Dating : My experience of spending money as an average looking 20s male in online dating

Dating : My experience of spending money as an average looking 20s male in online dating

So I’m very average looking guy. Solid 5/10 or 6/10 I’ve been told. That bumps up to 7/10 or 8/10 with personality, according to my women friends. Which I get, my face isn’t the best looking. I’m an average build (not overweight on BMI, but not ripped or anything). I dress nicely, keep up the hygiene, etc. I definitely am not one of those guys on here who claim their average, but look like they could star in the lead role of a wes anderson film.

So I went about this past month on essentially creating an average profile (full body shot, clear face shot, shot with friends, shot with my dogs, shot traveling, etc). Had my bio reviewed by some women friends to see if they liked it and made sure it was good. Then I set out. I decided to go about all out. I’m in my mid 20s for an age reference. I went and made a bumble, tinder, okcupid, eharmony, and hinge account. Then spent money where I could. Bought the boosts to use at peek times once a day (sometimes twice). Got premium accounts where I could. Even tried to see what would happen if I bought 30 USD worth of super likes on bumble.

1. Overall – Pretty much every site, a majority of the women I was seeing were overweight or had kids. Which is fine, but that is simply an observation I had. Also, a lot of instagram advertisers. I pretty much saw a pattern that if they had their instagram handle in their description/about me page; they were there advertising. Super likes NEVER worked. Don’t buy them.
2. Eharmony – Honestly, this was probably the worse one. They didn’t offer a single month subscription and it was pretty expensive to subscribe. A majority of my matches didn’t read messages or viewed my profile to even look. I suspect this was more of an issue with inactivity/quantity. That being said, the matches I was getting/audience I was viewing was not exactly what I was looking for. I simply set my filter to 20-32. A large portion of the matches I would get were in their 30s. Those that weren’t usually had kids. Finding no kids 20s women on this site was nearly impossible. I ran out of matches in a month in a city of 3 million. I met one gal on there that we got along pretty well, however she was 7 years my senior. I wanted to travel and do more adventurous things with my future SO, but she was ready to settledown/have kids quickly. So we decided we weren’t on the same page.
3. OkCupid – This one certainly had its activity, however I think the design is a bit skewed. Some people have had good success on this one and I had a few replies, but was never liked by anyone. A large portion of the profiles I was seeing said « I can’t see likes, message me! 😉 » or something along those lines. The app also forces you to do their version of swiping. You can go to discovery and say sort by everyone who has recently been online. They will actually NOT show you everyone in the discovery tab. You can go to the double take (their version of swiping) and see people currently online that are NOT showing up in the discovery tab. I suspect it is because they want to force people to use this side. However, I suspect that most interactions are simply message based. The women don’t seem to be using the swipe/like feature much and simply read through their messages. Many times I would message someone and get an error that their inbox is full.
4. Bumble – This was probably the most successful one. I had a lot of matches with pretty good looking women with good profiles who simply never responded/initiated chat. So they would expire. I did get a good match with a really cool woman and we went back and forth for a week. She went on a whole spiel about looking for something serious, long term, etc. Which I said that is exactly what I was looking for. Decided to meet up on a date. She got sick and she rescheduled for next week. This went on for about a month till she decided to leave the city for 4 months. That was a bit confusing. But a majority of the matches I got were no responses, low effort responses, or advertisements.
5. Tinder – This one I didn’t really have a lot of success with. I got a lot of matches with bots. The amount of bots on this app far exceeded the other apps. I got a few matches, but it wasn’t nearly as many as bumble or the other apps.
6. Hinge – I didn’t have any success with this one personally. Not sure what the draw of this one recently is. Population seems pretty low and pretty much the same experience as Bumble.

Another observation I had was that a lot of apps tried to get you to spend money. Women, from what I understand, don’t have to deal with this as badly since most guys swipe right on everyone. But they would say « You have 20 likes » and would never put those that liked you to swipe right. I remember I tested it without subscribing for a week, maxing out my likes on tinder. Never once matched with someone despite having 20 likes. The minute I subscribed they all showed up. Okcupid also did similar things. They would also reshow you people that you swiped on or messaged. So I would get a like, swipe left/not interested. Then the exact moment I was no longer subscribed/my premium sub lapsed; it say I had 30 likes. Well it was showing you everyone that liked you recently, even ones you swiped left on while you were subscribed.

I also have 6 good women friends who are very attractive. They are certainly the the center of attention when we go out drinking. So I often asked their advice on my profile and essentially what their experiences are with online dating. Every single one of them didn’t take online dating seriously. It was more of a game/distraction thing for them for when they were bored/wanted a date for the night. Most guys I meet go in expecting to meet their next girlfriend while the women I’m friends with go into it like they’re playing a game/not giving a care at all. No expectations, just bored.

Conclusion – Online dating is NOT worth spending money on. They really try to take advantage of you. I have been 30 times more successful in real life just approaching random people than doing online dating. Online dating seems to be most successful for women or guys who are pretty attractive. Online dating is a very physical/appearance centric way of dating. For average guys, it will kill your self confidence. Big time.