Warning: Long post incoming
I for one am incredibly frustrated with Tinder/Bumble and the like. I live in NY and have absolutely ZERO success on these apps. Bear in mind that I'm at least a 7.5 even now at age 38 after having been balding/thinning since age 16 (I'm currently somewhere between a Norwood 2.5-3.0 with diffuse thinning and a huge patch which is 75-85% bald on my vertex if I had to estimate; I use concealers to look more normal). I fairly regularly receive unsolicited compliments on my looks in real life and have good success in real life with women in terms of their responsiveness to me etc. But for whatever reason - be it the inherent social dynamic of these apps or that I look better in real life than in pics (several folks whom I've met from online have told me this) - I get no play on these apps. At all. Zero. Some bullet points:
- Started using Tinder about 1.5 years ago. Tried the typical guy strategy of "swipe right on everyone and then weed through your matches." Result: Perhaps ONE match every 4-6 weeks, if that. And the girls who I would match with were WELL below me in terms of physical attractiveness. In the 5-6.5 range. I even hid my age because I know that in itself will dissuade some girls from matching with you (I'm 38 now, but people tend to say I look like I'm 33-35; if I had more hair, they'd say 30 since my actual face/skin looks very young
).
- Learned a couple of months ago that Tinder has some new-ish algorithm which will limit your visibility to women if it detects that you're swiping right on all profiles. Apparently the only way to reset/recalibrate this is to create a new profile, so I deleted my account, created a new one, and began only swiping right on folks I was legitimately attracted to (if I had to estimate, I'd say 85% of these girls were 7.5+, and seldom below a 7). Result: ONE match in the last 6 weeks. And it was a girl I had "super liked," so who knows how that affects profile visibility or a particular woman's response to it (e.g., some may be put off by it, some may find it flattering that you "super liked" them, making them more inclined to match back etc.). So basically still ZERO success despite changing my tactics.
- Started using Bumble 2-3 weeks ago. Only swiped right on girls I was legitimately attracted to (probably a couple hundred girls at this point). Result: ONE match, who let the time expire without messaging me.
I know the obvious conclusion to the above is "you probably don't look nearly as good as you think you do" - but that's incorrect. If I'm off in my self-estimate (I'd put myself currently around an 8), it's only by +/- .5,
maybe 1.0 if you feel like docking me more for the sake of argument. But even assuming that, a 7 should get way more matches than I've gotten. It's absolutely baffling to me, and very frustrating. I do go out every weekend and have decent success (I'd have more success if I'd ever open my mouth, but that's a different matter entirely lol), and girls do approach me on their own. But at my age I'd LOVE to have another avenue to meet people without doing the whole bar/lounge/club, which is tiring (not least of all because of the amount of time I spend preparing my hair
). Today, that avenue is online dating - but it's been nothing but sh*t for me.
Last year, at age 37 on a singles cruise, the three most attractive girls on the boat all approached me on their own - these girls were all 8-8.5+, from 23-27 years old, and were getting mobbed by men as you could imagine. I ended up dating all 3 for a while; they all made it very clear that they found me very physically attractive. Three other girls on that cruise (in the 6-7 range) also approached me on their own. A month prior to that, a hot 26 year old who hooked up with me the first night we met (definitely fueled by alcohol, granted) who I was dating for a while asks me on our first actual date "how are you single?" I said that I had gotten out of a long term relationship several months prior and haven't found the right girl yet, and she goes "that's crazy - you're so good looking that you can get any girl you want." I regularly got asked if I modeled between ages 16-25 before my weight gain got really out of hand and my hair loss kept increasing. And even after that (as the above stories attest to), I still got/get attention for my looks. Not as much as when I had more/all of my hair and was younger/thinner, but I do.
There are other recent stories I can tell, but I'll spare you. I don't tell you all this to brag (seriously - I'm not like that at all), but only to illustrate that my self-appraisal of my looks isn't
that far off-base, if it's off-base at all. And that's why my utter lack of success on online dating is so frustrating to me: because it's not congruent people's reaction to me in my ACTUAL life. Like I said earlier, I do know that I don't photograph well and look better in person, so maybe that's the entirety of it. But even docking my pics a FULL POINT from what I believe myself to look like in real life (so from a 7.75-8.0 down to a 6.75-7.0), I should still get more than 4 matches in a year when I'm swiping literally thousands of girls (and again, those 4 matches were 5.0-6.5's for the most part). It's just bizarre to me.
A very attractive female friend of mine whom I hadn't seen for a couple of years invited me to her birthday party when I was 27. In that time, I had put on about 35-40 pounds (I'm 6'1" with a broad frame, so it doesn't look as bad on me as it would on many folks, but it's still 40 pounds - your appearance changes). We were talking and she goes "you look great!" I said "Really? Thanks. I've put on a lot of weight since I saw you last." And she goes "Bklyn_23, let me tell you something: I don't care if you were 300 pounds, when you walk into a room, people notice - believe me. Whatever 'it' is, you have it."
So who knows - maybe it really is just something that doesn't come across in pics. But as someone who would LOVE to forgo the bar scene at least once in a while and meet people through other avenues, my lack of success (or, more accurately, abysmal failure) with online dating apps is incredibly frustrating and perplexing.
Cheers to whoever got all the way to the end of this lol.
PS: If anyone is wondering what I look like, I look pretty much like Ben Affleck in the below pic (in fact, all my life people have told me that I look like him). I do think that I have better features than him (hazel/blue eyes, a substantially stronger jawline/chin and higher cheekbones for instance), but there's a definitely a strong resemblance. Minus his near-perfect hair/hairline, of course, which I would die for right now lol
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