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Dating apps - Which apps attract what populations?
I'm finally ready to sacrifice my self esteem and faith in humanity at the altar of dating apps. My question for those of you with more experience with them is this - do different apps attract noticeably different pools of users? What have you noticed comparing the populations on different apps? Which wound up working best for you, if any of them did?
Any that had particular features that bothered you? I've been using Hinge for like a day and already discovered they have a separate queue for your best matches that they demand a premium currency to message :/
I don't know what kind of people is most common on Tinder in my area. There were all kinds of people there. Largely the same composition as the people I see when I leave the house. Young people tend to have more eroticized profiles but that doesn't mean they're there just for sex. Every once in a while you'll see dudes looking for dudes, swingers, women looking for sugar daddies, actual prostitutes, and trans women here and there. I chatted with a trans woman once but it didn't go anywhere. Some women advertise "relationship only" which is weird because how the hell will I know that I want a relationship with you?. It's way too much pressure for a first date.
And if someone says on their profile that they're annoying, difficult, or "a bitch", well, in most cases they're telling you the truth. So maybe skip this one.
I used WooPlus once, it's an app for Plus Size people. But there was almost no one there and it was easier to just look for them on Tinder.
Highly intelligent secure women are the best because they know what they want, they can take a joke, and are more likely to appreciate my dating "skill set". So I did read the profiles.
It is always difficult to find someone, you cast a wide net, and a lot of times it doesn't work out. That was true before Tinder as well. But I did find some wonderful women there.
I got lots of dates on Tinder in pre-pandemic years, between my 35 and 38 years of age.
It helps that I'm very flexible with my preferences, being a woman under 45 that was geographically accessible was enough for me. They could be thin or overweight and of any ethnicity. If the conversation was good, I'd meet them.
I was never looking for just sex, but that did happen. It shouldn't surprise anyone, but most women really like sex and some kinda put me in the spot. I wish I had the confidence to say no more times, it's weird when a man refuses sex but it's an option that we have. I much rather wait to get to know a woman before we become intimate.
I met my previous girlfriend on Tinder, we were together for 2 years on and off. It was a tumultuous and passionate relationship. It took a long time for me to get over her.
I also met my current life partner on Tinder. We live together and she's pregnant with my child. I love her very much.
I assume that's as opposed to casual sex. If you're not looking for a relationship, they're telling you not to waste time on them. Unless your experience is different from mine, they're not looking to be in a relationship and move in together right from the first date.
I would configure my profile (usually it's a setting) to say the same.
That is a valuable observation. My view is that forcing a binary and premature choice might fail to account for a sudden change in perspective, as well as discourage potential partners. Most people are not firmly in the "casual sex" vs "relationship" camp. They are just sampling, meeting different people, and seeing what works. I may think I just want casual sex, but then I meet a wonderful person and change my mind completely. And I may think I want a relationship right now, but really need a brief encounter.
There are no guarantees either way, and I find it best to keep this open. In the profile, at least. Things can and often do get much clearer in conversation. A little mystery is good for romance.
I say what I say from a male perspective however. I have little knowledge on the kinds of absurd responses women get, including but not limited to dick pics. So it is quite possible that, for a woman, declaring themselves as "relationship only" would drive away enough abuse to justify potentially driving away some desirable partners as well.
Yeah same, I'm indeed assuming it is phrased that way because of that. If we turn out to want casual sex after all during the date, yeah why not. I just assume it's to avoid initial requests for such meetups
Congrats on the success!
I am probably a bit pickier than you were - I was prompted to ask this question because both of the apps I've tried this far seem to be dominated by a specific archetype and it's frustrating to swipe left through so many very similar profiles in a row.
Bumble is 40-60% dominated by people I would describe as 'normal in a bad way' you know what I'm just going to copy/paste my paragraph from another comment - profiles I could mistake for the same person - works for a tech firm, HR or nursing, hobbies are Gym/Yoga, Dogs, Wine, Travel, Clubs/Bars. Practically nothing on their profile, five nearly identical selfies, maybe a nod to reality television or true crime.
Hinge, meanwhile, has populated my standard feed 80-90% (I'm not kidding with these percentages) with people who are noticeably overweight, to put it delicately. I'm no supermodel and I don't mind some curves, especially given that the US isn't exactly the healthiest country, but the ratio makes me think this is either something the algorithm is doing for some reason or something distinct about the type of person using hinge.
The hinge algorithm does seem to be able to find people that have things is common with me, if only to hide them behind its semi-paywall - looking at the 'standouts' feed suddenly you have a bunch of average-weight people that share a bunch of my interests. I don't necessarily mind that, and there's a good chance I'll toss them $30 to use that feed.
I'm just wondering if there's some place where other nerds who take care of themselves are congregating that I should be using. I'll probably delete bumble after forwarding my contact info to the one match I found who was interesting and check out tinder or another smaller niche app, see what kind of people are on those.
You should give normal "boring" people a shot. They are often deeper and more interesting than it seems.
And compatibility is way more complex than "we like the same stuff". Someone that on paper is wrong for you can actually be a great match.
I'm not gonna lie, fat chicks are awesome. But I get it, you can't just push a button to change who you find attractive.
That's been suggested to me many times and I'm more than willing to entertain the idea that the world is secretly full of interesting people, but unfortunately every 'normal' person I've gotten to know on the bet of having hidden depths was in fact exactly as they appeared.
I know that comes across as incredibly stuck up, and I'm gonna keep trying, but at this point I'm not really holding out hope and suspect that all the books and movies were in fact just wrong and most people that seem shallow actually are.
Look, I don't think you're stuck up, but would I be wrong to assume that you're fairly young?
It is possible that the criteria that you established for what makes an ideal partner are not conducive to romance (or whatever it is that you seek)?
Would you be able to describe your ideal mate?
Maybe rethink what those criteria really are, how did you arrive at them, and whether or not they are aligned with reality.
And good luck :)
Yep, post college but still fairly young. I have mellowed out a bit over time and will probably continue to, although I don't think this particular point of dissatisfaction is going to disappear.
I'm pretty sure my interpersonal standards were poisoned by growing up loving so many books and tv shows - I'm looking around for main characters but basically nobody in real life is going to live their daily life like that. Every line in a book is carefully curated by an author to be engaging or meaningful in some way and that's just not how real life is.
Not to go full cringe but there was a moment in the most recent Jojo's season where a character is describing why he loves the female lead and I thought 'That! That's what I'm looking for!" and then "ah shit, I'm fucked aren't I" because expecting Joestar Levels Of Drive from real people is an incredibly high bar.
In short, I'm looking for drive, self-awareness, agency - someone with a strong idea of who they are, what they want from the world and how they plan to get it. Which I'm finding is incredibly rare.
That said, it's also stupid to think there's only one type of person you'll fit with. Even very picky people like me probably have at least a handful of Person Archetypes they could have productive, stable, happy relationships with - it's been suggested by people that know me and I don't necessarily dispute that I might be perfectly content being in a relationship where I'm the more 'active' partner to someone who grounds, supports and balances me out.
I'm going to try out lots of different types and see what sticks - people with much more experience than me tell me life is more often unpredictable than not.
IME, this is something that takes most people years to develop. It's not common in anyone under 30, especially not in a way that's healthy and not just manic.
I think there's quite a big spectrum between dull and fascinating. How fascinating do you need for a real connection with another human being?
I personally believe (based on experience) that every single normal person not only has great depths, they are also incredibly weird. Scratch a normie and just under the surface is an oddball. (Yes, I include myself. ) It's sort of the Errol Morris view of the world - just keep that camera rolling, your subject will soon reveal their eccentricities, and they will be vast.
Welp I sure hope you're right. I'm going to digging into people because the alternative is giving up and becoming a social hermit.
I’m pretty sure relationship only means that they aren’t there for a hookup, not that they expect an eternal companion at first sight.
WooPlus sounds like a fictional dating app from Bojack Horseman.
Congrats on meeting your partner!
I know you’re probably kidding, but tons of (regular) people meet on dating apps nowadays. My SO and I met that way and I have tons of friends who met their girlfriends/boyfriends/whateverfriends on there. It doesn’t have the same stigma it used to, mostly because a whole generation has grown up with them now and it’s just no big deal.
I think the biggest determining factor in which one you end up using is what are other people in your area using? Near me, it was OKCupid so that’s what I started with.
I think what is used locally is a good suggestion. I've never used them, but I have a good friend who met her now husband on plenty of fish. They mentioned it was more of a serious experience compared to apps like Tinder. I suppose it depends on what kind of dating you're looking for.
ooh, that's a good thing to think about. I have no idea how I'd figure out which apps are most popular by region but definitely something I'll look into.
As for the first bit, yeah I'm joking around a bit. I do think there's a lot wrong with dating apps as a medium and their status as by far the most common method today for coupling up (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yY7JftQf9WE), but I've been on them for a couple days and I'd say my faith in humanity has seen only modest erosion. Is that something I'd trade for a much wider net of potential partners and a robot matchmaker, plus some microtransactions? Yeah, that sounds pretty good.
Dating apps are pretty consolidated. Match Group owns Tinder, Match, Meetic (??), OkCupid, Hinge, Plenty of Fish, and more. Match Group was sued by the FTC for allegedly using fake accounts to bait users into paying for premium.
Bumble is an independent competitor, and has a gimmick that requires women to start a match conversation, but in my experience that only resulted in every match saying "hey" and then nothing else.
That's what blows my mind. Tinder was plastered with If you open with "hey" I'm blocking you. Yet every single bumble match I got started with nothing but "hey"
That's because on most dating apps, it's a women's market. As an example, Tinder is between 70% to 80% male.
Yeah, it's all a numbers game unfortunately.
I've tried both Bumble and Hinge - the noticeable difference in who I saw on the two was what made me think to wonder if other apps also had significantly different populations.
I will say Hinge has been a better experience than bumble. The UI and profile layouts are a significant step up, and their algorithm does seem to be able to figure out what profiles I'm likely to be interested in - even if it then proceeds to hide them behind a semi-paywall and fill the normal feed almost entirely with low-effort accounts.
Yep. Hinge is also my favorite. The features are decent, the paywall isn't too obnoxious and the userbase seems higher effort. I also get way more interaction on Hinge for some reason. I'm just another average guy on a dating app in a big city so the usual experience is pretty sad, but Hinge works well for me.
When Tinder was new-ish, before dating apps became normalized, I loved it. I mean, there was a good long period where it was kinda cringy to be on a dating app? Regular folk were ashamed to admit they were on it, so the early adopters were the folk who were adventurous enough to not mind the shame. I met a lot of quirky interesting weirdos?
But, as the years passed, and it became more and more normal to have a Tinder account, I found that the app became overwhelmed with, well... normal folks. Which is great if you're normal, too? But... I found it so much harder to find "my people", and I quickly stopped bothering.
I found my current partner on OkCupid? I took a bit of a different approach: I wrote out a long, in depth, revealing profile that did its best to capture my essence. I focused on all sorts of hyperspecific niches. Then, I moved across the country, and just... Waited? My hunch was that if the right person read my profile, they'd feel compelled to message, because I'd given readers so much fodder for conversation. I'd put in the effort to distinguish myself from all the other bland, repetitive profiles. And it worked! I got a similarly in-depth message, we chatted like crazy over all our compatibilities, and we've been together ever since.
I’ve heard that the different groups various apps tend to attract will vary, even city to city.
I have just recently (within the last 2 weeks) signed back up for dating apps after a self-enforced period of celibacy. This is the first time that I'm dating as an out trans woman, and it's a very different experience from The Before Time. I think a huge amount of that is the gender upgrade, but there's a part that is also my being almost 4 years older than the last time I was using dating apps.
I have found that Hinge tends to skew a lot younger (and seems to ignore my age preference settings), and it feels like there are fewer people using it than other apps. I actually met my previous long-term partner on Hinge back when it was newish, and so I think of it quite fondly. But I have found that I don't get many matches, but that's probably because I've become quite fussy about who I will date.
I signed up to Grindr because I had heard that there are a few trans women on there, and while I'm open to dating cis women as well, there is comfort in chatting to someone who properly gets it. Anyway, I've chatted to three trans girls with varying degrees of depth, met some really love guys platonically, and seen more dick pics in two weeks than I thought possible. It's very geared towards hookups, which I'm not really about: I prefer to have a connection with someone before getting intimate. That said, I'm keeping the app around for a bit, as the potential for making new friends seems pretty good, and I'm off to a few festivals in the summer and it definitely works better for meeting people who are in your immediate area than anything else!
Tinder is the biggest, and probably still the best. I honestly quite like that you can hook up your Spotify to your profile. I'm far beyond the age where I'll judge someone for their musical tastes, but having genres and bands in common gives you more to talk about initially. I've met up with two people so far, and have two more dates lined up this week, and a third next week, so it's definitely working the best for me. There seems to be a really broad variety of people on Tinder, and I've already chatted to and met up with some really cool women. I have found it far easier to make conversation with the people I've matched with on Tinder than anywhere else. I don't know if that's just a numbers game or if it's the people I'm matching with, but it's a stark difference from the last time I was using the app.
In general, I would recommend having good boundaries with yourself about what your red flags in others are. I don't bother trying to match with anyone who has no or minimal bio on the profile. I have decided on an age range that I am comfortable dating within, and won't entertain prospects beyond it. "Down to earth" appears to be code for "boring," so that's become a bit of an indicator for swiping left, based on the rest of the profile. I'm not a huge fan of house pets (or rather, pet hair: I love animals, even if my immune system doesn't), so they're generally a no, dependent on the size, breed, and number. I'm willing to match with anyone who is poly, and more cautious about mono, though it's not an outright no. I'm less fussed about looks than I used to be, but if your photos are all filtered to fuck, that's another no. Snapchat or IG handle in your bio? Absolutely not. In the main I am matching with people who have more than 2-3 photos in their profile (Hinge is good for this), and a bio that you have to click into to read the whole thing. I've been figuring this all out on the fly, and I guarantee you that I will break almost every one of these rules within a week :)
Good response, thanks for typing all that out. Tinder is next on my list to try, in large part due to it's perception of having a large and diverse userbase. Good luck!
Same. Met my wife about 6 years ago.
I think it was the only site that sold itself as the 'relationship' dating site with deep compatibility etc.
These days I think most of the major sites offer similar services.
I had a pretty good experience on Taimi, but that app is specifically for LGBTQ+ people so please be aware and respectful of that. I feel like it was a lot easier to find fellow nerdy gamers on there, vs on Tinder where the default personality type I would encounter was "Beer". I don't drink, I don't do the outdoors, and the only sport I care about is Jelle's Marble Runs so I'm really out of my element on tinder. On Taimi I found a girl I can gush over Mighty Nein with.
Huh... definitely one to take note of.
I cannot believe how frequently I look at bios and my first thought is 'wine is not an interest,'I know there are not this many sommeliers in my area
I'll be disappointed if that's as common on Tinder as I've found it to be on Bumble.
Bumble was a very odd experience. I did get dates on there but the people were very odd in personality.
Plenty of fish was plenty of flops for me. Not even a single bite.
I hear good things about hinge but haven't used it personally.
Tinder honestly got me to meet tons of people. Lots of hookups and eventually met my girlfriend of over three years and who I want to spend the rest of my life with. That being said, I met some wild motherfuckers too.
I have a friend who called it Plenty of Felons, lol.
Bumble for me has been no joke 40-60% profiles I could mistake for the same person - works for a tech firm, HR or nursing, hobbies are Gym/Yoga, Dogs, Wine, Travel, Clubs/Bars. Practically nothing on their profile, maybe a nod to reality television or true crime. Not the kind of person I'm looking for.
Hinge has a much better UI and I like its profile system a lot better. It's algorithm seems to know who I'd be interested in, even if it uses that knowledge to lock them behind a pseudo-paywall.
Probably going to ditch bumble - maybe I'll give tinder a shot and see if it's got as broad a population here.
My post pandemic experience with the dating apps was not good.
In the last few years especially it felt like much of the user base was a lot more focused around hookups than more serious dating, and that's across Tinder, Bumble OkC, Hinge CoffeeMeetsBagel, etc. (bare in mind most of these are owned by the same company Match Group)
They are (for the most part) pretty predatory. But they do work for people. What they do well is getting people talking to each other who probably never mind would otherwise.
Personally, I had mixed results. I met my ex on Tinder in 2016 and when I got frustrated with my return to the apps after we broke up I took a break, eventually ended up posting on r4r (to spite someone I didn't know claiming they met their boyfriend there) where I met my current girlfriend.
Honestly though. My advice for any single pringle is get out there, get a new and cool hobby, work on yourself and join a social for your new and cool hobby. You'll have a much better experience and learn something new rather than swiping.
I'm a dating app/site veteran. My experience on them has gotten shittier over time, and I don't think that it's just due to older people getting worse/less matches (I do get one almost every time I like someone, which isn't often at all these days). Enshittification has simply progressed further along with Match group getting their hands on services that were too useful for their liking. Such as OKC.
I have profiles on Tinder and OKC but can barely be bothered to open either app once a week, so it might be time for me to take a break. Bumble would have been interesting to try, as I'm definitely not shy to send the first message. But it turns out there's a 24 hour window to do so, lest the match expire. I'm a busy person working in a highly competitive creative profession. I can't possibly make myself a slave to a dating app like that. I sign in when I have time to focus on it, and this is definitely not every day. Therefore no Bumble for me.
OKC used to be superb. The questionnaire could actually be used intelligently to find really compatible people, provided that you knew yourself well and what you were looking for and why. A 99% match happened once in a blue moon, but when it did, it was the real deal. Nowadays the match rates have been sabotaged and you can't browse people freely based on the match percentage, by area, like you could before. I get high match rates with people who have several dealbreakers that I labelled very important in the questionnaire. The number doesn't mean anything anymore.
Hinge I have yet to try. Reason being that it's so overtly structured. Rather than free form text, you answer prompts, which sets a particular tone - one that I don't much care for, for myself. Deliberately going against it in my answers is also something that doesn't communicate who I really am. It just seems to be made for people who are very different from me.
My best relationship to date was with someone I met on one of the earliest dating sites, before the era of smartphones. I think it was technically possible to include some photos in your profile, but users had to pay to see them and most people didn't have any anyway. You would indicate your age, sex, location and whether you wanted to meet men, women or both. Then, you wrote free form text, any length you wanted. This really set users apart from each other. The top two people I met were both outstandingly witty, creative, intelligent and considerate men. I'm still good friends with both now, about 20 years later.
I realise that dating apps have evolved into their current form to accommodate more users. Not everyone is a literary genius, and everyone deserves to have a good experience on the apps. But the more the apps cater to those people who don't know what to say without the app doing half the work, the harder it becomes for someone like me to recognise the rare individual who would ace a carte blanche. That's who I'm looking for. And of course, on top of that, some traits and habits that go well together with mine.
I realise this rambling post did little to answer your questions, but hopefully there's something in there to make use of. Good luck!
Given the enshittification of most apps, I would guess that it might help to try out some new, niche dating apps. The algorithm might be beneficial to you because the app is trying to please the early adopters and get good word of mouth, and maybe there are fewer scammers and Only Fan creators on there. Whenever I am on Instagram I get dating app ads, so maybe that's one place to find new ones (I would click on the ads and send the info to my single girlfriends, which begat more ads). One was called Date My Age, another one was called Tawkify. Maybe someone here knows of some new or lesser known dating apps to suggest.
very good username o7
Bro they all suck nowadays I wouldn’t even bother. When dating apps were newer, they weren’t bad. Now they all want money to even show your profile or do the most basic of things. Way too many fake profiles, catfishers, and just scum. The success rate is probably like 2%. Waste of time.