I spent years getting frustrated on the apps, now I’m ending up marrying my best friend’s sister who I’ve known for 16 years and I was always too afraid to ask out. Turned out she was feeling the same way.
Life’s weird when you’re socially awkward.anytime i asked out an awkward shy girl she tells me to f off, despite flirting with me.
and of course the outgoing demanding women can’t get enough of me, even though I loathe them.
Really long story:
I once knew a girl in high school who I, in a rare moment of boldness while we were away from prying eyes, asked if she would be my girlfriend. She had been my friend for a short while and she fucking chuckled immediately in response, almost instinctively and said “No, sorry.”. My autistic ass did not exactly immediately understand why she laughed until I ruminated later.
That said, she seemed to be very friendly with me afterward, like maybe she felt bad and still liked me as a friend… And despite feeling hurt by the way she responded I still hung out with her every once in a while. She eventually got a hot confident boyfriend, because she was also hot. And I kind of started avoiding her because it hurt seeing her with a guy who I felt clearly was better than me, caused me to spiral into self loathing when I saw him. I did not know I was autistic, I just knew I was an infamously weird dork.
Fast forward ~11 years later I stumble into her and she looks like shes a different and much sadder person. I don’t want to body shame but she looked a lot worse and I was no longer particularly attracted to her, she was ok looking. She was going on about a recent break up with a guy who she said cheated on her to the bartender.
Now I’m polyamorous, and I legit don’t understand and actively dislike monogamy, but obviously I have a faint idea of how painful being cheated on would feel like, and she seemed super sad and I felt bad for her. After talking with her and catching up a little for like 20 minutes, she drunkenly tried to make out with me.
I got away from her and the internal anger I felt was supremely intense. Like, what the actual fuck, fuck you. You fucking said no and now that you’re washed up and depressed about your ex using me as a fall back.
I cannot describe the feeling of grief flare as well. Like, maybe if she had said yes back then. Maybe I could of had a normal romantic experience as a high schooler instead of being what I was. Sure maybe also wouldn’t have worked out like most relationships, but still. I was a really lonely fucked up high schooler with a completely empty romantic life. Just a void.
I’m doing better now romantically but I was also still having trouble getting any romance at this point in my life even 11 year later. I was still painfully lonely. But the absolute bitterness I felt toward her made even pity for her out the fucking window for me and my desperation for any intimacy dried up instantly in that moment.
Part of me wonders if I should have just gone for it and I was being petty. I don’t know. It just makes me kind of sad to think about.
The first time I asked my future wife out she said no to me. Straight no, I felt so bad that day. And the reason was that it felt unnatural at the moment, we were getting closer and I jumped to conclusions too fast.
I guess the moral of the story is you can get a second chance.
she didn’t tell you to f off though.
that’s very different than no.
So what you’re saying is literally every single girl you hit on told you to f right off?
Because if that’s true then it might be time to change strategy…
Hinge, Tinder, OkCupid, Plenty Of Fish and others are owned by one giant company called Match.com. You are not ugly, a monopoly just puts you down the pile by algorithm to prompt you to pay to increase your chances of more likes (that’s not to say that making your profile look good doesn’t matter). There are independent dating apps like Coffee and Bagel and Bumble, but either those apps don’t have many people or copying Match’s anti-consumer behaviour like Bumble does.
Can Lemmy be used for dating?
I bet someone did just that and succeeded
That really depends: are you looking for a nerdy man who lacks social skills or are you t4t and super online? If so, yeah probably. If not, feel free to try
I am a nerdy man who lacks social skills looking for a nerdy woman(ish person) who lacks social skills.
Any platform can be used for dating
I have read about people trying to use LinkedIn for dating, and I feel like that’s a red flag. Those men should probably be quarantined.
Everyone on LinkedIn should be quarantined.
Exhibit 1:
What the fuck‽
Oh yikes
Removed by mod
Sweet home Alabama, where the sky is so blue…
There’s Alovoa… an open source platform but it’s even less densely populated than Lemmy
Probably just messaging fake accounts/bots to make it look like women use the app but then real women get the flack for it
Yeah, that’s what they do. People don’t notice that? I’ve known several guys that worked this kind of jobs on and off when really strapped for money. Pretending to be women online. Unethical AF, of course, but this is more widespread than you could possibly imagine. And it’s not hard at all to get hired. I feel sorry for the dudes falling for it, though.
I do find that dating apps make me feel sexist. I have to remind myself that the women on Hinge are not representative of the female populace, otherwise I get bitter.
Same, the other sex around. Do not all. Men them, do not all men them.… She repeated through clenched teeth
What’s this “Helen Keller wasn’t real” meme? I’ve never heard (or seen) it
Just a dumb conspiracy theory where people either think a) she wasn’t actually blind and deaf, or b) she didn’t actually write the books she wrote and shrugs everything she achieved.
https://www.distractify.com/p/is-helen-keller-real-conspiracy
Goes perfectly well to match the stupidity of a populus who commonly has “likes to go to church” in their profiles. OP must live somewhere MAGA-ey.
Neither has she, lololol
I don’t get it.
Is it because she’s dead?
She was blind and deaf but yes she did in 1968.
sigh
It’s ok, that one got a chuckle outta me
He’s got a point about carbon copy profiles, they all blur together after a while, and it’s very difficult to find something interesting to talk about in a lot of them.
“fostering men until they find their forever homes.”
I see this one at least 10 times a day.
I know it’s meant to be positive but gives me horror to me, like Hansel and Gretel
it means she isn’t accountable for her actions that drive men away. you are smart to be afraid.
and on the first date she will tell you how all her exes are awful and it’s your job as her next boyfriend to fix all their mistakes. you basically start out the relationship with her in emotional debt, and you’ll never pay it off with the interest rate she is charging.
I have a suspicion it’s one of the default prompts. Or they’re just asking an AI or something.
“Hellen Keller wasn’t real” is an immediate swipe away from a profile. I don’t care if they’re joking or if they’re actually a nut job conspiracy theorist. If the latter, obviously we’re not gonna vibe, and if the former, that entire joke/line of thinking is prefaced on ableism and the idea that a deaf and blind woman could not have accomplished what she did, not to mention the erasure of a prominent socialist, suffragist, and activist. I fucking hate that joke.
Doesn’t matter had sex.
A VERY prominent and UNAPOLOGETIC socialist. The way history has defanged her turned her into a simpleton who learned to speak is an absolute appalling insult to the strong, principled woman she was.
Exactly! She’s one of my favorite historical figures, but when if she wasn’t, even if our politics did not align so well, she does not deserve to swept into the dustbin like this, liberal washed and eventually erased entirely. It’s disgusting.
There are absolutely a lot of awful realizations about how inhumanly the world treats people, but the realization that you don’t even get to have the legacy of the life you lived? That’s maybe the most heinous one.
This is the first I’ve ever heard about it, and I’m so confused
It started as a joke, and now there are actual people who believe that she was either not a real person, or that her accomplishments were faked. People with disabilities are already assumed to be lesser than able bodied people, and this particular trend is stripping away one of the most prominent examples to the contrary. It is also erasing one of the most prominent examples of a famous socialist woman in American history, and a southern American socialist woman at that. Her story is amazing, but more importantly, she is historically significant. She is an example to so many people, and she has been liberal-washed for a century, and now she’s being erased entirely. It’s disgusting.
Sickening. I had no idea she was being attacked in this way.
it’s a nothingburger that people online like to tilt at.
because they are all brave Knights errant, who are rescuing damsels or something.
where you around for Bonsai Kittens? lots of people lost their shit over that thinking it was some legit thing.
This is not at all comparable to bonsai kittens. Bonsai kittens were not at all based in reality. Hellen Keller was an actual, real human person who is being erased by idiotic conspiracy theorists. She was a disabled woman who overcame profound disability to become an incredibly example to millions of people, while also being a highly intelligent political thinker. She has been liberal washed for a century, and now she is being erased entirely. It’s not a funny little joke to disregard the accomplishments of someone who represents something that profound to people who are routinely discriminated against. The woman grew up at a time when disabled people were locked away in hospitals, homes, and attics.
Do you have any idea how utterly insulting it is to see people saying she could not have done what she did, or that she did not even exist, simply because they cannot imagine that a woman with her disabilities could learn language? As if to say that disabled people should be outright rejected because their experience is different from an an able bodied persons?
This has nothing to do with “rescuing damsels,” and the suggestion that it does is insulting in and of itself. The woman is dead, she cannot rescue herself, she deserves the recognition that she has lost. When she is taught in schools, it’s an abbreviated, liberal washed, abridged few paragraphs, when the reality is that she is one of the most important figures in the American disability rights movement, and one of the most prominent examples of a socialist woman in US history, especially southern American US history.
dude, idiots think bonsai kittens were real and were going around outraged about it.
just like idiots think helen keller isn’t real.
you are taking idiots way too seriously. please go outside and enjoy the sunshine and stop being ragebaited. you are not saving the world by being angry on the internet at stupid people. all you are doing is inflating your own ego and making yourself miserable.
I guess this is another moon landing flat earth sovereign citizen thing.
Tinder, Azar, Her, Hinge, match.com, meetic, Ok Cupid, Plenty of Fish, and The League are all owned by a single company.
The ratio of women to men on their dating apps are also wack.
How is that not an anti-trust issue? Each one started as an independent company trying to add value by bringing something new to the table, and they bought them all up to eliminate the competition and enshittified them all with the same profit-gouging algorithms.
Not to mention the concerted effort they made to make in-person dating a social taboo so that everyone literally depends on the dating apps to find potential partners.
Back before I gave up on dating, when I was still on reddit, I can’t tell you how many times I heard the same advice. “Don’t approach people in person, nobody wants to be bothered. Just use the apps where you know they want to be approached.”
That with the systematic minimization of the shittiness of the apps, and the victim blaming “just work on yourself bro, you must be a shit person if you can’t find a partner, so you’d find a partner if you could just stop being a shit person.”
Looking back, I wonder how much of that was astroturfing by the Match Group marketing department…
How is that not an anti-trust issue?
Because we live in the bad place. Conservatives are unlikely to pursue anti-trust unless they’re using it as a tool to hurt out-group (eg: they might try to break up an organization they perceive as being too queer).
We don’t have a strong left in the US. You get glimmers every so often - Lina Khan was trying to do anti-trust work, but then trump returned and that’s all moot.
A lot of problems would go away or be less bad if we stopped letting power consolidate. Unfortunately, this is the bad place.
Yeah, that’s so true. Ironically, anti-trust laws are more often used to help corporate interests maintain their monopolies and duopolies.
Any time a new startup comes in and threatens to claim a significant portion of the market share, these entrenched big business interests accusing them of “monopolistic practices” even though it’s literally the opposite. It’s plain old DARVO.
We do not live in a free market. That’s a myth told by the oligarch caste to enable and maintain their corruption, capture, and control of the market.
Feeld is there too. Their matching and like system is very much weighted towards paying not-cheap monthly prices.
This makes total sense!
I met my husband on Tinder in 2014, 3 years before consolidation in 2017. When I was using it it was only a joint venture with Match Group
I also had some success before 2014 on okcupid (initially owned by IAC which used to contain Match Group and has since separated from match group but Match group kept OkCupid) and POF (sold in 2015 to Match Group)
Makes sense to me why I had a way different experience on dating websites back when I was single compared to my single friends now.
Good lord they own basically all the major ones.
Also all the different “X People Meet” apps, but no Linux People Meet? 😭 /s
no Linux People Meet?
Are you sure there’s no transfemme one?
Also all the different “X People Meet” apps, but no Linux People Meet? 😭 /s
Tbh, isn’t that just Alovoa? I had never heard of it until I saw it on FDroid
Lmao an open source meet up app. Never heard of it, but interesting to know it exists
We meet here bro 😘
I met my girlfriend on IRC, we’ve been living together for 7 years now. She was trolling people with goatse pics and we started talking about philosophy and poetry etc and then it turned out that she’s a super cute canadian girl. This is usually not the story we tell people when they ask how we met.
That’s the most crazy story i have read and the best one probably
Also, THIS is how you are supposed to meet people online not with dating apps, dating apps just suck and make you choose the most sexy “option” and maybe their interests maybe
A girlfriend that trolls people with goatse? lucky bastard
You’d never guess if you just met her, she’s a 5’2 ballet dancer but she knows everything about various serial killers. People are complex, we have many sides.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them
Hey no kink shaming in the guild!
Holy shit, I didn’t think that was even possible. I can’t let myself start thinking that’s a possibility, I just can’t. That could lead to disaster.
This is usually not the story we tell people when they ask how we met.
Honestly, it’s a way better story than telling people you met on a dating app. And the ones that would be weirded out by the story are probably not people you’d want to spend a lot of time around
Fun fact: you can probably guess the ethnicity of Spencer Rascoff, the CEO of Match Group.
Reminded me of a terrible joke.
Why couldn’t Hellen Keller drive a car?
Because she was a woman.
Helen Keller wasn’t real
wat
you’re not real either, buddy.
Shut up Jaden Smith
Hellen Keller went with Goku and Sonic to take The Ring to Narnia for Zordon.
Deaf, blind, and socialist? She’s just woke propaganda
Dating apps are brutal for men, especially 4channers.
They’re terrible for women as well, just in a very different way.
What is it they say, dating apps for men are like being in a desert looking for anything they can drink.
Dating apps for women are like being in a swap; plenty to drink but none of it good.
No, the problem with dating apps for women is that there are tons of “regular” guys looking for a relationship, but because of the gender ratios there are also quite a few “top 5%” guys relative to the number of women. Guys that are very attractive and have great charisma, the kind you’d see on the bachelorette or similar shows.
What ends up happening is that most women will match with these guys (the same way men will swipe right on every supermodel looking woman just in case). So you have relatively few guys dating pretty much all the women they can, because our society says that sleeping with a lot of women if you can is a great way to show you have value. And for these men there are plenty of fish in the sea and no reason to settle down so they get labeled “fuckboys”. Fundamentally these men would normally be completely inaccessible to most women, but the gender ratios on dating apps create this situation where average men don’t get any matches and average women are only dating fuckboys who don’t want a relationship. Then they leave the app and quit dating for a bit out of frustration.
In a normal setting average men and women pair up over shared interests and goals, and fuckboys date supermodels (over their shared focus on aesthetic beauty and charisma I suppose).
Obviously this is an overgeneralisation. But it’s not exactly a gendered issue since if you flip the genders you’d other still get the same dynamic. The problem on these apps is the gender ratios. You can’t have health matchmaking when there are 10 men for every woman (or vice versa).
This wreaks of incel talking points. You’re literally doing chads and stacys here. I think the real problem may be more things like this:
Women tend to have realistic expectations and seek out partners their own age on dating sites. Men of all ages try to get with 22 year olds. 40 year old men who are bald, 50 lbs overweight, and with no real hobbies will message women in their 20s expecting a response. And they themselves will have a long list of weed-out criteria. No woman nearly as obese as he is. No women with children. No women over 30.
The data shows that women are much more reasonable in their partner expectations than men. This is likely what is largely responsible for the difference in gender ratios on the platforms.
Women on dating apps rate 80% of men below average and men rate 50% of women below average. You can say women are more reasonable but it sure doesn’t look like it.
What I said has nothing to do with chads and Stacey’s. It’s an outcome of an almost 4:1 gender ratios on dating apps. The outcomes are the same in anything that’s badly matched. 4:1 jobs to employees means employees will jump ship at the slightest hiccup seeking greener pastures with very little getting done. The opposite ratio is of course worse with employees being abused in every way like in every recession.
Any time the ideal ratio is 1:1 and you throw it off that hard you’re going to have dysfunctional human behaviour because we’re not designed to have so many options. We evolved in deep scarcity and a key aspect of our survival was optimizing our choices. When we have no choices, or too many choices we are dysfunctional. Fuck even too many brands of shampoo is stressful to choose from.
I’m not judging anyone or stereotyping anyone here. The same would happen with reversed genders. It’s just dysfunctional human behaviour because of shitty algorithms.
It’s actually not an incel talking point. If I remember correctly, this came out of plenty of fishes Data dives on their populace. They basically showed that some top X percentage of men got the vast majority of messages and interactions on the platform and that really emboldened the incel talking points. Also remember they did some dives on race and basically found out that Indian men and black women are matched at vastly lower rates than anyone else.
Anyway, I’m on team Go do things that interest you and never install dating apps. The people that work on these apps have a vested interest in keeping you an unhappy customer forever. So why would you pay them or give them your data? Because I mean if I was them I would make sure a free user never got his dick wet except in rare instances so that he would tell other people to get my app.
and think Helen Keller wasn’t real
wat? I’m not on any dating apps, is this a real conspiracy theory people believe?
there are many many more conspiracy theories out there that people believe than there is time for you to learn about all of them.
at least “designed to be deleted” part of it is truthful. Nothing else to be done with that garbage program.
Lol it’s so enshitified it’s designed to be deleted
I honestly can’t afford to lose my wife because there’s no way I would find another partner in the modern dating scene. I feel like the bar is way higher than it was in the early 2000s.
I felt exactly this way, and then my wife left me in at the start of this year. The apps are now a complete shitshow compared to when I last used them in ~2020, and I’m not in any kind of scene adjacent to dating. This isn’t directed at you (good luck in your marriage), but to anyone else reading this there is hope. I randomly bumped into a girl six weeks ago, plucked up the courage to ask for her number (I’ve literally only done this once in my life) and we’ve been going steady since. I now believe in karma and am happier than I’ve ever been.
social media has convinced folks anything less than perfect means your partner is a total loser.
and everything you possible do is wonderful and perfect and above and criticism.
it’s literally insane and the reason why most people are single. they want their partner to be like an elite marathon runner while they can barely walk 5 blocks without getting winded.
people were way more humble and chill before social media brain rotted everyone, but that was over a decade ago at this point. also has nothing to do with dating apps, it’s just how folks thing about relationships now.
I met a handful of people on dating apps, had some sex, and the relationships went basically nowhere. Every solid, long-term relationship I have had has come from going places and doing things with people. If I was single I’d start climbing again.
