that it would’ve mattered, because I want to meet people not bodies, but who do they think is going to swipe right on a sunset, or on Wrath of the Lich King box art?)

• Plenty of couples looking for unicorns that listed themselves as one person to be on my feed anyway. Always with vague filler that tells me nothing about them or what they’re looking for, stuff like ‘connect and see where it goes’.

• plenty of (hypothetical) women that were theoretically looking, but actually the profile was their male partner, whom you had to talk to first, despite saying nothing about her. No photos, no hobbies, nothing about her as a person. Idk if he was standing guard to feel in control and soothe his relationship insecurities, or if she wanted him to protect her from all the risk/effort, but either way: nope. They’re almost never looking for a mutual experience, theyre looking for a volunteer to perform her fantasies for free

• I had every permutation of individual switched on: trans men, women (cis or trans), enbies etc included… but 99% of what I saw was cis men. I don’t know if they were promoted by the app or they really are almost all of the users, but the app would literally start looping through the same empty profiles of cis men without ever showing me a queer woman (that wasn’t a couple pretending)

• Once I stopped including cis men (which i felt very conflicted about but i was so fucking overwhelmed), I finally started seeing queer women (and more unicorn hunters ofc). Almost all of them had fully filled out profiles but the amount of likes dropped to like… 2 over the remaining 3 days I had the app installed.

• one pan man put a ‘super like’ on me which let me see him directly, he’d actually filled put his profile which was great because it gave me something to open with. We had a great conversation but I slowed down on meeting up in person right away because I needed to attend to some real-life needs and invited him to connect outside the app while that happened, which he agreed with but then kinda disappeared without doing so. Maybe he assumed I wasn’t actually interested or I would take too long, idk. A shame because I did like him

I have a (mostly) straight male partner and he showed me his app experience: most of the straight women didn’t bother filling out their profiles at all either, nor did gay men. It seemed only queer women filled it out almost every time? We theorised that the queer dating pool is really small so it’s understood you have to represent yourself to be seen, and women want to have an idea of who you are before they reach out.

Meeting other women is hard so I’d probably need to get back on apps at some point, but damn. Really do feel sorry for everybody out there. All of the people I’ve actually dated have been met in-person.