[blacknwhitespade]

(10-11-2017 10:20 AM)questor70 Wrote:  

Would you say the conclusion one might draw from the above decline in Match results is that the "swipers" like Tinder/Bumble are gradually destroying traditional paid dating sites?

I think my last point in my post confirms this. Match girls are more attracted to my shorter, generic opener than they are to me actually reading their profile, picking out 1-2 common interests and constructing a more original opener. The whole site feels a lot more POF-ish (I never had success with POF).

Anyways, we all hit dry spells, but my online game definitely doesn't work in the post-Tinder era. I assumed match would be better quality than the swipe apps. I might still check out Eharmony (had success there in the past as well) for what I am coining "quality-over-quantity, provider-male-smoke-screen game". Otherwise, we're definitely living in the new testament now.

[N°6]

(10-11-2017 10:20 AM)questor70 Wrote:  

Would you say the conclusion one might draw from the above decline in Match results is that the "swipers" like Tinder/Bumble are gradually destroying traditional paid dating sites?

There's no doubt about it.

After giving men a temporary boost which seemed to reverse the decline brought about by the smartphone era, tinder destroyed online dating and then itself through monetisation.

Any dating platform which uses the Hot or Not swiping system brings about its decline because it sees a collapse in conversation.

Men need to start managing their withdrawal from online dating - perhaps Meet Up as a quasi-social platform it the half way house to disengage to.

[Mess O.]

(10-11-2017 10:02 AM)blacknwhitespade Wrote:  

I've been working match.com for several weeks now, messaged 150+ profiles, several terse/luke warm responses, 1 phone number flake, 0 dates. I'm 36, youthful, handsome, in-shape, no kids, have very good photos, creative/engaging profile write-up, targeting women 23-36. Started with the women who were viewing my profile and sending the more personalized/genuine message style like OP for the first 40 women I contacted, 0 responses. Started searches and switched to my cut-and-paste 3 sentence curious travel question that got me dates with girls when I was on match.com in 2014, and started at least getting some terse/luke warm responses, a couple of warmer responses, but they flaked after I told them we should meet and send me their number.

A few observations:

-the quality on match.com has noticeably declined in the last 3 years. Most of the women in my age group are single/divorced moms with attitudes, and fatties/fuglies. Match.com used to have more quality/young professional women, but even the 20-somethings are closer now to the quality of OKC/POF.
-A lot more p4p bots on match.com, almost worse that Tinder was in my area last winter.
-Approximately 40% of profiles messaged do not view me/read their message. Do I still need a bigger sample size?
-women are way more flakey. As mentioned, I landed dates with women in 2014 with the same opener I'm using now. The girls who have responded are viewing my profile after I ask for the number and still flaking.
-I'm more likely to get a response from women w/out kids like myself than the divorced/single moms.
-the cut-and-paste opener at least gets responses!! Writing more original/engaging messages got me nothing. I guess when you're living in an era where women online don't take things seriously, the less serious messaging style works??

I exclusively used the 'cut-&-paste' method. And the sent message cap is total bullshit. So I do a daily quota of around 50, and per those, I'll get maybe 2 responses. Must've sent hundreds of messages, maybe +1000, so as to get the most out of the fuckin' thing. I just toured a 3-month subscription, and have just recently hung it up for now. Your other observations are also very accurate.

16 dates, but no bangs, since I backed down in those instances where it was feasible.

[pancakemouse]

(10-11-2017 11:46 AM)N°6 Wrote:  

(10-11-2017 10:20 AM)questor70 Wrote:  

Would you say the conclusion one might draw from the above decline in Match results is that the "swipers" like Tinder/Bumble are gradually destroying traditional paid dating sites?

Men need to start managing their withdrawal from online dating - perhaps Meet Up as a quasi-social platform it the half way house to disengage to.

Meetup is generally trash. Mostly because most people who need to use Meetup to meet people don't have any friends, so it self-selects for weird and awkward people.

[questor70]

(10-11-2017 05:20 PM)corsega Wrote:  

...most people who need to use Meetup to meet people don't have any friends, so it self-selects for weird and awkward people.

Note that online dating had that stigma in the early days, which is why there was reluctance to use it until it became a convenient attention-whoring platform.

[Baphomet]

(10-12-2017 09:12 AM)questor70 Wrote:  

(10-11-2017 05:20 PM)corsega Wrote:  

...most people who need to use Meetup to meet people don't have any friends, so it self-selects for weird and awkward people.

Note that online dating had that stigma in the early days, which is why there was reluctance to use it until it became a convenient attention-whoring platform.

And it should be noted that:

- Sally Mae kills her paid Match account for whatever reason.
- Sally will get multiple emails/offers from Match to rejoin for many months after she quits.

- Billy Joe kills his paid Match account for whatever reason.
- Billy will get one email confirming his account termination, then nothing.

Match has 90% more Billy Joes than Sally Maes. They have no reason to market to men who desperately sign up in droves. They need females.

This is why your profile, and your intro emails have to truly stand out in order to be successful. I'd classify the girl I'm seeing as a 7. She literally had 75-100+ emails every day. Sometimes 3-4 from the same guys.

Even the 4s (which Match is replete with, I might add) get bombed.

Also bear in mind that probably 60% (educated guess) of the women you are sending notes to are not PAYING members and so cannot even see your messages. This is why you need very strong photos, and a solid profile. If they become paying members, you'll likely be remembered. (This is how I got connected with the GF above.)

That said, I understand that it is maddeningly frustrating at times.

[SlickyBoy]

Had a conversation the other day about Match and similar apps with a friend in the DC area. He leans hard on online dating because he sees it as more efficient. He's too busy with work and there's no way he can talk to as many women in a day as he can by doing the online thing. Even with the advent of Tinder and nobody even bothering to read profile paragraphs anymore, he still think's it's the way to go versus a more developed social circle.

So I asked him what his conversion rate was - he didn't have much to say.

It doesn't help that his chief method of dating usually involves sitting across a table from his date (I'm betting it's almost always a dinner date) and effectively asking interview questions to "learn more about her." Add to this he's pretty seriously PC brainwashed - says he actually wants a woman who's "driven" and serious about her career and I suspect it'll be a while before he's red pilled, if ever.

[HedoRick]

Do not use match. Tinder basically killed what little user base it already had. My sister thought it was a great idea to get me on match again. What I found was the most pitiful ratios I have ever seen. I live near three cities, and out of the whole area, there was only two women that were attractive enough for me to contact. It's impossible to play a numbers game, if you have no numbers to work with. I'm glad I never paid for a subscription(it was a gift)

But I discourage any of you from wasting money on this archaic crap.

[TheBMan]

I got on match last year when they did a groupon and it may have been the most depressing thing I've ever done. I'm 6'3, in shape, good looking, good income - check all the boxes - and I could barely get an email returned by anyone remotely attractive.

[BadgerHut]

(11-26-2017 09:24 PM)TheBMan Wrote:  

I got on match last year when they did a groupon and it may have been the most depressing thing I've ever done. I'm 6'3, in shape, good looking, good income - check all the boxes - and I could barely get an email returned by anyone remotely attractive.

That's exactly the experience I'm having and hearing from my friends as well. I think online in general has jumped the shark now that it's all become another form of validating social media. Someone's getting ass off these sites (forum testimony alone confirms it), but it's almost literally not anybody that I know.

Guys should view that time as an investible capital stream - instead of wasting it on swipes and tweaking emails, go use that time to meet women in public and expand your social circle.

[BadgerHut]

Another interesting thing about online dating is how OkCupid turned itself into a swipe app - the Tinder/Bumble phenomenon has pulled other services in its direction.

One could write a big behavioral-econ thesis about online dating services, but basically, there's two major engagement problems for the user: paradox of choice (too many options) and it consumes time. Joints like Coffee Meets Bagel try to control the options factor by limiting throughput (one swipe a day, or another site I tried made you "pay" with a token currency to message matches), introducing some artificial "scarcity." Tinder took care of the time problem by making each encounter a two-second operation or less, but that exploded the choice factor and drove a race to edge where girls got more selective and guys got less selective.

In the grand scheme, the various apps are rotating novelties - toys with incremental feature changes that get swept up for a while until everyone has migrated to them and then everyone gets bored and tries another new one.

(Also the proprietor has an incentive to not match people up, use bots, etc to keep eyeballs on the site/app, but that's another story.)

[Dulceácido]

Great data sheet!

[Mess O.]

Still mired in my ongoing break since July, I'm now contemplating reapproaching Match as part of a comeback, by where I'd restructure my game from the ground up. Although this thread is tailored toward the 40+ crowd, I feel the advice given here can apply to me, given how I'm gettin' toward that demographic. Remembering the full brunt of the experience last time around, I'm in no hurry. If I do try online again, I'm going in with pro photos for sure, and far smaller message quotas, tailored toward the individual profiles.

[Shemp]

>>Really the underlying factor is they [over 40 women] would take anyone with a pulse just to avoid being alone and the fear of not being able to find someone again. There ARE elite older single women who are looking to complete the power-couple. These seem like a good catch on the surface since they have better self-esteem but I went to an icebreaker with one and she ran me through the gauntlet like it was a job interview. Too cold and calculating.

Yeah, the women you don't want cling to you, the women you do want regard you and 99% of men in general as undesirable.

Desire for validation is what mostly brings men and women together, much more so than "sex drive". Validation comes from sex and/or relationships with people generally considered attractive.

Older elite women are ALWAYS Alpha widows, unless they are not really elite (some hidden defect). That is, they have had sex and relationships with the top 1% of men in society. Unless you are another top 1% man yourself, you look bad in comparison to what these women have experienced previously, and all they can think is "I'd lose status if I went with him", meaning you. Younger women can be alpha widows too, but a younger woman feels like a failure if she is not having regular "mind-blowing" sex like Cosmopolitan tells her she should be having, so she's willing to take a lower status guy and then hamster herself into thinking he's actually top 1%. But older elite women do not feel like losers if they are not having sex. The physical need is usually weak and they can masturbate if it isn't weak, since society says masturbation is empowering when women do it, but pitiful when men do it. Older elite women are quite happy living alone and getting their need for social connections at all women luncheons where the "girls"' whoop it up laughing at the pathetic men available in the dating pool and their impotence problems.

When you've lived your youth amidst sexual abundance, and physical desire is mostly gone, it's easy to retire from the game and live on memories of how beautiful you used to be and how men used to fall at your feet, and that's the position of elite older women. Even elite women in their 30's are often heading in this direction. Which is why older men are sometimes not bullshitting when we say it's easier to get the adventurous 19 year olds than older elite women.

The non-elite older women are mostly horrifying.

Older guys should be preparing to leave the developed world, that's all there is to it. Don't bother making yourself attractive to elite women and you can save a bundle, making early retirement that much easier. Drive a junker, live with a roommate, eat at home, etc. Don't skimp on health, of course, since you'll need that after you retire.

[Cavorite]

I just signed up. Initial observations:

The response rate is better than any other online platforms. Presumably the pay factor limits the amount of guys to a certain extent.

The girls are largely average looking, with fewer top tier girls and fewer shit tier girls.

About 1 girl out of 50 will reply with a personalized rejection "sorry, you aren't my type but i wish you luck, etc." which I find hilarious. I assume these girls just get off on rejecting guys. Or are they stupid enough to think that men actually are anxiously awaiting her reply, instead of messaging hundreds of people? I asked one girl and she said she doesn't want to hurt anyone's feelings by not responding.

Women seem to expect me to go to a location close to them, and react very poorly when I suggest a neutral location. I also tried agreeing on the condition they buy the first round, and that went over even more poorly.

In summation: It's worth the $40 i paid for a month, but don't get sucked into a longer subscription.