It's always been my opinion that people should spot trends and react to them accordingly. This is no different in online dating. And, unfortunately I think we are currently in a down period for online dating. Here's why.


There have been several new dating apps to appear over the last few years, each with it's own specialization, "cool factor", or something else that makes it attractive. At first, imo, men could see a net benefit from this - join a new app while it's the cool new thing, meet some girls, then devote minutes (or seconds) a day to it's maintenance. This has been my strategy for the last few years, and it worked quite well. So instead of spending 30 minutes on OKCupid, I would spend - 3 on tinder, 3 on happn, 3 on Sweat, 3 on CoffeeMeetsBagel, etc - really maximizing my range of potential matches from several different user groups.

Now, I have noticed that in the last few months most dating platforms have become virtual graveyards of untouched profiles. This is especially true with GPS based apps - happn, tinder, Bumble, etc. At first it looks like there are plenty of potential matches in your area - but when you look closely at the activity dates - they tell a completely different story.

I have also noticed girls doing the same thing I told guys to do - join every possible service to maximize their chances. And of course we all know what happens when women have too much choice in dating - they freeze up, eat up the attention and become "bored. "

I've talked to several female friends about this and they all confirm the same thing - they join a new app, go out on a date or two, and never use it after.

Add to that - the popularity of swiping based dating apps (tinder, bumble, hinge ) - comes with the side effect of having the "traditional" sites - OKCupid - where you can message anyone at anytime - lose popularity. This is a huge disadvantage for guys like me that are really good at writing good online openers.

So as I see it right now - we have a bunch of dating apps and sites out there that are ignored by most of their user base.


What to do?

1. The obvious choice is to work on yourself and get "prettier". If she has unlimited choice and her standards skyrocket - well then you have to be the guy opening up his Armani suit to show your abs. The #1 rule of Male Female interaction applies more than ever - you're either the shit, or you don't exist. Unfortunately the barrier to be "the shit" is a lot higher now.

2. In the dating power dynamics - just about everything by default is designed to give women the leverage of the interaction, or a larger balance of power. Bars, clubs and dating sites are places where women come to reject men. However - a man, with enough clout, knowledge, and preparation - can be the "king of a venue" - this is essentially why dudes in the club buy bottles and pop champagne - to stand out from the sea of other dudes. What's the online version of this? IMO it's web sites where women have to pay. They are rare these days. In fact Match and Eharmony are the only two I can think of off the top of my head. I might legit experiment with Eharmony and report back

3. Keep an eye out for new apps - before the participation rate inevitably plummets - new apps are a very good idea to hook up with girls. The first month or so of Bumble was amazing. Then it became a shithole. Even if the app has zero viability in your eyes - you have the opportunity to exploit its user base at the start .


So, am I the only person that thinks this? Am I lowing things out of proportion? Any advice? Any trends you noticed? I would love to hear it all

Online dating is definitely at a low point right now, women are saturated with too many choices, and with so many different apps now the available dating pool is being split up too widely across too many platforms.

I've had some of the best results using POF, but it seems like it's become the home for "lifers" now. I rejoin maybe every year or so to start some new pipelines, and you just keep seeing the same girls on there year after year, it's pretty sad. The batshit crazy, serial daters are all over the place now.

I actually had some pretty good results when I used eharmony & match, but it was a couple years ago and I've let my subscriptions expire and have been doing strictly day game since then. But I think eharmony works the best because it requires some buy-in from females, and makes them invested in the matching process instead of letting them sit back and be lazy in the process and try and dictate how things go. I like that it forces you into a rapport early on, and it quickly gets you both on the same page with your interests and intentions. If you haven't before I'd definitely give eharmony a try, most women there are looking to get married yesterday, but just be ZFG up front and prepared to break a few hearts (as usual, play on playa), and the poon will flow like wine.

Seems like #1 is the only way if you care to be any bit successful, at all.

Also, I've noted it's streaks --- weeks with little to nothing, then like 3-6 days of feast.

No idea why, but that seems to be a life lesson, hot and cold: streaks.

Get outside and start asking chicks out in person. I've been killing it recently just by being very forward. I go up to a girl, chat her up for a bit, if she seems to be digging me I say, 'Hey, I'd like to take you out for a drink, let's exchange numbers'. Or better yet, I just ask her if she wants to go grab a drink right then on the spot. The hit rate with this approach has only increased as online dating has gotten worse. Girls have even commented that they can't remember the last time a guy approached them and asked them out in person. I'm probably at like 4/5 of girls saying yes (after screening for obvious disinterest, availability, etc.) and about half of those turn into something.

Compare that to going back and forth with a girl on Tinder for a week only to have her flake on you the same day as your date. Fuck that shit.

Do some research about achieving succesd about online dating. The two things you can do is:

1) great pictures - Great smile, great body language, great fashion, a picture with a or many attractive women, and the best quality pictures.

I remember i msged a decent looking woman who had model style pictures. She looked more attractive than she was dressing up and taking professional model type pictures. Great pictured with s quality camera go a long way.

2) Write the best damn profile you can. It will show your character, intelligence, confidence, and shows your willing to walk an extra mile. Make sure no spelling mistakes, and use bold/italics to make a emphasis on certain words.

Write a profile that shows the woman reading it thst your not an average beta chump but not in a arrogantt tone. Aslong as she figures out your a cool guy she can have fun with it will go a long way.

Once youve done these two things you have seperated yourself from alot of average guys.

Your analysis is on target. OKCupid used to be worthwhile as it gives you more opportunity to distinguish yourself from the crowd of incoherent morons and supplicating chodes. But now that seemingly every 4/10 and up has flocked away from OKC and onto the mass swiping apps, where it's impossible to stand out unless you're a model, the return on investment from online dating is horrifically low.

To your point about inactive profiles- I noticed ~6 months ago that Tinder stopped displaying when each profile was last active. Before that, as I swiped for awhile, I would notice that the "last active" time kept increasing until I reached girls who hadn't been on Tinder in over a week, at which point I knew I was wasting my time and thus took a break to wait for new prospects. I assume Tinder still orders its queue partially based on last login time, but now I don't know when I'm wasting my time swiping on inactive profiles. I'm guessing they removed this feature to hide the fact that there's really not that many women actively using the thing.

Living in a rural-suburban area with a non-existent pickup scene, I've been way too reliant on online dating these past few years. Believe me when I say it's a terrible experience. The lopsidedness of the market could not possibly be understated. If you're 6'2" with a high-paying job and a ripped body, good luck consistently pulling anything better than chubby 4's. And if you're not, good luck consistently pulling anything at all. I've vowed that should I ever pack up and get my ass to a major city, I will shift my focus to approaches.

I agree with everything stated here. The effort required to pull chicks from dating apps now is just not even worth it. I noticed a sig drop in my success rate when tinder changed to limited swipes and became a pay-based model (which I refuse to pay for).

When you travel abroad you see that the situation is completely reversed. No chick even bothers to look at the ripped bartender, waiter, or personal trainer as these are considered low-class jobs in the non-western world. Chicks are more engaged by a man's total package- job, experience, style, wealth, etc.

I agree that many apps are filled with fake profiles or inactive users. Additionally, the hottest chicks are not on the apps anyway. They are getting enough attention in the real world.

The answer lies- not in improving yourself for pussy, but improving yourself for you. If you build a successful and engaging lifestyle you will naturally come into contact with girls worth gaming. Also, I think that online and apps should not take the place of real social interaction and in-person gaming.

I've stopped using Bumble in DC. It consistently shows girls I've swiped left on several times over. It recycles the same girls over and over. Happn has died here. I got a couple bangs off it in 2015. It's now filled with undesirables. Tinder is dead. I fully believe that. It hasn't produced a date or bang for me in 2 years. I'm not ugly. I know that. I consistently use fake gps to tap into NYC and get girls who constantly reply to my messages. The only thing preventing me from meeting them is the distance. Perhaps if I get a better paying job, I can afford a room in a group house in Queens or Brooklyn as a second place to hang out when I feel like traveling from DC to NY for the weekend. Girls seem so eager to meet me there over DC. DC is a deadzone for me.

I have all but entirely moved away from using online dating as a way to meet girls. Thrre is an ebb and flow to any new trend in pop culture, and online dating is certainly ebbing. It seems that it may have lost a lot of its novelty and most women see it now as tacky, contrived, and a place where weak men of only paper status dwell. Going out and meeting girls is superior I'd say.

You mention still reaping reward from online dating by looking even better - well if you are talking about trying to look like top 10% of looks status, any man will do well in any social platform with looks/style like that. Fact of the matter is, one must evaluate if it's really worth the effort (and money for professional shoots etc.) to try to build an even more attractive online profile in hopes of re-capturing the "golden era" of online pussy paradise.

I still have an account on OKC but I am one of the other graveyards. I hardly ever login except when I get message notifications, and they are usually desperate fatties. Meh

The market is oversaturated and its really easy to set up fake profiles on sites such as POF. Chances are more than not you are probably getting desparates (its possible those desparates dont even look like their porfile). I would not be surprised if you guys cant even set up interest.

Online dating was originally set up to get more people who otherwise didnt like talking or picking up women to do so in the comfort of your own home. It eventually became an area for an easy fuck now because anyone in the market has multiple profiles.

I agree with Ensam. Try Game in public.

Or, and I am not suggesting you use them, SeekingArrangement does a background check. The site itself is strictly for betas only (and is practically legalized prostitution) so dont use them but both men and women have to buy in as an investment to the site. If you are able to find a dating site that does an actual background check in a similar basis use them.

If you think online dating sucks, you're not on the good sites...

For the record, SA does NOT perform background checks.

Quote: (07-21-2016 11:05 PM)Cattle Rustler Wrote:  

If you think online dating sucks, you're not on the good sites...

I fail to see how this by itself adds any value. Care to elaborate?

Since I am back on after an 8 month hiatus, I have noticed the exact same thing. Especially with Happn, which I have always had good success with. Tinder seems much slower now, and pretty boring to use now. I resolved to go back into daygame, and be consistent with it. That is the way I am combating this. Bumble seems to work ok, but I havent spent a lot of time on it. Match works well because you can search for what you want.

Second Cattle Rustler... SA is by far the best dating app for quality/quantity presently.

What's SA?

Like General Stalin, I have pretty much checked out of online dating. The small talk 'hi how r u" and the inevitable ghosting makes it a waste of time. I'm finding that it is me bailing or flaking on dates now. I just don't enjoy them any more.

I think I will try meet up for general socialising.

Quote: (07-21-2016 11:05 PM)Cattle Rustler Wrote:  

For the record, SA does NOT perform background checks.

It was more of an understanding based on many articles written on the subject. I am not a user myself.

https://www.seekingarrangement.com/background-check/

Linked for relevance: thread-21493.html

So the TL;DR on this thread, if you think online dating sucks, you should get into a site dedicated to sugar babying. I haven't read the thread fully, but I imagine the gist is that you have to put on like you're a high roller who's auditioning girlfriends and she's got to pass the casting couch audition.

You can go the other direction and go with the sites that pitches itself as the site for LTRs and hope to swoop a ONS off there. Or you can go to offline game.

None of this disproves OP's point.

When has on-line dating not been absolutely, positively terrible?

Quote: (07-22-2016 08:30 AM)puckerman Wrote:  

When has on-line dating not been absolutely, positively terrible?

I live in the Boston area, and I wouldn't rate my experience with online dating that way. Traditional night game is very difficult around here, the women are cuntish, ratios are bad (if you do an honest assessment of a venue based on "approachable girl" metrics, not just simple girl to guy spread: http://www.rooshv.com/the-approachable-girl-metric), the majority of women you'll encounter day to day as a 30-something guy simply aren't interested, particularly in the suburbs (where I'm stuck for the moment.)

Online is also a grind, but it's a lower energy grind when one is working ~bignum hours a week and just doesn't have an enormous amount of time to spend day or night gaming. Now that I'm in touch regularly with a couple girls I get along well with, I'd frankly rather spend my weekends banging girls I like than getting blown out by one more beeyotch at a Somerville bar.

In the past year I've hooked up with one, singular girl from night game. Meanwhile I've closed with pushing around ten girls from online, including two I ended up seeing regularly, and probably could've banged more if I'd known what I was doing early on. I'd say the quality around here on OKC overall between 25 and 35 has simply been average, though that evaluation comes from a position of experience; some of these girls would be ones the average beta would be throwing himself at to LTR if he could. Mostly "6es", a "7" or two, one solid "8" (wow!) and a couple "5s" (sorry.) College educated white girls pretty much to a one; the youngest was ~26, the oldest 38. I'd say the average age of girls it's worked out with was about 30.

I've had to grind through a lot of go-nowhere meets with serial daters that I've complained about, but after a year I'd rate OKC like a pussy mutual fund...low investment provides a steady low, but consistent return. In a major Northeast city at least, don't think it's unreasonable that a guy from this forum shouldn't be able to grind out one solid new lay every month or two from it without a huge investment.

And it does seem to go through boom and bust cycles, along with seasonal variation. You can get nothing for a couple months, then bang two new girls in a week. Spin the wheel enough and sometimes you just get lucky, and you get a hot girl in front of you who hasn't been laid in a month or two, is dying for some solid male company, and you're the third date she's been on and the previous two were losers. "It Happened To Me"

I'd give it a B- overall

If you do the suit/open shirt pic stuff to distinguish yourself, do you have face shots at all, or just leave it to mystery if someone tries to connect with you?

Btw, I saw a "sugar baby" the other day, I messaged and laughed my ass off --- the girl was probably 5'4" 170, minimum, maybe 180

Sugar baby? That's how pathetic some of these bitches have gotten. How am I gonna take care of you when you can't even take care of yourself? LOL

Quote: (07-22-2016 10:34 AM)XPQ22 Wrote:  

Quote: (07-22-2016 08:30 AM)puckerman Wrote:  

When has on-line dating not been absolutely, positively terrible?

I've had to grind through a lot of go-nowhere meets with serial daters that I've complained about, but after a year I'd rate OKC like a pussy mutual fund...low investment provides a steady low, but consistent return. In a major Northeast city at least, don't think it's unreasonable that a guy from this forum shouldn't be able to grind out one solid new lay every month or two from it without a huge investment.

I agree with this. I used to be on OKCupid, and after a recent break up I plan to go back because my return on investment, though not overwhelming, was still pretty good. Honestly, I don't see a great difference between the effort required for online sites and the effort required to go to a mall and try to 'cold-introduce' myself to women all afternoon, or hang out at a bar all night. I'm not a game denialist by any means, and I know day game and night game work well for a lot of guys, but based on my lifestyle and desire not to invest too too much time in getting pussy, online is a good fit for me. When there's some downtime at work I would log on, look around for anything interesting, and if so shoot off a quick message (more or less boilerplate stuff for all the girls- jokes, a little cockiness etc.)

Yes, there are serial daters, a bunch of fatties, dates that didn't turn out so great (I had a girl ditch me with a dinner check once ), but all that happens in the real world too. Cities in the Northeast are getting worse and worse every year, and I see online dating at least as a low-effort way to hedge my bets, like adding bonds to a portfolio.

I can't believe anyone still "does" online dating. It's a fucking joke. Why spent any time on something with such a shit ROI? Especially when there's opportunity in the real world, where showing up doesn't automatically lower your value for simply participating?

A few years ago okcupid was very good for meeting women. I could message a hundred girls in one week, maybe 10 respond and a couple of them would follow through and meet up and show up and some of them would bang. Good shit.

Now, in 2016, if I message a hundred girls in a week, and 10 of them respond, it will turn out that all ten are running some sort of scam. Either they want me to buy into one of their online cam shows, or they are not actually in the same city as me but are unsatisfied with the dating pool in Zainesville, Ohio(or wherever) or some of them will just hit me up for money, they have not met me yet much less started dating me, but they are having trouble making rent so are asking me for money(wtf).

From what I understand, a woman will make an account on okcupid in 2016 and will get blitzed wtih ove 100 messages the first day and just delete her account because it is just too much to handle.

As for what to do instead with your online gaming? Try meetup.com

whatever you are into, maybe you are a hipster artist, join the art gallery club. There are thousands of members that go to art galleries, game the women there.

If you like sports, try different things like paintball, or volleyball, or hiking, whatever.

Do day game. I hate night game, so I don't do it. SA game, it's ok I guess, it may be a little late now, the girls I met off of that last year who said they are OK with no allowance over the message system will meet up and say they really want a cash allowance in person. I don't know what to tell you there, it may depend on your area.

I'm having more success than ever. Great pics and a really well-written profile that is unique to you makes you stand out over 99% of the other guys there. At least that's what girls tell me.

Donny, what city are you in? If it's New York City, then yeah, online game works great because of the favorable ratios and most of the girls are there to ride the carousel for all it's worth.