For Bumble does the “You’re amazing. So is the person waiting to meet you” or is it just a “you haven’t used the app in a hour” bait notification?
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OrcaAlso known as EspressosaurusWrexRegistered Userregular
One of the messages means you have someone in your beeline. There's a different one that lets them use random reinforcement on you and is meaningless. I don't recall which is which.
So I just created a Bumble profile since that seemed like the easiest one to start on as a man that hasn’t dated in 5 years. I’ll probably try Hinge at some point since I’ve heard good things, but starting out I like the idea of not being the one that has to make the first move.
Honestly bud, my experience with Bumble has been that your match's idea of the first move is 'Hi'. Sometimes you'll get a 'Hey'.
It turns out that women also are lazy and bad at starting conversations. It's so weird to me - I get that everyone is throwing messages out nonstop, but at least throw out something. Though there is the advantage that it's relatively easy to look good in comparison to like 50% of people.
(I never actually received that many "Hi" messages, more.. threesome requests, but probably a fairly special case)
I haven't been on Bumble long, but I found that if you use specific prompts (aka ask a question or pose a specific challenge in your bio), you don't get that many Heys and Hi's. I've got around 40 openers from girls and it looks like only 4 or so are just variants of Hi (though there about 11 variants of How's your day/weekend/week going?)
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OrcaAlso known as EspressosaurusWrexRegistered Userregular
I’ve been on a ski trip for 3 days and gotten 10 matches. More typical for me is maybe 2-3 in a week. I live in a major metro area. Either Bumble is giving me a higher ranking temporarily while I’m at a different location, or my profile is not well optimized for where I live.
All the locals in Skiville have already swiped one way or the other on each other, so when new blood (you) drops in, everybody immediately is looking at your profile. Meanwhile back home in Metropolis, there are oodles of people that the locals haven't seen yet, plus new visitors all the time, so the odds that anyone will even see your profile are much lower.
Or at least, this is my thoughts. I had a similar experience recently when I opened a quarter-assed Tinder profile and immediately got several matches who were interested enough to chat, whereas my reasonably well-executed Bumble profile hasn't seen any matches in months.
Its also the case that your popularity score (at least for Tinder) is location bound. So, if you leave your hometown (where your score might have settled lowered after time) and go to a different market, you'll get the "new profile boost" where your score will be relatively high and thus shown to more people first as Tinder assesses your popularity in the new area.
I've gotten back home and although not at the ridiculous rate I had back at SkiTown, the number of people swiping on me is still higher than the old normal (probably 6 since I got back 3 days ago?). And the last two are lookers. I don't really want to pursue anybody new at this point, so it's all wasted, but...huh. I suspect Bumble is not limiting by location, and that time in SkiTown may have raised my relative rank. Or they're just dicking around with things since I haven't been swiping much lately due to wanting to see if I can cultivate the current dates into a real relationship.
Obnote: I just found out you can change your interest to the same sex without penalty. Been interesting to see the competition. Some good looking dudes, and some good profiles, but for the most part not the two together, at least in my nominal age range. Interesting bit of competitive research, though depressing when I compare myself to those guys that are just goddamn good looking.
edit: third possibility: people are home and bored due to WFH/office shutdowns thanks to COVID-19.
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OrcaAlso known as EspressosaurusWrexRegistered Userregular
News on the street is that Bumble is more heavily monetizing their service: you're limited in the number of swipes you get per day in the free tier (apparently like Tinder?) with those who are subscribers still (for the moment) getting unlimited swipes. Swipes reset at midnight per a Bumble rep. Apparently people in your beeline will still show up, though it's not clear to me if people in your beeline will show up when you have run out of swipes per day.
News on the street is that Bumble is more heavily monetizing their service: you're limited in the number of swipes you get per day in the free tier (apparently like Tinder?) with those who are subscribers still (for the moment) getting unlimited swipes. Swipes reset at midnight per a Bumble rep. Apparently people in your beeline will still show up, though it's not clear to me if people in your beeline will show up when you have run out of swipes per day.
Not sure where this is coming from, but I couldn't google anything up. Tinder does and has always limited the number of right swipes that free accounts get. Bumble doesn't, but more because their method where women have to message first cuts a large chunk of the problem that Tinder limits right swipes for (that men will typically right swipe everyone and then spam any matches).
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OrcaAlso known as EspressosaurusWrexRegistered Userregular
News on the street is that Bumble is more heavily monetizing their service: you're limited in the number of swipes you get per day in the free tier (apparently like Tinder?) with those who are subscribers still (for the moment) getting unlimited swipes. Swipes reset at midnight per a Bumble rep. Apparently people in your beeline will still show up, though it's not clear to me if people in your beeline will show up when you have run out of swipes per day.
Not sure where this is coming from, but I couldn't google anything up. Tinder does and has always limited the number of right swipes that free accounts get. Bumble doesn't, but more because their method where women have to message first cuts a large chunk of the problem that Tinder limits right swipes for (that men will typically right swipe everyone and then spam any matches).
It's coming from the r/Bumble subreddit. I'm a subscriber as well as not in swipe mode right now so I haven't seen it. The behavior was acknowledged as by design by one of the official accounts. Seems like it's something like 20 swipes per day, resetting at midnight. They may be rolling it out piecemeal...I don't know.
20? That seems awfully aggressive. I'm pretty sure Tinder is 100 or so. It has been ages since I checked, but if I wasn't already off the platform, 20 swipes per day wouldn't drive me towards finding my credit card.
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
Ah, I see. If Bumble's method is anything like Tinder, then it isn't a set maximum number of swipes for everyone. Tinder is only 100 swipes if you're female or have a high desirability score. For most guys it is somewhere around 25-50, bottoming out for people that swipe right indiscriminately (aka on everyone after spending very little time looking at a profile).
News on the street is that Bumble is more heavily monetizing their service: you're limited in the number of swipes you get per day in the free tier (apparently like Tinder?) with those who are subscribers still (for the moment) getting unlimited swipes. Swipes reset at midnight per a Bumble rep. Apparently people in your beeline will still show up, though it's not clear to me if people in your beeline will show up when you have run out of swipes per day.
Not sure where this is coming from, but I couldn't google anything up. Tinder does and has always limited the number of right swipes that free accounts get. Bumble doesn't, but more because their method where women have to message first cuts a large chunk of the problem that Tinder limits right swipes for (that men will typically right swipe everyone and then spam any matches).
It's coming from the r/Bumble subreddit. I'm a subscriber as well as not in swipe mode right now so I haven't seen it. The behavior was acknowledged as by design by one of the official accounts. Seems like it's something like 20 swipes per day, resetting at midnight. They may be rolling it out piecemeal...I don't know.
Is there any mention of this appearing as a message similar to the loosen your filters one? Because I’ve gotten that message already, then not adjusted anything, and the next day several more meeting my filters were available. It was weird. Actually signed up for Tinder thinking that it must just be used more in my area as a result.
That said, had my first date since my divorce last night with someone I matched with. We had been talking pretty constantly since Tuesday and met at a bar for after work drinks and ended up just sitting there talking and sharing loaded nachos for 5 hours. I’d say it went pretty well!
I'm starting to feel like the level of interest someone I match with has towards me is directly proportional to their distance from me. Women who live two hours away or more are down to chat or have me come see them, but whenever I match with someone who lives close by I get radio silence.
Ah, I see. If Bumble's method is anything like Tinder, then it isn't a set maximum number of swipes for everyone. Tinder is only 100 swipes if you're female or have a high desirability score. For most guys it is somewhere around 25-50, bottoming out for people that swipe right indiscriminately (aka on everyone after spending very little time looking at a profile).
I definitely don't have a high desirability score and my cap was over 50, maybe 100'ish. Now, this also becomes a bit harder to judge once you 'catch up' to the number of available members in the area. It doesn't matter if the cap is 50 or 100 if only 40 people show up in the list, even after expanding age and distance settings.
Of course, as noted, I've also deleted both Tinder and Bumble for having almost zero value in actually connecting me with people. Facebook dating has zero'd out and doesn't seem to have many new people showing up, so I've decided to try Hinge out. OKCupid seems to remain a bit meh as well, but having dabbled in 5 platforms recently, it has been interesting to see where the obvious business model chokepoints come into play. Hinge's 'likes' per day is aggressively low, that I can legit imagine being down around 10 or 20. It has made me pickier a bit, but I was never one to just mindlessly swipe 'like' on everyone either.
That said, 'spending very little time looking at a profile' feels like a natural outcome of the system in place. Why spend time doing a deep dive on everything written/shown (when actual effort has been put in, that is) when the vast majority of the time it won't lead to a match anyways? Like, that's not meant to be dour or anything, but that's my lived experience. Focusing too much on someone without even a match is a waste of time. Once there's even a hint of interest reciprocated, okay, now to take more time to assess what shared interests and activities might appeal to one another.
Tinder, Bumble, OKCupid, and their ilk intentionally hiding the 'likes' I do get in order to incentivize me into buying their premium service is a trick that only works so many times. The last time I paid for such a thing, I discovered that many of them were from foreign countries (and that's before getting into the repeatedly noted underhanded shit some sites have been busted doing using fake accounts).
As the years have gone on, it feels like dating sites and apps went from being a shameful secret, to being incredibly common, and with that boom in usage came more and more aggressive gamification and paywalling. I get that like any business they need to make money to continue to exist, but 'lol there's 26 people who like you, $22 to find out who' is some bullshit. And that's before getting into the "Premium service" ($40 for a single month, or buy more months for a discount!) which includes such features as flat out saying "see and be seen by even more attractive people".
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
Ah, I see. If Bumble's method is anything like Tinder, then it isn't a set maximum number of swipes for everyone. Tinder is only 100 swipes if you're female or have a high desirability score. For most guys it is somewhere around 25-50, bottoming out for people that swipe right indiscriminately (aka on everyone after spending very little time looking at a profile).
I definitely don't have a high desirability score and my cap was over 50, maybe 100'ish. Now, this also becomes a bit harder to judge once you 'catch up' to the number of available members in the area. It doesn't matter if the cap is 50 or 100 if only 40 people show up in the list, even after expanding age and distance settings.
Of course, as noted, I've also deleted both Tinder and Bumble for having almost zero value in actually connecting me with people. Facebook dating has zero'd out and doesn't seem to have many new people showing up, so I've decided to try Hinge out. OKCupid seems to remain a bit meh as well, but having dabbled in 5 platforms recently, it has been interesting to see where the obvious business model chokepoints come into play. Hinge's 'likes' per day is aggressively low, that I can legit imagine being down around 10 or 20. It has made me pickier a bit, but I was never one to just mindlessly swipe 'like' on everyone either.
That said, 'spending very little time looking at a profile' feels like a natural outcome of the system in place. Why spend time doing a deep dive on everything written/shown (when actual effort has been put in, that is) when the vast majority of the time it won't lead to a match anyways? Like, that's not meant to be dour or anything, but that's my lived experience. Focusing too much on someone without even a match is a waste of time. Once there's even a hint of interest reciprocated, okay, now to take more time to assess what shared interests and activities might appeal to one another.
Tinder, Bumble, OKCupid, and their ilk intentionally hiding the 'likes' I do get in order to incentivize me into buying their premium service is a trick that only works so many times. The last time I paid for such a thing, I discovered that many of them were from foreign countries (and that's before getting into the repeatedly noted underhanded shit some sites have been busted doing using fake accounts).
As the years have gone on, it feels like dating sites and apps went from being a shameful secret, to being incredibly common, and with that boom in usage came more and more aggressive gamification and paywalling. I get that like any business they need to make money to continue to exist, but 'lol there's 26 people who like you, $22 to find out who' is some bullshit. And that's before getting into the "Premium service" ($40 for a single month, or buy more months for a discount!) which includes such features as flat out saying "see and be seen by even more attractive people".
Each generation of dating apps tries to solve issues with the last but can never fully reach their goals. Hinge and Coffee Meets Bagel both have systems that lessen the swipe fatigue and deluge of likes women deal with but those also introduce their own other issues too.
In the process a lot of the older ones try to modernize but often don't nail the landing. Case in point, what OKC has become.
Ah, I see. If Bumble's method is anything like Tinder, then it isn't a set maximum number of swipes for everyone. Tinder is only 100 swipes if you're female or have a high desirability score. For most guys it is somewhere around 25-50, bottoming out for people that swipe right indiscriminately (aka on everyone after spending very little time looking at a profile).
I definitely don't have a high desirability score and my cap was over 50, maybe 100'ish. Now, this also becomes a bit harder to judge once you 'catch up' to the number of available members in the area. It doesn't matter if the cap is 50 or 100 if only 40 people show up in the list, even after expanding age and distance settings.
Of course, as noted, I've also deleted both Tinder and Bumble for having almost zero value in actually connecting me with people. Facebook dating has zero'd out and doesn't seem to have many new people showing up, so I've decided to try Hinge out. OKCupid seems to remain a bit meh as well, but having dabbled in 5 platforms recently, it has been interesting to see where the obvious business model chokepoints come into play. Hinge's 'likes' per day is aggressively low, that I can legit imagine being down around 10 or 20. It has made me pickier a bit, but I was never one to just mindlessly swipe 'like' on everyone either.
That said, 'spending very little time looking at a profile' feels like a natural outcome of the system in place. Why spend time doing a deep dive on everything written/shown (when actual effort has been put in, that is) when the vast majority of the time it won't lead to a match anyways? Like, that's not meant to be dour or anything, but that's my lived experience. Focusing too much on someone without even a match is a waste of time. Once there's even a hint of interest reciprocated, okay, now to take more time to assess what shared interests and activities might appeal to one another.
Tinder, Bumble, OKCupid, and their ilk intentionally hiding the 'likes' I do get in order to incentivize me into buying their premium service is a trick that only works so many times. The last time I paid for such a thing, I discovered that many of them were from foreign countries (and that's before getting into the repeatedly noted underhanded shit some sites have been busted doing using fake accounts).
As the years have gone on, it feels like dating sites and apps went from being a shameful secret, to being incredibly common, and with that boom in usage came more and more aggressive gamification and paywalling. I get that like any business they need to make money to continue to exist, but 'lol there's 26 people who like you, $22 to find out who' is some bullshit. And that's before getting into the "Premium service" ($40 for a single month, or buy more months for a discount!) which includes such features as flat out saying "see and be seen by even more attractive people".
Note that swipes are typically limited only by right swipes you make. If you have a maximum of 50 right swipes, you can still reject 60 people with left swipes on the way to 50 right swipes and wind up seeing over 100 profiles per day. And yeah, I'd avoid for paying to reveal likes unless you simply don't have the time to swipe through all the profiles in your area. In most areas, if you max out your swipes each day, you can usually view the entire active local dating pool on the site within a few days to a week. If you still have unrevealed likes after that, they're probably from people outside of your desired parameters.
Note that swipes are typically limited only by right swipes you make. If you have a maximum of 50 right swipes, you can still reject 60 people with left swipes on the way to 50 right swipes and wind up seeing over 100 profiles per day. And yeah, I'd avoid for paying to reveal likes unless you simply don't have the time to swipe through all the profiles in your area. In most areas, if you max out your swipes each day, you can usually view the entire active local dating pool on the site within a few days to a week. If you still have unrevealed likes after that, they're probably from people outside of your desired parameters.
Oh, in the distant past (prior to my last relationship) I ran an experiment where I'd swipe 'like' on literally everyone. It was something like 100'ish people a day on Tinder, and even after several days of this I'd still fail to even get a match. Like, to the point where no matter how bad my pics were (and I don't think they were awful) I'd have expected to get a match or two entirely accidentally eventually.
I get that 'nopes' don't count against the limit, and I'm sure Tinder has likely way trimmed back the ability to spam Likes, but entirely anecdotally I feel like with Tinder and OKC it used to be the case where 'likes' would filter into the list at least fairly regularly. These days it feels like the number just keeps growing without more than a token handful actually showing up in the feed, which is starting to make me think that it's possible they're actively holding them back out of reach as further incentive to pay in. I could be wrong, it might just be that most or all of them are too far away, or outside of my age range for searches, but the 'near me/top matches' etc lists that OKC offers up seems to rarely actually line up with the people who have expressed interest.
Given that we've had apps/sites busted for using old or fake profiles to inflate numbers, it wouldn't at all shock me if that was somehow in play as well. Why match people up for free when you can entice them with dozens of unknown possible connections that will be revealed for $20?
It's part of what I like about FB's dating page; they just flat out note when someone likes you. No bullshit, no paywall, these people dig you, say hi. (yes, the usual caveats about the evils of Facebook apply, I am the product, they are surely montezing this aspect of my life just like all others, etc, etc).
On some level, it's fascinating to figure out how the game is being played. Take Hinge for example. I set up my profile, started flipping through the users, and was floored by the wall to wall stunning women on the site. Which immediately became suspicious. First off, they set your default search radius to 100 miles, so that's a bit much. Next, my hunch is that they explicitly front load the profiles shown with people who rank well (get a lot of likes/messages) in an effort to get people to pay for their premium service. "If this is the caliber of those on this site, I'd be crazy not to!", except the gorgeous profiles rapidly gave way to much more average looking people. Which isn't a slight against anyone, *deity* knows I'm no underwear model, but it felt misleading, and in chatting with a friend who has used the app as well, she said her experience was very similar, except she actually paid in, and was frustrated to find that it wasn't, in fact, an untapped treasure trove of hot dudes in the city.
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
Note that swipes are typically limited only by right swipes you make. If you have a maximum of 50 right swipes, you can still reject 60 people with left swipes on the way to 50 right swipes and wind up seeing over 100 profiles per day. And yeah, I'd avoid for paying to reveal likes unless you simply don't have the time to swipe through all the profiles in your area. In most areas, if you max out your swipes each day, you can usually view the entire active local dating pool on the site within a few days to a week. If you still have unrevealed likes after that, they're probably from people outside of your desired parameters.
Oh, in the distant past (prior to my last relationship) I ran an experiment where I'd swipe 'like' on literally everyone. It was something like 100'ish people a day on Tinder, and even after several days of this I'd still fail to even get a match. Like, to the point where no matter how bad my pics were (and I don't think they were awful) I'd have expected to get a match or two entirely accidentally eventually.
I get that 'nopes' don't count against the limit, and I'm sure Tinder has likely way trimmed back the ability to spam Likes, but entirely anecdotally I feel like with Tinder and OKC it used to be the case where 'likes' would filter into the list at least fairly regularly. These days it feels like the number just keeps growing without more than a token handful actually showing up in the feed, which is starting to make me think that it's possible they're actively holding them back out of reach as further incentive to pay in. I could be wrong, it might just be that most or all of them are too far away, or outside of my age range for searches, but the 'near me/top matches' etc lists that OKC offers up seems to rarely actually line up with the people who have expressed interest.
Given that we've had apps/sites busted for using old or fake profiles to inflate numbers, it wouldn't at all shock me if that was somehow in play as well. Why match people up for free when you can entice them with dozens of unknown possible connections that will be revealed for $20?
It's part of what I like about FB's dating page; they just flat out note when someone likes you. No bullshit, no paywall, these people dig you, say hi. (yes, the usual caveats about the evils of Facebook apply, I am the product, they are surely montezing this aspect of my life just like all others, etc, etc).
On some level, it's fascinating to figure out how the game is being played. Take Hinge for example. I set up my profile, started flipping through the users, and was floored by the wall to wall stunning women on the site. Which immediately became suspicious. First off, they set your default search radius to 100 miles, so that's a bit much. Next, my hunch is that they explicitly front load the profiles shown with people who rank well (get a lot of likes/messages) in an effort to get people to pay for their premium service. "If this is the caliber of those on this site, I'd be crazy not to!", except the gorgeous profiles rapidly gave way to much more average looking people. Which isn't a slight against anyone, *deity* knows I'm no underwear model, but it felt misleading, and in chatting with a friend who has used the app as well, she said her experience was very similar, except she actually paid in, and was frustrated to find that it wasn't, in fact, an untapped treasure trove of hot dudes in the city.
Hinge in particular is a weird one. Their approach was based on doing a curated suggestion instead of the self-directed swipe fest but people demanded the latter. I've definitely noticed that after the free trial of premium ended that anyone in my profile queue got much less conventionally attractive and physically fit. A working theory I've seen floated is that said queue prioritizes showing profiles that aren't getting matches. As it stands, when Hinge suggests a profile it's been worth looking at but beyond that it's not worth looking at the app.
Bumble keeps sending me notifications that I have a like but when I look it’s blank. does that mean it is most likely people that I’ve already swiped left on?
Bumble’s notifications and general connectivity has been awful, it drops messages and sends repeat notifications if you lose and regain connnection. It also seems to need a hard app closure half the time to refresh the queue even after literal days.
Bumble keeps sending me notifications that I have a like but when I look it’s blank. does that mean it is most likely people that I’ve already swiped left on?
It's possible that they've matched and then unmatched before you saw them. The notification will come to you that you have a connection, but there's nobody to be seen when you actually get in the app. Not to say that's the only thing in play here (milski is correct, the app has a number of issues), but that does seem to be one factor.
I've generally found that changing the distance or age range settings refreshed the queue pretty handily, so that's an option as well. That said, it does indeed seem to be flaky on the messaging side, and thus a good reason to move to text/whatsapp/whatever eventually, if both parties are interested of course.
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
Bumble keeps sending me notifications that I have a like but when I look it’s blank. does that mean it is most likely people that I’ve already swiped left on?
I can also be someone that is outside of your preferences. Bumble shows users profiles of people who won't see them back due to the latter's search settings.
That moment when your crush, who you've attempted to ask out several times but kept getting thwarted by technical gremlins on their end (actually verified, not just an excuse) such that messages didn't get through, updates their status to "in a relationship". And not with you (obviously).
Bumble was weird for me. I only used it for like a week and a half and kept running out of potential matches starting like the third day. I had a pretty wide age range and my only filters were verified and non-smoker.
Conversely I used Tinder for about half that time after getting fed up with bumble and got twice the matches (though unverified and having already started talking to someone on bumble that I really liked I didn’t pursue them really) and significantly (4x) more likes than I ever had in my beeline (though I never did Tinder’s premium to see how real those were).
Yeah. I had way more likes a few years ago when I tried Tinder. I just kind of gave up on Tinder because I sacked my rating by swiping right too much. I figured I would give bumble a try, but after two and a half months I got nowhere near the matches.
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cptruggedI think it has something to do with free will.Registered Userregular
Which apps are good has a ton to do with which city you're in. Tinder in ATL is just clubwear pics and hook ups. Bumble has a great user base, but with the classic caveat of how they prioritize showing you folks who've been swiped right A LOT first. OKC seemed good, especially for a 40+ yr old nerd.
I ended up meeting my now girlfriend last year on Bumble. My puppers pic, beach pic, and ugly christmas sweater pic were the real winners.
So in 3 years. I got 2 good runs of more than 2 months out of Bumble. Lots of first dates out of OKC, only 3 second dates. 1 Good first date out of Tinder, but the rest was dead ends.
Bumble was weird because you can feel the algorithm. you would see hot girl hot girls CEO hot girl and then your match. despite that though I ended up getting a lot of matches especially in San Diego. been seeing someone on bumble and we've been dating for about two months now. Hinge was better for finding dates.
Bumble was weird because you can feel the algorithm. you would see hot girl hot girls CEO hot girl and then your match. despite that though I ended up getting a lot of matches especially in San Diego. been seeing someone on bumble and we've been dating for about two months now. Hinge was better for finding dates.
Bumble's list of sins include front loading popular profiles, showing you profiles of people that won't see yours because you're not in the other party's preferences, playing loose with location data to a degree that made it useless if you lived close to a popular airport, and showing profiles that aren't active. It was a reaction to Tinder but didn't do a ton to fix Tinder's flaws. The newer ones we see now like Hinge have applied more lessons and gone with making a more niche product that's more usable for that niche.
I do find some of things about its algorithm hilarious though. I remember liking one profiles mention of sharks and I saw a huge uptick in profiles that mentioned sharks afterwards. Note that this could be either mentioning an admiration of sharks or viewing them as nightmare fuel because Natural Language Processing was evidently not a priority for the algorithm team.
When an account has a phone number or email hidden in the bio or pics, that's some kind of scam, I assume?
Yup, they know the account will be quickly banned, so they want a non-app means of contact. Anyone who wants to legit meetup quickly will provide their contact info in messaging, not publicly.
Bumble was weird because you can feel the algorithm. you would see hot girl hot girls CEO hot girl and then your match. despite that though I ended up getting a lot of matches especially in San Diego. been seeing someone on bumble and we've been dating for about two months now. Hinge was better for finding dates.
They've all been pretty useless for me in Seattle, but I do have particular tastes. I end up getting tons of people I find unattractive or people I find attractive but they're terrible people. Seattle seems to have a lot of single conservative women who like to list all the things they hate.
After having a few people flake out after initially agreeing to 1st dates in the past few months and now the pandemic, I'm taking a break and ditching my beard. I have a habit of absent-mindedly stroking the whiskers that's hard to stop doing. Didn't know I could look older without it, despite the only grey hairs on my head being on my face.
After having a few people flake out after initially agreeing to 1st dates in the past few months and now the pandemic, I'm taking a break and ditching my beard. I have a habit of absent-mindedly stroking the whiskers that's hard to stop doing. Didn't know I could look older without it, despite the only grey hairs on my head being on my face.
I've slacked off on shaving but got annoyed enough to trim everything off today. If this goes on for longer than expected I may contemplate growing a grizzled apocalypse survivor beard to be on brand.
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It turns out that women also are lazy and bad at starting conversations. It's so weird to me - I get that everyone is throwing messages out nonstop, but at least throw out something. Though there is the advantage that it's relatively easy to look good in comparison to like 50% of people.
(I never actually received that many "Hi" messages, more.. threesome requests, but probably a fairly special case)
I've gotten back home and although not at the ridiculous rate I had back at SkiTown, the number of people swiping on me is still higher than the old normal (probably 6 since I got back 3 days ago?). And the last two are lookers. I don't really want to pursue anybody new at this point, so it's all wasted, but...huh. I suspect Bumble is not limiting by location, and that time in SkiTown may have raised my relative rank. Or they're just dicking around with things since I haven't been swiping much lately due to wanting to see if I can cultivate the current dates into a real relationship.
Obnote: I just found out you can change your interest to the same sex without penalty. Been interesting to see the competition. Some good looking dudes, and some good profiles, but for the most part not the two together, at least in my nominal age range. Interesting bit of competitive research, though depressing when I compare myself to those guys that are just goddamn good looking.
edit: third possibility: people are home and bored due to WFH/office shutdowns thanks to COVID-19.
Not sure where this is coming from, but I couldn't google anything up. Tinder does and has always limited the number of right swipes that free accounts get. Bumble doesn't, but more because their method where women have to message first cuts a large chunk of the problem that Tinder limits right swipes for (that men will typically right swipe everyone and then spam any matches).
It's coming from the r/Bumble subreddit. I'm a subscriber as well as not in swipe mode right now so I haven't seen it. The behavior was acknowledged as by design by one of the official accounts. Seems like it's something like 20 swipes per day, resetting at midnight. They may be rolling it out piecemeal...I don't know.
Is there any mention of this appearing as a message similar to the loosen your filters one? Because I’ve gotten that message already, then not adjusted anything, and the next day several more meeting my filters were available. It was weird. Actually signed up for Tinder thinking that it must just be used more in my area as a result.
That said, had my first date since my divorce last night with someone I matched with. We had been talking pretty constantly since Tuesday and met at a bar for after work drinks and ended up just sitting there talking and sharing loaded nachos for 5 hours. I’d say it went pretty well!
I definitely don't have a high desirability score and my cap was over 50, maybe 100'ish. Now, this also becomes a bit harder to judge once you 'catch up' to the number of available members in the area. It doesn't matter if the cap is 50 or 100 if only 40 people show up in the list, even after expanding age and distance settings.
Of course, as noted, I've also deleted both Tinder and Bumble for having almost zero value in actually connecting me with people. Facebook dating has zero'd out and doesn't seem to have many new people showing up, so I've decided to try Hinge out. OKCupid seems to remain a bit meh as well, but having dabbled in 5 platforms recently, it has been interesting to see where the obvious business model chokepoints come into play. Hinge's 'likes' per day is aggressively low, that I can legit imagine being down around 10 or 20. It has made me pickier a bit, but I was never one to just mindlessly swipe 'like' on everyone either.
That said, 'spending very little time looking at a profile' feels like a natural outcome of the system in place. Why spend time doing a deep dive on everything written/shown (when actual effort has been put in, that is) when the vast majority of the time it won't lead to a match anyways? Like, that's not meant to be dour or anything, but that's my lived experience. Focusing too much on someone without even a match is a waste of time. Once there's even a hint of interest reciprocated, okay, now to take more time to assess what shared interests and activities might appeal to one another.
Tinder, Bumble, OKCupid, and their ilk intentionally hiding the 'likes' I do get in order to incentivize me into buying their premium service is a trick that only works so many times. The last time I paid for such a thing, I discovered that many of them were from foreign countries (and that's before getting into the repeatedly noted underhanded shit some sites have been busted doing using fake accounts).
As the years have gone on, it feels like dating sites and apps went from being a shameful secret, to being incredibly common, and with that boom in usage came more and more aggressive gamification and paywalling. I get that like any business they need to make money to continue to exist, but 'lol there's 26 people who like you, $22 to find out who' is some bullshit. And that's before getting into the "Premium service" ($40 for a single month, or buy more months for a discount!) which includes such features as flat out saying "see and be seen by even more attractive people".
Each generation of dating apps tries to solve issues with the last but can never fully reach their goals. Hinge and Coffee Meets Bagel both have systems that lessen the swipe fatigue and deluge of likes women deal with but those also introduce their own other issues too.
In the process a lot of the older ones try to modernize but often don't nail the landing. Case in point, what OKC has become.
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Note that swipes are typically limited only by right swipes you make. If you have a maximum of 50 right swipes, you can still reject 60 people with left swipes on the way to 50 right swipes and wind up seeing over 100 profiles per day. And yeah, I'd avoid for paying to reveal likes unless you simply don't have the time to swipe through all the profiles in your area. In most areas, if you max out your swipes each day, you can usually view the entire active local dating pool on the site within a few days to a week. If you still have unrevealed likes after that, they're probably from people outside of your desired parameters.
Oh, in the distant past (prior to my last relationship) I ran an experiment where I'd swipe 'like' on literally everyone. It was something like 100'ish people a day on Tinder, and even after several days of this I'd still fail to even get a match. Like, to the point where no matter how bad my pics were (and I don't think they were awful) I'd have expected to get a match or two entirely accidentally eventually.
I get that 'nopes' don't count against the limit, and I'm sure Tinder has likely way trimmed back the ability to spam Likes, but entirely anecdotally I feel like with Tinder and OKC it used to be the case where 'likes' would filter into the list at least fairly regularly. These days it feels like the number just keeps growing without more than a token handful actually showing up in the feed, which is starting to make me think that it's possible they're actively holding them back out of reach as further incentive to pay in. I could be wrong, it might just be that most or all of them are too far away, or outside of my age range for searches, but the 'near me/top matches' etc lists that OKC offers up seems to rarely actually line up with the people who have expressed interest.
Given that we've had apps/sites busted for using old or fake profiles to inflate numbers, it wouldn't at all shock me if that was somehow in play as well. Why match people up for free when you can entice them with dozens of unknown possible connections that will be revealed for $20?
It's part of what I like about FB's dating page; they just flat out note when someone likes you. No bullshit, no paywall, these people dig you, say hi. (yes, the usual caveats about the evils of Facebook apply, I am the product, they are surely montezing this aspect of my life just like all others, etc, etc).
On some level, it's fascinating to figure out how the game is being played. Take Hinge for example. I set up my profile, started flipping through the users, and was floored by the wall to wall stunning women on the site. Which immediately became suspicious. First off, they set your default search radius to 100 miles, so that's a bit much. Next, my hunch is that they explicitly front load the profiles shown with people who rank well (get a lot of likes/messages) in an effort to get people to pay for their premium service. "If this is the caliber of those on this site, I'd be crazy not to!", except the gorgeous profiles rapidly gave way to much more average looking people. Which isn't a slight against anyone, *deity* knows I'm no underwear model, but it felt misleading, and in chatting with a friend who has used the app as well, she said her experience was very similar, except she actually paid in, and was frustrated to find that it wasn't, in fact, an untapped treasure trove of hot dudes in the city.
Hinge in particular is a weird one. Their approach was based on doing a curated suggestion instead of the self-directed swipe fest but people demanded the latter. I've definitely noticed that after the free trial of premium ended that anyone in my profile queue got much less conventionally attractive and physically fit. A working theory I've seen floated is that said queue prioritizes showing profiles that aren't getting matches. As it stands, when Hinge suggests a profile it's been worth looking at but beyond that it's not worth looking at the app.
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It's possible that they've matched and then unmatched before you saw them. The notification will come to you that you have a connection, but there's nobody to be seen when you actually get in the app. Not to say that's the only thing in play here (milski is correct, the app has a number of issues), but that does seem to be one factor.
I've generally found that changing the distance or age range settings refreshed the queue pretty handily, so that's an option as well. That said, it does indeed seem to be flaky on the messaging side, and thus a good reason to move to text/whatsapp/whatever eventually, if both parties are interested of course.
I can also be someone that is outside of your preferences. Bumble shows users profiles of people who won't see them back due to the latter's search settings.
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Welp.
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I found Bumble to be basically a time waster in Seattle as a late-30s liberal.
I had some luck up until Coronavirus hit. It's been a wasteland since.
Bumble has a lot of ways it wastes your time unless you pay for a membership. And even if you do.
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Edut: same experience on Bumble
Conversely I used Tinder for about half that time after getting fed up with bumble and got twice the matches (though unverified and having already started talking to someone on bumble that I really liked I didn’t pursue them really) and significantly (4x) more likes than I ever had in my beeline (though I never did Tinder’s premium to see how real those were).
I ended up meeting my now girlfriend last year on Bumble. My puppers pic, beach pic, and ugly christmas sweater pic were the real winners.
So in 3 years. I got 2 good runs of more than 2 months out of Bumble. Lots of first dates out of OKC, only 3 second dates. 1 Good first date out of Tinder, but the rest was dead ends.
Bumble's list of sins include front loading popular profiles, showing you profiles of people that won't see yours because you're not in the other party's preferences, playing loose with location data to a degree that made it useless if you lived close to a popular airport, and showing profiles that aren't active. It was a reaction to Tinder but didn't do a ton to fix Tinder's flaws. The newer ones we see now like Hinge have applied more lessons and gone with making a more niche product that's more usable for that niche.
I do find some of things about its algorithm hilarious though. I remember liking one profiles mention of sharks and I saw a huge uptick in profiles that mentioned sharks afterwards. Note that this could be either mentioning an admiration of sharks or viewing them as nightmare fuel because Natural Language Processing was evidently not a priority for the algorithm team.
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Yup, they know the account will be quickly banned, so they want a non-app means of contact. Anyone who wants to legit meetup quickly will provide their contact info in messaging, not publicly.
They've all been pretty useless for me in Seattle, but I do have particular tastes. I end up getting tons of people I find unattractive or people I find attractive but they're terrible people. Seattle seems to have a lot of single conservative women who like to list all the things they hate.
Snapchat in profile, sexual profile comment, one picture of a hot girl, nothing else: Scam
Snapchat in profile, money or meetup related comment, multiple pictures: probable escort
Snapchat in profile, other interests in profile, regular looking person: regular person probably getting spammed by peeps
Hot person with Instagram in profile: probably just a model looking for thirst follows
Email in profile: turboscam
I've slacked off on shaving but got annoyed enough to trim everything off today. If this goes on for longer than expected I may contemplate growing a grizzled apocalypse survivor beard to be on brand.
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