If this is OKCupid, I have an account that I play around with, with no intention of meeting anyone anytime soon. Over the past couple months I have around 60 likes and have received around a dozen messages (without initiating any), I would say almost none of those come from viewing a profile and hoping to get a view back (especially since they might not see your view). Most of that came from doing the Quickmatch thing. I mess around with that. Sometimes I say “yes” to everyone, it depends. I think you have to be proactive doing the Likes yourself and initiating messages to ones you find interesting.
Online dating is the Eighth and Ninth Circles of Hell. Just assume that 96% of all profiles are scambots, escort services, forty-something bored housewives passing themselves off as 25 year olds, and slobby late middle-age guys cruising for co-eds and you’ll get a good sense of the field. You are less likely to catch a disease or pick up a stalker going to to the local hookup market, and you’ll get more truth and integrity from reading The National Enquirer. Online dating is more unhygenic than taking a bath in pigshit, a bigger timesuck than reality television, and more absurd than any three random episodes of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. It is a greater waste of financial resources than the Olympics, more corrupt than FIFA, and more incomprehensible than the World Cricket League competition structure. But hey, I’m not bitter. I have Irish whiskey. Although if I had some bitters I could make a Dubliner. Which sounds delicious, actually.
I had a point when I began this but it has since escaped like Provisional IRA inmates from Mountjoy Prison by helicopter.
Stranger
Oh now I understand why when I wanted to transition to the phone they didn’t want to do it because like you said it was a fake profile
This is totally different from my experience, which I’ll admit was in the aughts, so it might have been different.
Totally different for me too. There are some fake profiles but they are extremely easy to spot. Mostly a lot of women who are not attracted to me and a lot of women I’m not attracted to. Just trying to find that Venn diagram sweet spot.
Well, I’m certainly no authority on dating, either virtual or in actual reality, but it is well known that companies such as Match.com do everything they can to inflate or manufacture interest insofar as there business is not making sure you meet your soulmate or anysuch, but rather ensure that you credit card meets with their receiving account. (In fact, I had to cancel a credit card in order to get away from one of Match.com subsidiary companies and was included as the plaintiff group in some class action lawsuit last year.) No dating service gives fuck-all about whether you are successful or not, even the vaunted eHarmony which has had its own issues with inflated advertised success.
Setting aside scams, bots, and other perfidy, online dating sites are just chock full of people either looking to hook up and cheat on their existing spouse or significant something, and those who want to inflate their self-worth by pretending to be appealing online but with no actual intent to ever meet up. Back when I was doing the online thing I finally came to the policy of insisting on a meetup after three exchanges unless there was some pressing reason (distance, work schedules, family issues, et cetera) which legitimately dictate for a delayed meeting. It was amazing the number of women who, when presented with the decision of either meeting in some neutral, public location in daytime or ending the online conversation opted for the latter, almost always by either making some transparent excuse or just not responding at all. The difference in continued interest was an order of magnitude less, but there was a corresponding reduction in the number of times I was stood up on a date, so as a filtering tactic it worked out.
But with regard to the o.p., if you’re going to make a go of it you actually have to put some effort into it. Complaining that you aren’t getting responses by looking at other profiles is like bitching that the cute Manic Pixie Dream Girls in the coffeeshop aren’t falling into your lap like clumsy Zooey Deschanel clones on peyote. If you aren’t at least going to send out messages you can hardly expect the minority of actual women who are available and interested to respond, as they are way too busy deleting dick pics and trying to decide between dating the 29 year old muscle hound who is still living with his parents or the thrice-divorced 42 year old patent litigator with a secondhand Type 996 that is featured in every picture he has and a combover so bad even Donald Trump is like, “Dude, no!” The actually desirable women are so besieged by candidates that if you don’t make some kind of exceptional effort you might as well be one of those stormtroopers who gets picked off by random blaster fire that just nicked your shoulder but caused your armor to spontaneously combust.
I recommend just pouring another glass of a nice Irish whiskey or bourbon and ordering in Thai food, but it’s your misery; enjoy it the best way you know how, but at least take a swing at it. Don’t be like Matt Damon in Rounders, inexplicably fending off a willing Famke Janssen while pining over a petulant Gretchen Mol. That reference actually had nothing to do with anything, I just find it the most jarring part of Rounders, and that even includes John Malkovich’s absurd accent and Damon’s character being welcomed into a cop game.
Stranger
This, and also if the match/friend percentage is very low and/or the enemy percentage is very high, or if there’s no percentages at all, like the person hasn’t even filled out their profile or answered any questions yet. If there’s not some at least mildly compelling reason to want to view the rest of the person’s profile, I won’t bother for the reason further below the post I’m replying to, because they can see if you’ve visited and I’ve had the same experience of being jumped on by someone I don’t know if I want to interact with them yet. Wow, that sentence was a grammatical horror. I’d bypass my own profile on that basis. 
I also agree that the online dating scene has changed a lot since the early days of the century.
Good advices given and I would also say don’t put too much into online dating. If it does not work out do put yourself down or beat yourself over it. Try to the best of your ability to also date in real life.
Good luck.
Online dating is (or should be) real life dating… The goal is not to talk online and have online relationships, but to arrange dates in real life by connecting two people who wouldn’t otherwise meet. IMO, the conversations online should be very brief, and only serve to eliminate the totally unacceptable and move to phone calls and dates for everyone else.
Oh, man, are you ever going to get roasted now by the people who will insist that you should allow for dozens of e-mail exchanges and three months of on-and-off communications to negotiate a coffee date with the alcoholic single mother of four or the unemployed motorcycle enthusiast who lives in the back of a van but has $50k of Harley Davidson apparel. Sorry for you but I am so going to enjoy this for not being directed at me.
Stranger
Telephone dating was so much better because you heard the person’s voice instantly and you met a lot faster. Not with online dating you have to keep typing messages back and forth and hope it leads to a phone number exchange?:smack:
I’ve been married for thirty-two years (with no end date in sight), so I’m a little unclear on how online dating is supposed to progress.
Do you start by sharing a funny cat video on youtube, and then go out for a quick dessert recipe video that you found on facebook?* And then work your way up to a movie trailer and a yelp review of a local restaurant?
Is the third online date too soon to share a video on redtube? What about if she’s already asked you to help her with a wikihow video on how to unclog a garbage disposal?
*(and if you do that, how are you supposed to calm her down if she wants to know who shared that recipe with you? Is it okay to tell her it was your high school girlfriend’s sister who you’re not even in contact with the girlfriend any more, but her sister sent you a friend request through YOUR sister?)
You browse online profiles
You send a message to someone you like
If they are attracted to you then you begin to chat online
after chatting for a few mins you then exchange phone numbers
once you talk on the phone you plan a first meeting at a cafe or restaurant
if things go well then you see each other again
I don’t consider the first meet a real date, just a first meet to see if you want to go out again. First meet should be no longer than 2 hours
Welcome to the SDMB. 
I have a couple of online profiles. Ideally I’d like to meet someone in person, but I do like to get a conversation started online first. Meeting a total stranger is tough. When I’m sitting there in the Starbucks (or wherever) waiting for her to arrive, I’d like to have something ready to talk about.
That’s the theory. It tends to be a little different in practice.
I get pissed off when I exchange 7 or 8 messages with a woman and it don’t lead to me getting her phone number which means it
-
was a fake profile
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she was only chatting out of boredom
Just accept that this will happen sometimes. Assume that most messages will lead to nothing, but send out a bunch.
I have a habit of getting caught up in a pretty face and then I get disappointed when she stops responding.
Here’s a tip for you: Make the face and physical parameters the last thing you look at. Read the rest of the profile first and make a decision about whether she seems interesting, and then look at pics and weight/height/hair/eyes. If nothing in her description or interests resonates you may assume that even if you get to the point of meeting up you’re not going to have anything to talk about, which is always awkward unless you are both deaf-mutes.
And consider this from the woman’s perspective: even vaguely attractive or interesting women on dating sites are going to get far more messages, winks, et cetera than they can possibly respond to. Even the ones who do try will become overwhelmed and fatigued by the effort, and of course wary of the seemingly inevitable display of genitalia images. (I cannot figure out how ‘dick pics’ became some kind of dating meme or what conscious adult human being would believe that someone else wants to see a picture of their sexual bits without any other context but I cannot count on all appendages the number of women I’ve talked to about their online and texting experiences who have receive this treatment repeatedly. In fact, I think the figure is pretty much all of them.)
So, if some woman stops messaging you, it may have far less to do with the offensive or uninteresting things you had to write about as that she is exhausted and just passed out over her third glass of wine or watching one of those creepy romantic comedies where a 35 year Drew Barrymore pretends to be a brain-damaged bimbo just waiting to be assaulted by a man-child who can’t even spell the words “informed consent”. I recommend treating it like a game of dating Mario Cart, where you get powerups for every time you do get a response or interest, and then hit reboot when you’ve clearly crashed or you are in the rear position.
Stranger
Then don’t do that. Understand that the chances that any particular profile you respond to will turn into a girlfriend are extremely low, but when you add up many attempts, one of them will eventually succeed.
Make a routine – find ten new profiles to send messages to (similar to the sample message I suggested earlier in the thread) each day. Eventually, you’ll get a date (it probably won’t take that long), and one of those dates will turn into a relationship.