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As someone recently single for the first time in over 14 years... it was an eye opening experience to see how things had changed. Online dating is very much a

As someone recently single for the first time in over 14 years... it was an eye opening experience to see how things had changed. Online dating is very much a skill, and books I have read point and tell me even more. My short version of what I have learned (and have succeeded with): 1. Appearance matters, but more so for females 2. For men, it is more important that you convey what you are doing than absolute attractiveness. Women are most attracted to “rocket ships”, people that are going places with their lives (it doesn’t matter your current state). Also, I recommend Hinge over most of the apps out there... for what it is worth, I have had my most success there, including the girl I am currently dating. Just my two cents...

carabiner 6y ago
Always calibrate the dating advice by the attractiveness of the person giving it. It's just a very different game for different types of people.
- akavi 6y ago
  I'm reminded of a 6 ft tall, blonde roommate I once had who advised me to "make sure your photos have you doing something in them, so the women you match with have a hook to start the conversation with.". (If you don't see what's hilarious about that advice, you are either not a man, are extremely attractive, or haven't ever used a dating app)
  - carabiner 6y ago
    I have male friends who get approached by women in bars, rather than the other way around. I guess their advice would be "go to bars and just wait, someone will notice you." I go to bars and this has never happened to me in my life.
    - WalterBright 6y ago
      Back in the days when I went to bars, I'd tease a handsome friend of mine that his pickup line was "ok".
    - flukus 6y ago
      For me the ban on smoking in bars was a great leveler, smokers would have to go outside and hang out with people that are all in different groups inside and everyone would chat to each other. Obviously "take up smoking" is bad advice, but is there anything else that forces cross group interaction like this?
      - 29083011397778 6y ago
        Taking up smoking may be bad advice, but keeping your (smoker) buddy company outside sounds like a reasonable way to mingle.
    - kinghtown 6y ago
      I’m reasonably good looking, but I’m really into weightlifting so I guess that’s why women will approach me first sometimes. There are genetic limits to strength but fitness and being in shape are psychologically attractive to women. A lot of guys would be attractive if they would at least do the minimum requirements for maintaining their health. But I digress. Guys who complain about women ignoring them are usually themselves ignoring lots of women around them who would be suitable for them but they aren’t good enough for whatever reason. I’ve seen it SOOOOO many times when average looking guys complain about how shallow girls are or how good looking guys have it easy (this second point isn’t exactly completely untrue mind you) yet they still focus on the most classically attractive women they know or at the bar wherever who are out of their league. If average looking guys were to spend more time on themselves- grooming, having a hobby outside of work/tv/games, fitness, reading a book once in a while- they would be surprised to see how the world around them will change. Also there are lots of good girls who may not be supermodels looking to date regular guys. At least give them the green light once in a while.
      - throway98752343 6y ago
        I'd go out with two friends: one was very fit/muscular and charismatic, the other was tall and functionally mute. The tall guy was constantly approached by women. Never saw it happen with the fit guy. Anecdotal sure, but the results were consistent across many bars and clubs. All that to agree with the ancestor comment about taking this kind of "if you build yourself they will come" advice with a grain of salt.
        kinghtown 6y ago
        Girls love tall guys. This is true. I’m also willing to bet that your tall mute friend is more attractive than you probably realize. Being tall for all I care could be the male version of having big boobs. This doesn’t change anything about what I said. Please imagine how much worse your friend would have it if he were overweight and boring. Also, you should build yourself irregardless of women. Reading is good for you. Exercise is good for you. Having a passion is good for you. Coincidentally, these are all signifiers of someone who would be a good dad. Most guys are clueless how women approach men and often don’t even realize when women are coming onto them. It’s never (or rarely) as crass as “hey let’s fuck”. It’s more like they take initiative to say hi first and ask follow up questions. Maybe your fit friend is too passive??
    - 300bps 6y ago
      I am 6’7” and have met most relationships in bars. They usually begin with the woman saying something like, “OMG how tall are you!?”
      - jl2718 6y ago
        I think you’ll find that this is a sub-optimal strategy for acquiring the benefits of stable partnership.
        rhizome 6y ago
        I think you'll find that if you learn what "300bps" means that your relationship advice might be wasted effort. ;)
demarq 6y ago
hey can you suggest some books?
- aerophilic 6y ago
  I can, but depends on your stage of the dating “funnel”. Here is my advice in a nutshell: Imagine dating as a funnel, where you have the following steps: 1. Your profile (landing page) 2. Initial message 3. Banter 4. Initial phone call 5. 1st Date 6. Follow up banter 7. 2nd date 8. Deepening of relationship 9. Go/no-go determination Where I personally initially struggled was the first two steps. What I learned most was there is an art to taking good profile pics. Doing a great job here makes 95% of the difference. Learn how to take the best profile pic you can. We can’t help our natural attractiveness, but even the best looking guy can look horrible if they don’t focus on this. Best way to help yourself is use an objective “scoring” method. I used this site: https://www.photofeeler.com https://www.photofeeler.com It is somewhat painful initially (as you get scores below 5), but if you work on taking better pictures of yourself... it gets better, currently my best pic is a 9.4/9.5/8.0... but it took me literally 3-4 weeks of taking TONs of photos... I started at 4.5/4.8/4.5. Once you master your pics, then you need to practice grabbing their attention, and keeping it. I can go farther, but hopefully that helps at least a bit.
  - demarq 6y ago
    Thanks for your detailed reply, there's clearly a lot more to it than I thought
symlinkk 6y ago
Awful advice. Attractiveness doesn’t matter for women, you can sign up as a female without a picture at all and you’ll still get more matches than an average man. And women don’t care what you do for a living unless it’s something flashy like a rapper. I’m a software engineer and I get rejected by women working at Chick Fil A.
- aerophilic 6y ago
  100% agree on the fact women get a ton more interest, there are studies and blogs about it, including this experiment: https://jonmillward.com/blog/attraction-dating/cupid-on-trial-a-4-month-online-dating-experiment/ https://jonmillward.com/blog/attraction-dating/cupid-on-tria... However, what is interesting, and what they talk about in the link above, a highly attractive women (good pics), will get 10-20x the interest than just an “okay” looking woman. To your point on software engineer... no woman really cares too much... (unfortunately). There are dozens of software engineers already expressing interest in her, the question that you need to answer for her is “What makes you special?” Can you make her laugh? Do you and her share common interests, etc. Anyway, not a professional here... all of this is based on my observations and “intense learning” over the last 3 months of being single again.
- baccheion 6y ago
  "Engineers are boring, though" ... Many swiping on women are bots or males that swipe on everyone. A bit of an illusion. On the other hand, women do have an easier time. For example, even on OkCupid from back in the day women had a higher response rate when sending the first message (compared to men sending the first message). The thing most beneficial for women online (in addition to being prey rather than predator) is the gender skew. There are usually 2x as many males compared to females, leaving the top 50% of women (the ones seen as viable) gobbled up by the top 25% of males. With a bit of a skew in the swipe ratio, the top 20% of males (ones the top 80% of women are chasing) are enough to take all viable/acceptable women.

carabiner 6y ago

Always calibrate the dating advice by the attractiveness of the person giving it. It's just a very different game for different types of people.

akavi 6y ago
I'm reminded of a 6 ft tall, blonde roommate I once had who advised me to "make sure your photos have you doing something in them, so the women you match with have a hook to start the conversation with.". (If you don't see what's hilarious about that advice, you are either not a man, are extremely attractive, or haven't ever used a dating app)
- carabiner 6y ago
  I have male friends who get approached by women in bars, rather than the other way around. I guess their advice would be "go to bars and just wait, someone will notice you." I go to bars and this has never happened to me in my life.
  - WalterBright 6y ago
    Back in the days when I went to bars, I'd tease a handsome friend of mine that his pickup line was "ok".
  - flukus 6y ago
    For me the ban on smoking in bars was a great leveler, smokers would have to go outside and hang out with people that are all in different groups inside and everyone would chat to each other. Obviously "take up smoking" is bad advice, but is there anything else that forces cross group interaction like this?
    - 29083011397778 6y ago
      Taking up smoking may be bad advice, but keeping your (smoker) buddy company outside sounds like a reasonable way to mingle.
  - kinghtown 6y ago
    I’m reasonably good looking, but I’m really into weightlifting so I guess that’s why women will approach me first sometimes. There are genetic limits to strength but fitness and being in shape are psychologically attractive to women. A lot of guys would be attractive if they would at least do the minimum requirements for maintaining their health. But I digress. Guys who complain about women ignoring them are usually themselves ignoring lots of women around them who would be suitable for them but they aren’t good enough for whatever reason. I’ve seen it SOOOOO many times when average looking guys complain about how shallow girls are or how good looking guys have it easy (this second point isn’t exactly completely untrue mind you) yet they still focus on the most classically attractive women they know or at the bar wherever who are out of their league. If average looking guys were to spend more time on themselves- grooming, having a hobby outside of work/tv/games, fitness, reading a book once in a while- they would be surprised to see how the world around them will change. Also there are lots of good girls who may not be supermodels looking to date regular guys. At least give them the green light once in a while.
    - throway98752343 6y ago
      I'd go out with two friends: one was very fit/muscular and charismatic, the other was tall and functionally mute. The tall guy was constantly approached by women. Never saw it happen with the fit guy. Anecdotal sure, but the results were consistent across many bars and clubs. All that to agree with the ancestor comment about taking this kind of "if you build yourself they will come" advice with a grain of salt.
      - kinghtown 6y ago
        Girls love tall guys. This is true. I’m also willing to bet that your tall mute friend is more attractive than you probably realize. Being tall for all I care could be the male version of having big boobs. This doesn’t change anything about what I said. Please imagine how much worse your friend would have it if he were overweight and boring. Also, you should build yourself irregardless of women. Reading is good for you. Exercise is good for you. Having a passion is good for you. Coincidentally, these are all signifiers of someone who would be a good dad. Most guys are clueless how women approach men and often don’t even realize when women are coming onto them. It’s never (or rarely) as crass as “hey let’s fuck”. It’s more like they take initiative to say hi first and ask follow up questions. Maybe your fit friend is too passive??
  - 300bps 6y ago
    I am 6’7” and have met most relationships in bars. They usually begin with the woman saying something like, “OMG how tall are you!?”
    - jl2718 6y ago
      I think you’ll find that this is a sub-optimal strategy for acquiring the benefits of stable partnership.
      - rhizome 6y ago
        I think you'll find that if you learn what "300bps" means that your relationship advice might be wasted effort. ;)

demarq 6y ago

hey can you suggest some books?

aerophilic 6y ago
I can, but depends on your stage of the dating “funnel”. Here is my advice in a nutshell: Imagine dating as a funnel, where you have the following steps: 1. Your profile (landing page) 2. Initial message 3. Banter 4. Initial phone call 5. 1st Date 6. Follow up banter 7. 2nd date 8. Deepening of relationship 9. Go/no-go determination Where I personally initially struggled was the first two steps. What I learned most was there is an art to taking good profile pics. Doing a great job here makes 95% of the difference. Learn how to take the best profile pic you can. We can’t help our natural attractiveness, but even the best looking guy can look horrible if they don’t focus on this. Best way to help yourself is use an objective “scoring” method. I used this site: https://www.photofeeler.com https://www.photofeeler.com It is somewhat painful initially (as you get scores below 5), but if you work on taking better pictures of yourself... it gets better, currently my best pic is a 9.4/9.5/8.0... but it took me literally 3-4 weeks of taking TONs of photos... I started at 4.5/4.8/4.5. Once you master your pics, then you need to practice grabbing their attention, and keeping it. I can go farther, but hopefully that helps at least a bit.
- demarq 6y ago
  Thanks for your detailed reply, there's clearly a lot more to it than I thought

symlinkk 6y ago

Awful advice. Attractiveness doesn’t matter for women, you can sign up as a female without a picture at all and you’ll still get more matches than an average man. And women don’t care what you do for a living unless it’s something flashy like a rapper. I’m a software engineer and I get rejected by women working at Chick Fil A.

aerophilic 6y ago
100% agree on the fact women get a ton more interest, there are studies and blogs about it, including this experiment: https://jonmillward.com/blog/attraction-dating/cupid-on-trial-a-4-month-online-dating-experiment/ https://jonmillward.com/blog/attraction-dating/cupid-on-tria... However, what is interesting, and what they talk about in the link above, a highly attractive women (good pics), will get 10-20x the interest than just an “okay” looking woman. To your point on software engineer... no woman really cares too much... (unfortunately). There are dozens of software engineers already expressing interest in her, the question that you need to answer for her is “What makes you special?” Can you make her laugh? Do you and her share common interests, etc. Anyway, not a professional here... all of this is based on my observations and “intense learning” over the last 3 months of being single again.
baccheion 6y ago
"Engineers are boring, though" ... Many swiping on women are bots or males that swipe on everyone. A bit of an illusion. On the other hand, women do have an easier time. For example, even on OkCupid from back in the day women had a higher response rate when sending the first message (compared to men sending the first message). The thing most beneficial for women online (in addition to being prey rather than predator) is the gender skew. There are usually 2x as many males compared to females, leaving the top 50% of women (the ones seen as viable) gobbled up by the top 25% of males. With a bit of a skew in the swipe ratio, the top 20% of males (ones the top 80% of women are chasing) are enough to take all viable/acceptable women.