Anyone else fed up of dating apps?

Bullet To The Head? wrote: »

Maybe you shouldn't have messed the guy around and he wouldn't have been annoyed?

Whoosh.

He can get annoyed all he wants, but what he can't do if he wants a normal woman in his life is start texting insults and putdowns the second something doesn't go to his plan. No matter if he's being messed around or if the other person is genuine with their reasons. That's just a fact. No skin off my nose that he got so annoyed that he revealed himself to be a Not-So-Secret Psycho type, in fact that development proved my instinct about him was right on the money, when I started getting uneasy about his obsessive texts midweek. But that kinda behaviour will hurt him and his chances of a healthy relationship more than it will any woman he tries to pursue.

I did cancel on the morning of the day we were supposed to meet, but I never stood him (or anyone, ever) up. I texted him to say it's not a good idea, and that I'm in a bad place in life just at that time (i.e. "It's not you, it's me"), because I certainly didn't need the consequences of telling him the truth, that I have started getting spooky vibes from him, and that is not a frame of mind to be meeting someone on. I needn't have bothered, because he went balistic anyway. In hindsight, I actually feel sorry for the guy. I hope he learns to manage himself with time.

ETA: Thank you, lainey. That's it.

Ficheall wrote: »

I must start using that on ladies whose entire bio is "Ask me" or any variant thereof.

It's funny how so many men don't seem to realise this isn't a gendered thing. Men seem to think women on apps are princesses who expect men to do all the work. Do you not realise that lots of men do exactly the same thing?

I will ****ing stitch myself shut before attempting online dating again. We all deserve better.

lainey_d_123 wrote: »

Could not disagree more re multi dating.

This 'stay cool and detached and date around' approach is IMO largely why so many people are incapable of forming proper bonds and starting real relationships these days. You're supposed to get a bit carried away, not be cold and clinical and making sure you have a back-up plan. How can you give anything a proper chance when your attention is so divided?

In an ideal world you wouldn't need to be cool and detatched but things have changed with the rise of OD. Problem is its the getting carried away that leads to a bad place if the other person is not on the same page which certainly does happen. The way it works is you wait until the 3rd/4th date when you know interest is both ways.. then you start to give it a real chance.

Greyfox wrote: »

In an ideal world you wouldn't need to be cool and detatched but things have changed with the rise of OD. Problem is its the getting carried away that leads to a bad place if the other person is not on the same page which certainly does happen. The way it works is you wait until the 3rd/4th date when you know interest is both ways.. then you start to give it a real chance.

Yeah agree with this. It's a serious "occupational hazard" to get invested in anyone too early when you're using the apps, people have so much choice and are prone to all sorts of crappy behaviours that can leave you quite hurt and damaged if you're not careful. I know a guy who would build a "dating pipeline" and would add and delete different girls to his instagram every other week based on who he was dating and how he felt about them.

I hate the idea of seeing more than one guy but I've gotten burned in the past so if I was online dating again, I'd definitely be casting the net and not taking anyone too seriously until I had established it was a mutual interest and they were investing in me and wanted the same things.

I am, oh yes I am....

Wibbs wrote: »

Forget your interests, ask them what their interests are. Nobody lost money betting against people's fave subject being them. So that'll will take up a huge amount of the slack in any convo. Listen to what they say, goes for women, men, kids, dogs and cats, and murderous parrots. People are so unused to being actually listened to. You'll stand out if you demonstrate that you've only one mouth, but two ears.

The above is really excellent advice from Wibbs. If anyone is looking for a way to set yourself apart from the crowd, without having to spend a lot of money on nice clothes, surgery, round the world trips and so on, this is how to do it. I have heard probably hundreds of interactions between men and women over the years and I would say 90 percent of the time the man either starts trying to demonstrate to her what a great catch he is, or starts immediately cracking jokes in order to show that he's a funny guy, or goes on about some generic thing they have in common "how long have you been here?/how are you finding the course?" etc. Now people obviously get together, so to some degree the above can work of course, maybe other factors come into play, his looks, his confidence, the way he speaks, what they have superficially in common. However, I think people who genuinely take an interest in other people's passions and what makes them tick are genuinely quite rare, as Wibbs says, people are simply not used to being listened to. And yes, nearly everyone's favourite subject is themselves, especially after they develop some comfort around you. It tends to honestly surprise quite a lot of ladies if you can demonstrate this ability.

Now of course this is by no means a 100 percent cast-iron means of seduction either, but I will maintain if you can do it successfully, you will to a large degree stand out from the crowd and women will truly enjoy talking to you. Once you have this sorted then it's a clear advantage and you never know what can happen after that.

To come back to the actual thread, I am also starting to get sick of the apps, especially Tinder. Now I am usually fairly confident, but sometimes interacting online can really test this confidence.

For a start, I'm not attractive enough to clean up through looks alone. As hinted at above I need other strings to my bow. In the past I have been lucky enough that some very attractive girls were into me for whatever reason, but it almost certainly wasn't on just looks alone. It was something else that I brought to the table in real life. So as we all know, if you are not in the top 20 percent of guys looks wise, maybe even higher (10 percent?) you are immediately at a disadvantage.

Nevertheless, as others have said, in this day and age you kind of have to use online dating to some degree, real life is better, but not everyone has the gift of the gab to talk to complete strangers, nor a huge social circle where you're meeting different people all the time. Work can bring you into contact with a lot of people, but there are other drawbacks there which I don't need to go into as I'm sure everyone is aware of them.

So online dating is a big part of our single lives in 2019. Now I don't get many matches as explained above. However, I do get maybe a couple a week or something like this. Now many are just duds, they aren't even worth the time trying to get to know. Nevertheless, every so often you can start speaking to someone that actually seems genuinely interesting. Your hopes are raised and then completely randomly you are just blocked and you have no idea why, presumably something you said, but not necessarily either. This has even happened after two dates I have been on, both times I thought they went reasonably well, not absolutely fantastic or anything, but I was definitely thinking that a second one could occur. So to be just "ghosted" like this, especially when you have met the person in real life, is hard to take, you think they could at least make up some excuse or something. If you haven't met them, well I do have to concur with those that say that randomers online don't owe you anything. Maybe you think that you have a nice connection built up and in an ideal world they would tell you why you are being removed, but ultimately they owe you nothing and whereas it's disappointing, you can hardly blame them too much.

The online world is a byproduct of our era of course and it does enable people's behaviour to be worse as a general rule. Whether it's people not "reading" your messages and then ignoring you or "unfriending" you for no apparent reason, these can all hurt, you would always like to think that you deserve some justification for doing this, but online interactions makes it just that little bit easier to be rude and dismissive of people. We would like to think we all deserve an explanation, but maybe in their heads they think you don't and that given there are so many people in this world anyway, what does it matter if you are basically spurned for no reason? There's always someone round the corner to replace you. So yeah, dating apps are not great, but they are just an unfortunate consequence of how civilisation has gone, it's so easy to theoretically meet people now, but that means others are just as easily disposed of.

Wibbs wrote: »

It's a good rule of thumb that anyone using a term like Sapiophile or self describing themselves as highly intelligent, looking for same is almost certainly thicker than bottled pig poo.

what gets me is the women who have very ambitious on their profile yet the are 30 + unemployed and have never had a job or worked in their life, how can that be very ambitious?

depends what your ambition is, i suppose. Maybe they're being self deprecating, they had a list of things they were looking for in a guy and someone said 'you're being very ambitious there, love...'

I like a sense of humour in a woman.

Purple Mountain wrote: »

What even is a sapiophile?

A pseudo intellectual.

Homelander wrote: »

It can be a funny game. I once had a woman message me in the first instance, and we had great conversations about movies, TV shows, general life interests/values, and all the rest. It was actually one particular obscure movie that featured in both our profiles that started it, I think. Then, out of nowhere, she comes out with "Sorry though, I find your tattoos really degrading, I couldn't imagine explaining to my daughter why her father hates women"!

I mean, grand, fine, you're perfectly entitled to either dislike tattoos, or tattoos that you feel are offensive, whatever, you know, free world and that initial perception doesn't bother me at all. But why in the name of god would you message me first, engage in conversation, and THEN come out with that?

I would say you had a lucky escape.

kiki_the_third wrote: »

So for those who are sick of the apps, what are the other options?

Would you go to a speed dating event? Must we all join hiking MeetUps?

Yes. The hiking meetup is your only job really. Guaranteed success. I'm not a bit biased on this either :D:D

Also don't think a non-hiking meetup that meets in the local pub down the road of a Thursday will do. It won't. It will end in tears