How I use dating sites today

Tinder:

I swipe right on every profile. For a while – I think I wrote about this – there was an app that let me swipe right on 250 women at a time. Tinder’s evolved so that’s no longer possible, and added the “super-like” feature, which lets me – five times, in any given 12-hour period – cause my “liking” of someone to actually generate a notification for the person on the other end. Absent a “super-like,” swipes only result in notification if there’s a match, if the person swipes right as well – on my wolf. Which is, as you might expect, a rare occasion indeed.

The way I see Tinder is, primarily, as a way of distributing my blog. I occasionally set my location to a location other than the one in which I find myself. I also, of course, occasionally travel. I match infrequently – I think I matched about ten times in the last two weeks. When I match, I only actually message if something about the profile leads me to believe either that a) there’s a reasonable possibility that a woman to whom I’m attracted will end up sucking my cock as a result of our interaction, or b) I’m likely to enjoy interacting with – and receiving compliant, dirty photos from – my match. If neither a nor b applies? I’m unlikely to initiate communication.

And then there’s the interaction. I’ve written about this before. I have a few tropes – “Why’d you swipe a dog like me?” (my profile picture is, as I said, a wolf, or a husky, depending on whom you ask) is a stand-by with which I end many approaches, because I genuinely am curious – why would a woman swipe a dog picture, followed by several suggestive and erotic pictures, and accompanied by words that make it clear that I’m not the average Tinderfella? But apart from those tropes, I genuinely do interact genuinely, uniquely, individually, with each match. I recently found myself asking a woman these three questions:

  1. When dressing this morning, what were your considerations?
  2. If you were to describe your voice using precisely three adjectives, which would you choose?
  3. Why the hell did you swipe a dog like me? Was it my pointy ears?

As I typed those questions, I realized that they might well sound canned. They weren’t. (And any future Tinderella out there whom I ask those three questions can find them here, and call me on my honesty – I promise, if I ask these questions ever again, I’ll disclose that I’ve used them before.)

And so I wrote this: “Now that I’ve written these, I see that they might be a good set of questions for any Tinder match, but I assure you, I’ve never asked questions 1 or 2 before. 3? I’ll confess. I’ve asked it before. A brief glimpse at my blog will establish that I’m the kind of guy who generally is inclined to tell the truth, but I recognize that this disclaimer might itself be repurposed.”

Point being: Tinder is a fun way to meet, and interact with, women. I never cut and paste, or duplicate messages, in Tinder, except when a woman insists on a photo or asks for a verbal description, when I provide a standard, one-paragraph physical description, culminating in a link to this post. Regular readers of this blog know so much more about me than that paragraph possibly could communicate, it feels almost like I’m deceiving a woman by just telling her what I look like. Over the years, I’ve met quite a few quality ladies on Tinder, including Isabel, and Tamora, and the Rockette, and Rose. I’ve only listed those women with whom I’ve had sex more than twice, and who remain active, in some way, either in my life or my imagination. There are others. Several others. And there are distant buddies. About whom I tend not to write, but of whom, currently, there are one or two….

But the main thing I get from Tinder – and not from lack of trying – is simply interaction. Once in a great while, a date. But mostly, interaction. And, generally, it falls flat. Either the woman isn’t interested in what I’m offering, or I’m not interested in what she’s offering. I like that interaction. (Why, what I get out of it, is a subject for another post.)

A note on my profile picture: no doubt, if I included my face picture, I’d get exponentially more matches. My face is cute/handsome, and the fact that I don’t include a face picture surely is a dealbreaker for many. I totally get that. But I’m not posting a face picture.

Happn:

Happn is a flawed app. It’s much better than it once was, but it’s still buggy, and annoying. The premise is a cool one – they promise to show me women whose paths I’ve crossed, and to give me the chance to run into them again, this time, intentionally. The population they serve, clearly, is a mate-seeking population. I match very rarely, in spite of tapping on the heart attached to literally every woman whose face picture they show me. Again, the fact that I can’t display my face works against me in this context. If what people see is screen upon screen of faces, and mine is the back of a bald head (Happn rejected my husky), it’s no surprise that women don’t go for that.

That said, I’ve had the occasional match on Happn, and while none has been a keeper, I have had two or three interesting dates, and one or two interesting blowjobs, as a result….

Hinge:

Every day, Hinge presents me with about ten women. I click on the “heart” under each one. I’ve never, ever, matched with one, to my knowledge. My profile there is some sort of partial shot of my chest and/or face, I think, as they wouldn’t let me use either my husky/wolf or the arty back-of-a-bald-head shot I use on Happn.

OKC

I’m still on OKC, but, honestly, it’s not the right place for me. The effort required is simply too great. For a while – years, actually – I put in that effort, and still had paltry results. If I were to generalize, I would say that the women I’ve met through OKC (other than the Historian) are just too. damned. serious. And maybe she is, too. I don’t know. She seems to have stopped talking to me. (That’s a story for another day, I suppose.)

Bumble

I’ve tried repeatedly to join Bumble, but they keep telling me I have to be over 18 to join, and blocking me. True story.

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