What's bugging you? 2021

[Hopper]

I was married in 2014. Even without a pandemic I just cannot imagine navigating that today. The countless apps, the games played on said apps. I have lots of dating friends and the stories and things that are now expected or normal just sound nauseating. I just missed the tinder era by literally a few months. Rejecting people on a 1 second glance at a photo and then texting back and forth before meeting...no thanks. I was reading a thread somewhere where one of the guys insisted and calling rather than texting and the replies acted like this person was mentally ill for not wanting to text.

 

My son is 24, and trying to date but he says it is an absolute nightmare, especially using apps.

I feel bad for him.

[Jimbo]

I was married in 2014. Even without a pandemic I just cannot imagine navigating that today. The countless apps, the games played on said apps. I have lots of dating friends and the stories and things that are now expected or normal just sound nauseating. I just missed the tinder era by literally a few months. Rejecting people on a 1 second glance at a photo and then texting back and forth before meeting...no thanks. I was reading a thread somewhere where one of the guys insisted and calling rather than texting and the replies acted like this person was mentally ill for not wanting to text.

 

My son is 24, and trying to date but he says it is an absolute nightmare, especially using apps.

I feel bad for him.

 

I would think it would be the opposite.

 

It used to be:

- meet someone from school.

- meet someone from work.

- meet someone in a bar.

- introduced by a mutual friend.

 

The second one is not recommended. The fourth one works better for those with a wide social network. An advantage of online dating is that it levels the playing field for those without the large social network, as well as eliminating the bar scene.

[OldSchoolSnapper]

The second one is fine. I got married that way and know lots and lots of other people who have. What I would not do, and recommend against, is pursuing something at work that you know to be short-term and only lukewarm interest. You can find a spouse at work, I would not recommend looking for hookups there.

[owbc]

My wife and I met on Tinder in 2016. I was fairly new to the online dating scene (it was crazy to jump into that world after getting divorced), she had been doing it for years and was on the verge of giving up. In big cities there are seemingly an infinite number of people you can potentially go on dates with. I found it amazing. I would have never crossed paths with someone like my wife without a dating app. It changed my life.

 

At this point I think most people recognize that one of the dangers with the apps is that it can become addictive to always want to find someone slightly better than the current person you are dating. When you combine that with the social norm of 'ghosting' it leads to people being very guarded and cautious about getting hurt. Even so it is emotionally exhausting to go on all those dates. It's not uncommon to go on multiple dates on the same day. You have to have thick skin. It's the tradeoff for the potential number of people you can meet.

 

Hopper, if your son is having trouble with the apps, I recommend getting some third-party opinions (preferably his female friends) to review his profile or hiring a dating consultant. I'm not even kidding. You only get one first impression and in the dating app world that's your cover photo and the first line or two of your profile.

[LouisEly]

I would think it would be the opposite.

Not really - the paradox of choice. Too much choice creates indecision (the infamous "jam" experiment).

 

It also raises expectations, creates comparisons, and creates disappointment because people post the best pictures of themselves (usually several years old) but get the real person when they meet. People lie about their occupation (I guarantee that 90% of men who say that they are CEOs/VPs aren't, and most of the other 10% aren't either) which, coupled with inaccurate pictures, deceives people in to pursuing people who they otherwise wouldn't. Many good-looking men aren't looking for a serious relationship (just looking to "pad their stats", and why would a good-looking guy need a dating app anyway?), and many good-looking women are just looking for attention (i.e. just looking for Instagram followers... or are fake profiles trying to get men to subscribe... or are bots).

[MrTPlush]

I recommend getting some third-party opinions (preferably his female friends) to review his profile or hiring a dating consultant. I'm not even kidding. You only get one first impression and in the dating app world that's your cover photo and the first line or two of your profile.

 

This reminds me of a time I was sitting at a little hotel bar and this guy walked up (mid 30s maybe). He was the type to go on endlessly about himself and mentioned he was failing at Tinder. So he voluntarily pulls it up on his phone for my opinion. Well his photo was some semi-seductive selfie of him laying on a bed shirtless (he wasn't in shape). His bio mentioned his cat and then had some sexual esque sentence. I can't remember it exactly and while it wasn't bad it certainly seemed like it would give a woman the wrong idea about what he was after.

 

So I basically told him his profile pic was pretty bad and he should have something more normal WITH a shirt on. Also...probably don't mention your cat and don't infer you want to get to know someone romantically before you even message them.

 

He brushed off my advice and thought his profile was perfect...sigh, probably still single without a single match on Tinder.

[nodakfan17]

People lie about their occupation (I guarantee that 90% of men who say that they are CEOs/VPs aren't ...)

I always chuckle about this when I see ‘Vice President’ in someone’s profile. I work for a company with about 6,000 employees and I’d wager there are at least 300 ‘Vice Presidents’ (myself included). A VP and an actual ‘Executive VP’ are two very different things. I have enough authority to approve birthday cakes and pizza orders, but still need special permission to order more than two toppings. When prompted, I usually just say I’m a manager in such-and-such department. At least my mother is impressed with my business card.

[owbc]

I recommend getting some third-party opinions (preferably his female friends) to review his profile or hiring a dating consultant. I'm not even kidding. You only get one first impression and in the dating app world that's your cover photo and the first line or two of your profile.

 

This reminds me of a time I was sitting at a little hotel bar and this guy walked up (mid 30s maybe). He was the type to go on endlessly about himself and mentioned he was failing at Tinder. So he voluntarily pulls it up on his phone for my opinion. Well his photo was some semi-seductive selfie of him laying on a bed shirtless (he wasn't in shape). His bio mentioned his cat and then had some sexual esque sentence. I can't remember it exactly and while it wasn't bad it certainly seemed like it would give a woman the wrong idea about what he was after.

 

So I basically told him his profile pic was pretty bad and he should have something more normal WITH a shirt on. Also...probably don't mention your cat and don't infer you want to get to know someone romantically before you even message them.

 

He brushed off my advice and thought his profile was perfect...sigh, probably still single without a single match on Tinder.

 

Hahaha yes! Men with cats. One of many easily-avoidable mistakes. My wife was on the apps so long that she started taking screenshots of all the profile pics of guys with cats. She had (has???) a folder full of dozens of them and put all of them into a photo collage. Now I need to find the right moment to ask her if she still has it...

[AKCheesehead]

I wonder how many of the guys with cats were doing so "ironically."

 

Also, do people still try to meet people in grocery stores?

[jerichoholicninja]

All my married friends are married to people they met in high school or college. My wife and I were set up through a mutual acquaintance. I was doing Match or something like that for a few months before and only had one actual interaction with someone there but after exchanging a few what seemed like friendly messages she basically told me to leave her alone. So I did. I have no idea how I would meet people if I was single today.

[CheezWizHed]

I wonder how many of the guys with cats were doing so "ironically."

 

Also, do people still try to meet people in grocery stores?

 

This June, I'll be married for 26 years. But as a mid-40s guy, I've been hit on twice in stores in the last couple of years. In Target, I had paid and was leaving when I passed a woman. As she passed, she looked at me, smiled, and said, "Nice". To which I replied, "Thank you" and kept walking. The other time, I was standing in the spice aisle looking for something and a woman asked what I was making. I replied "chili" and she commented it was nice to have a guy cook. I replied, "My wife thinks so too".

 

So I guess it still happens.

[RobDeer 45]

I wonder how many of the guys with cats were doing so "ironically."

 

Also, do people still try to meet people in grocery stores?

 

This June, I'll be married for 26 years. But as a mid-40s guy, I've been hit on twice in stores in the last couple of years. In Target, I had paid and was leaving when I passed a woman. As she passed, she looked at me, smiled, and said, "Nice". To which I replied, "Thank you" and kept walking. The other time, I was standing in the spice aisle looking for something and a woman asked what I was making. I replied "chili" and she commented it was nice to have a guy cook. I replied, "My wife thinks so too".

 

So I guess it still happens.

 

CheezWizHed after the lady said "nice." I'm back!!!

 

[GAME05]

I've been a writer before and have also studied a good bit on what is and isn't attractive in a dating profile, and there's definitely a lot to it and always something that can be improved. I used to go on a website and edit other peoples' profiles because it was a really fun project to do.

 

There's also some funny videos on youtube where they use extremely attractive people but then intentionally make them monsters in their write-ups and still watch all the "Hey there.." emails come rolling in.

[CheezWizHed]

I wonder how many of the guys with cats were doing so "ironically."

 

Also, do people still try to meet people in grocery stores?

 

This June, I'll be married for 26 years. But as a mid-40s guy, I've been hit on twice in stores in the last couple of years. In Target, I had paid and was leaving when I passed a woman. As she passed, she looked at me, smiled, and said, "Nice". To which I replied, "Thank you" and kept walking. The other time, I was standing in the spice aisle looking for something and a woman asked what I was making. I replied "chili" and she commented it was nice to have a guy cook. I replied, "My wife thinks so too".

 

So I guess it still happens.

 

CheezWizHed after the lady said "nice." I'm back!!!

 

 

I hope to think I was a little more composed (at least externally), but it was a nice ego stroke.

 

In fact, it was so out of the ordinary, I thought for sure she was a wife/friend of one of my co-workers and I was being setup. But if it was, no one ever fessed up (and yes, I asked).

[RobDeer 45]

That is hilarious that you were asking around to see if someone was messing with you. Good stuff!

[zurch1818]

I met my wife online (on a free website, OKCupid), so online dating is definitely possible. After not having much initial success, I decided to change my strategy up a bit by seeing what my competition was like by creating a fake profile. I copied the profiles of a couple different women that I was attracted to into "my" profile. I then found "my" profile picture from someone random from my parent's trip to France and I was all set to be an imposter. I figured someone from France should be safe to use. Oh my is all I have to say. You get soooooo many emails and most of them are complete garbage. My worst was a visiting professor from Alabama that was saying he was in town for just the weekend while at a conference, yikes. My guess is he wasn't a professor or from Alabama. Most of the emails were just one liners or men talking about themselves. You could totally tell it was copied and pasted. It was actually kind of fun to be an imposter. After that little experiment, I successfully learned what not to do...and made my actual profile. In addition to this, I learned what to say (and not say) in an email. One last thing, I found that I had the most success when my profile was new, so I made new profiles every couple weeks. They were free, so why not?

 

All of a sudden I was getting responses and even dates. For me, I found that asking to go on a date in the second email was the best approach. There were a few weeks where I had 3 dates with 3 different women on 3 nights in a row. That was really taxing for someone that is more introverted. The people at the mini golf course probably thought I really loved mini golf.

[jerichoholicninja]

I met my wife online (on a free website, OKCupid), so online dating is definitely possible. After not having much initial success, I decided to change my strategy up a bit by seeing what my competition was like by creating a fake profile. I copied the profiles of a couple different women that I was attracted to into "my" profile. I then found "my" profile picture from someone random from my parent's trip to France and I was all set to be an imposter. I figured someone from France should be safe to use. Oh my is all I have to say. You get soooooo many emails and most of them are complete garbage. My worst was a visiting professor from Alabama that was saying he was in town for just the weekend while at a conference, yikes. My guess is he wasn't a professor or from Alabama. Most of the emails were just one liners or men talking about themselves. You could totally tell it was copied and pasted. It was actually kind of fun to be an imposter. After that little experiment, I successfully learned what not to do...and made my actual profile. In addition to this, I learned what to say (and not say) in an email. One last thing, I found that I had the most success when my profile was new, so I made new profiles every couple weeks. They were free, so why not?

 

A couple months ago I read an article about people who work at a bunch of online dating companies whose job it is was to make fake female profiles so they could weed out all the creeps, sexual predators, and people looking for prostitutes. According to the article the vast majority of female profiles on these sites are these fake ones and very few women actually use online dating sites.

[CheezWizHed]

I met my wife online (on a free website, OKCupid), so online dating is definitely possible. After not having much initial success, I decided to change my strategy up a bit by seeing what my competition was like by creating a fake profile. I copied the profiles of a couple different women that I was attracted to into "my" profile. I then found "my" profile picture from someone random from my parent's trip to France and I was all set to be an imposter. I figured someone from France should be safe to use. Oh my is all I have to say. You get soooooo many emails and most of them are complete garbage. My worst was a visiting professor from Alabama that was saying he was in town for just the weekend while at a conference, yikes. My guess is he wasn't a professor or from Alabama. Most of the emails were just one liners or men talking about themselves. You could totally tell it was copied and pasted. It was actually kind of fun to be an imposter. After that little experiment, I successfully learned what not to do...and made my actual profile. In addition to this, I learned what to say (and not say) in an email. One last thing, I found that I had the most success when my profile was new, so I made new profiles every couple weeks. They were free, so why not?

 

A couple months ago I read an article about people who work at a bunch of online dating companies whose job it is was to make fake female profiles so they could weed out all the creeps, sexual predators, and people looking for prostitutes. According to the article the vast majority of female profiles on these sites are these fake ones and very few women actually use online dating sites.

 

So, you're saying you could make a job at this?

 

[owbc]

A couple months ago I read an article about people who work at a bunch of online dating companies whose job it is was to make fake female profiles so they could weed out all the creeps, sexual predators, and people looking for prostitutes. According to the article the vast majority of female profiles on these sites are these fake ones and very few women actually use online dating sites.

 

That is part of why Bumble became so popular, since the women have to send the first message. I think Hinge is the other popular one right now although I'm not sure what is unique about it, it might be that people tend to migrate to new apps every couple of years to stay one step ahead of the creeps/spam/etc.

 

At least where I'm at, the stereotypical dude on a dating app is a software engineer at a tech company who enjoys video games, coding, occasional hiking, and craft beer. Talks about himself for 90% of the date, including not-so-subtle references to how much money he is making. Successful, career-orientated women are a big turnoff to this type of tech dude. My wife tells a story about how one of these guys had her over to his place so she could watch him play video games.

 

After hearing these type of stories over and over again from multiple sources, it made me very concerned for the future of the world, but it did provide a lot of clarity on why tech algorithms prioritize the things that they do. And made me realize that fragile masculinity is a real and serious problem in our society.

[TURBO]

fragile masculinity?

[LouisEly]

A couple months ago I read an article about people who work at a bunch of online dating companies whose job it is was to make fake female profiles so they could weed out all the creeps, sexual predators, and people looking for prostitutes. According to the article the vast majority of female profiles on these sites are these fake ones and very few women actually use online dating sites.

I've received a small share of a lawsuit settlement from a site that had fake female profiles. Men who searched in different cities (can't remember if it was because they were traveling or because they suspected fake profiles) saw the same profiles/pictures in different cities.

 

Not at all surprised that a high % of the female profiles on any site are fake.

[LouisEly]

That is part of why Bumble became so popular, since the women have to send the first message.

And the surprising thing is how many don't and let the match expire. I think many women don't know this; I've actually seen in profiles women make references to men messaging them first. Uh... they can't - read the rules.

 

At least where I'm at, the stereotypical dude on a dating app is a software engineer at a tech company who enjoys video games, coding, occasional hiking, and craft beer. Talks about himself for 90% of the date, including not-so-subtle references to how much money he is making. Successful, career-orientated women are a big turnoff to this type of tech dude. My wife tells a story about how one of these guys had her over to his place so she could watch him play video games.

Maybe I need to move to Seattle, or maybe the influx of the tech industry in Madison will be good for me. In Chicago, I think the stereotypical guy is dark-haired, drives a Porsche or Range Rover, is from an upper middle class Chicago suburb, lies about his occupation/level/income, and is very skilled at getting women to believe what he wants them to believe because he's a complete DB.

 

I can make a good first impression, but as soon as some dark-haired guy with some combination of my height, a hot body, a Porsche/Range Rover, or a fried with a boat on Lake Michigan comes along, I'm yesterday's news.

[nodakfan17]

fragile masculinity?

I had to Google it - I guess it’s anxiety caused by not meeting the traditional cultural standards of manhood and the compensatory behavior to make one feel more masculine.

 

[sarcasm]Whatever. I’m just going to grab a beer and watch the game.[/sarcasm]

[TURBO]

fragile masculinity?

I had to Google it - I guess it’s anxiety caused by not meeting the traditional cultural standards of manhood and the compensatory behavior to make one feel more masculine.

 

[sarcasm]Whatever. I’m just going to grab a beer and watch the game.[/sarcasm]

 

 

lol

 

well, it seems society has pushed men into thinking they don't have to be masculine, so why would not being masculine cause anxiety if they choose to be that way?

 

Some of the guys I see today that kind of have a blend of male and female seem to make that decision, so I'm not sure I understand the anxiety part. (I'm not talking about transgender or any other related label, I'm just talking about men who seem to embrace feminine qualities such as dress, hygene, hair styles, etc)

[FVBrewerFan]

You guys are using a lot of words to say the same thing. You don't have game.