With Bumble only women can do the contacting. Men can not send anything to women first.
I know. I’m on Bumble, every once in a blue moon I’ll receive a message from a woman I’ve matched with.
Bumble and Tinder are rather different than sites like Match or OKCupid. You can’t specify any search criteria other than your age, and I think the apps get your age from Facebook, so it’s rather difficult to fake that to manipulate the searches.
Our oldest son (22) did a Covid first date. They sat on our deck, while we were out of town (younger brother was with his girl friend’s family). I don’t think it went any further, but I think they enjoyed themselves. I forget which online service they met on.
Alright, alright, got on OKC a couple days ago. Every suggested match today, I swear, looked like a potato.
I did okc and pof and wasted a lot of money paying for those. As a guy my experience is very likely to not be very like yours so, this is a for-what-its-worth thing. I was actually going to delete my pof profile and took one last look around, saw someone who was the right age, had, in broad strokes, the same life experiences as me etc.
That would be the current girlfriend, we’ve been dating since last november. Had a few dates from pof, but more responses and conversations from okc, with no dates. Basically it was a mixed bag experience for me and the only reason to pay is to be able to message and respond more freely
Pof and okc both have terrible matching algorithms. You have to actively go searching
I’m glad you said that.
One of my so-called top matches the other day was a guy who wants kids and who “keeps god first!” and I can assure you, we’re not a good match at all.
I like OKC’s question things… I’ve answered hundreds of questions on the thing, and they range from mundane to serious (Marvel or DC? How do you feel about a right to abortion? Pizza or tacos?). Then matches start filtering in based on that, and I realize… I’m not fit for consumption by anyone!
My PoF profile is constantly having somebody try to log in, for some reason, but I have two-factor authentication so I just get a few text messages (in different languages) with my verification code every week. I haven’t cared enough to go change my password.
The last time I was “dating” was in 1972. I have no idea how I would cope with the current practices.
The last time I was “dating” was only 15 years ago, and I’m scared shitless even without all the COVID things on top of it!
I’ve enjoyed the hell out of online dating, have met some fantastic women, prefer OKC over Tinder, make extensive use of the SDMB in showing them what I’m like (usually I link to the Sophia thread), and the typical 10-3-1 ratio seems to hold up:
10 messages
3 conversations
1 date
I’m always easy on where to meet, ‘whatever makes you comfortable’ is my go-to response. I suggest coffee or something simple, saying ‘if we click, we’ll talk for quite a while. If not, we can say our goodbyes early.’
They never leave early - I’m not bad at talking and can both tell, and react to, a story. While I sure haven’t taken every woman I’ve met to bed, I’ve taken them all on a 2nd date. Except the obvious alcoholic… when the bartender at Chili’s knows your name and your favorite frozen concoction, and you down 3 of those bad boys in 60 minutes, we’re just living in different worlds, ma’am.
Guys… y’all are just failing at this. OMG, the stories these women tell me! Guys immediately declaring their love, guys who flat out lie, guys who reach out but then are too timid to say ‘well, are we gonna meet or what?’, guys with profile pics 10 years younger, braggarts and douchebros. And the worst thing… you don’t listen and you don’t read the profiles:
‘Your profile says you have 2 children… tell me about them.’
‘You remember my profile?’
Don’t be that guy.
Went to a dance class the other night with Cris, a lovely woman from Mexico City who is divorced and is… though she would never put it in these words… is just sick of the patriarchy. She is a few years younger than me and, as I danced with her on this, our 2nd date, I marveled that a woman so beautiful and determined and fascinating would spend her time with me. We are seeing each other again this Wednesday and I am practicing my (horrible) dancing courtesy of YouTube so I won’t be as pathetic.
(Oh, and I don’t play games with ‘when/whom should text first’ or whatever. I’ll get home and text ‘I had a great time, you’re a wonderful person, let’s do it again’ or ‘I had a great time, you’re a wonderful person, but we just weren’t clicking’. We’re adults here, being honest is OK!)
Then there’s Laura, pictured above in one of the links, smart as hell, sardonic and a great conversationalist, and a game player. Her father has been visiting her since the day after our first date and we haven’t seen each other since, though we have been texting/calling daily. In addition to being beautiful, we have the best talks/texts with topics ranging from addiction issues to why Republicans suck to sci fi TV shows, appreciating the connections that two educated Gen-Xers are supposed to have.
And, of course, Cathy, with whom I had an LTR with during and after the divorce (no, she was not the cause, she & I didn’t meet until the property settlement was agreed upon between my ex & myself). Cathy is a domestic goddess and she was there for me when I needed somebody, and we’re still friends (saw her today, in fact) but the romantic part of our relationship is over.
Personal observations which pertain to me only…
-
I do look at profile pics for clues as to who you are and I have swiped left because of things seen in the profile pics which indicates we won’t get along… a lot of alcohol pictures are a red flag for me - people really into drinking don’t care for my teetotaling ass.
-
My ‘age range’ is 40-65. And 40 is pretty young, tbf. Fortunately, the ages of the women I find attractive has increased as I’ve gotten older so I’m not some pathetic loser chasing after a 29yo. I wouldn’t even know what to do with a girl in her 20s. What the fuck would we even talk about?
-
Ladies, some tips? Pictures are free, there is no need to have fuzzy pics in your profile: take some more. Also, don’t make every pic a selfie - they all look the same, sorry. And do include some full body pics - none of us look like we’re in our 20s and if you put on (more than) a few life pounds, well, so has this insurance guy from San Antonio TX. It’s ok. You’re still lovely.
“Online dating during quarantine!”?
sometimes i miss aol chatrooms i met a few people from there yeaars ago… then i moved here and my life died …
You sound fun; I’m not surprised the ladies love you. I’d never heard of the 10:3:1 ratio, but it makes a lot of sense. When I was doing the online dating thing, I learned to be very selective about who I messaged back, but to move relatively quickly from messaging to meeting face-to-face. I’m a huge proponent of getting coffee for a first date for exactly the reasons you give.
I’ve dated three women who I met on OkCupid during the quarantine. I just had a few in-person dates with the first one, during which we distanced from each other and kept our masks on. She was rather casual about it and told me she didn’t think the quarantine was necessary; that’s one of the reasons I stopped seeing her. The second one and I unmasked after our third date, after we were both convinced that the other person was keeping appropriately isolated. We dated for about 3 months. The third was similar; we unmasked after the third date and after 5 months now we’re basically living together, but still keeping isolated from others outside our bubble.
I am having flashbacks of the before years when AIDS was killing people for the sin of fucking. Hubs and I met through a personal column in a swinger magazine. We met at a safe place, had dinner and agreed that we would like to have sex and were going to the local health department for clean results first.