I’ve heard from several people that dating apps for guys really puts them down and makes them feel self conscious and less than because of how hard it is to get a response from anyone. For us girls it’s so easy, likes come rolling in at a ridiculous pace. I can’t imagine feeling unwanted and getting no matches like that. What’s your take?
How do dating apps make you feel?
r/AskMen
Comments
Even though I’m repeatedly told I’m attractive I get no matches on dating apps so they make me feel unwanted. Maybe everyone is just being nice.
Those apps have probably increased the average suicidal feelings in its male users by like, 150% at least
Haven’t used one for many years, but it made me feel like I was wasting my time.
The only reason for it to exist was to serve me ads and try to get me to pay for premium memberships.
Either really good when I’m traveling and get 100-200 likes a day, or miserable in my country when I get 2-4 per day. It used to bother me somewhat but now I don’t even care about anyone in my country. So I just remember how great I do in other places and save all my money to continue traveling. I never message anyone first so not getting a response is not a problem. What bothers me more is when they message me and stop responding or unmatch after I respond but usually I just tell myself that they all have mental problems or whatever lol. Once in a while I get a very effortless hookup in my country where I can sense that they’re very interested from the first message, so I take what I can get until they expire and continue looking forward to my long term goal of leaving.
It’s a quick dopamine fix. People forget its original intent. It depersonalizes people. I do not recommend using them as it’s proven detrimental to one’s mental health and self esteem. Meeting people IRL (work, networking, hobbies, pursuing your interests, educational pursuits) is the better way.
Incredibly relieved that I’m too old to ever have had to bother with them.
I feel like a product, not a person. The nickel and diming of any sort of interaction is disgusting, but Match (who owns almost all the major apps now) made $3.5 Billion last year, so I guess everything is fine.
Like I’m a thirsty loser that is a joke to all females.
Dating apps are a hard one. As a guy I get a few likes but it’s so hard to tell how a person is and you gotta sort of guess from photos on the energy of a person.
Not my cup of tea as I’m in my thirties and prefer old school but when your busy working it’s the only way to put yourself out there
Being on dating apps can feel like being under evaluation. If we’re constantly rejected (fail to get matches or responses), then it’s natural to take it personally. We start to believe that there might be something wrong with us, which is why we’re unwanted. This fuels our insecurities and ultimately affects our self-esteem.
Overwhelmed initially, when you first join I think it puts you in front of a lot of faces so you get a bunch of likes per day, then after 2 or so weeks it dwindles to next to none or people you don’t find attractive. So for me at least, it inflated my ego only to deflate it.
Yeah I’m in the same boat, even buying all the premium features I’ve gotten like 2 likes (and 0 matches that I didn’t accept from the likes) this entire year, going back 12 months it was like 3. If I don’t use spotlights/boosts/whatever I doubt I’d ever get anything
It just reaffirms to me I’m ugly, it’s alright not everyone can be Brad Pitt. But yeah it definitely sucks when you try everything they recommend and get literally nothing for hundreds of dollars.
The negative things I’ve heard about them far outnumber the success stories.
For that reason, I’ve never downloaded any of them.
Not even that girls get a ton of likes, its they don’t even have to put effort in compared to guys needing to come up with opening messages all the time. No message is even more likely to get no response, but then wasting time to make messages to get a fraction more matches, which often also leads to no response
I’m a fairly decent looking dude, I wouldn’t consider myself conventionally “attractive”, but I’m not unattractive and I’ve at least had some really attractive girls show interest in me and date me. 10+ years ago when Tinder first came out and was the new big I did really well on it. Unlimited swipes for everyone, swiping right on someone made your profile a priority for when they were swiping, and no subscriptions.
Nowadays, if I try downloading a dating app I’ll get a bunch of matches within the first week which makes me feel pretty good, but then suddenly it’ll dry up. Things will fizzle out with the previous matches, because you can’t expect every match to be your soul mate, and there’d be no new matches coming in. Spend enough time like that and it gets very easy to convince yourself that you’re the ugliest dude on the planet and don’t deserve love. I had better luck deleting my account every 2 weeks and making a new one than I did trying to stick with 1 account and focus on the matches I had.
The system is designed to make you feel like shit, to make you feel like you’re incapable of getting matches without paying for their bullshit subscriptions that push your profile to the front of girl’s pages. With a model like that what happens is the only guys who get seen are the ones paying money, everybody else destroys their self esteem, and everybody loses. These companies have labeled guys as “desperate” and are doing their best to perpetuate that feeling so that they’re more and more willing to pay for their ever increasing subscription costs. The day Internet dating dies for good is the day I’ll actually start dating again, until then I am much, much happier staying single as I have the last 2 years.
Haven’t used one in a few years now, but they made me realize im more attractive than I thought
I mean, it’s usually pretty depressing, but occasionally getting a like from a nice girl does help boost your confidence a bit.
It’s tough but if u r smooth it works really good you just need to try for a lot of time. But when u put effort on it and take the time you can get at least a date a week.
Like shit
Best thing I did for my mental health and financial health was deleting the apps.
It’s really tough for most guys to get any matches at all, and even more rare that a match actually happens to want to meet up for a date
Dating apps made me feel disposable. Like I was just another face to be flicked away. Eventually I stopped trying. It was crushing
Definitely unwanted. I gave up on them for the most part because I might get one or two catfishes on average over a 6 month span but got no actual dates until about 4 years in. And that went well enough for the first month, but after a bad day I got ghosted. I have some profiles up, check them occasionally, but I haven’t gotten much of anything in the last 8 years. No dates, no messages. Maybe 1 or 2 likes a year. It’s dismal out there. Granted IRL isn’t any better.
I’ve hardened my heart to it, at this point, I just use hinge to crack myself up with the jokes I send in likes, and if they respond, so be it.
There was a guy who right swiped 2 million times and got 1 date.
What do you think the odds are that he will ever approach in person after having that kind of data informing him where he stands and what his odds are?
I don’t ‘feel’ any kind of way due to them because they’re just a platform.
Most of the women that I’ve met on apps have had a far worse time than I have because getting likes doesn’t mean much when most men swipe right on everyone without even looking.
Fuck those apps like bro I do great out in the wild and then I get on those shitty apps and feel like a 300lb tub of lard
Yo conocí a mi exnovia en Bumble así que creo que me fue bien ahí. En Tinder, solo habían perfiles falsos buscando likes en IG. O vendiendo contenido x
I suggest all you guys watch this 9 minute video to get a sense of what you’re really up against when it comes to these dating apps: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3lypVnJ0HM
I feel pretty good about myself, knowing that the quality of the women on a lot of these dating apps is a lot worse than the women I meet in any random real-life situation.
It just feels like a waste of time. Definitely in the past I’ve gotten down about it because it makes me feel like what the hell im doing wrong. Start saying oh if i was this or that then I would get matches. Then compared to the endless matches girls have, it just feels like bruh. So the couple matches you do get it feels like you gotta say the exact right things or it’s over. Honestly just not fun at all
Not bad. Sure they’re a superficial meat market where people lie about their appearance, personality, and lifestyle but you can find some good ones on there.
I met my wife on Tinder 5 years ago. No regrets!
They serve their purpose for me. Like any free product there’s benefits and drawbacks backs.
For example with hinge you have to be patient to get roses and picky who you give them to unless you spend money to bypass that. On all dating apps you have to put in some work on your profile and find people who have done the same. There’s far too many “make me laugh” types out there which gives the vibe that you work for them and the relationship is transactional rather than a partnership.
On a whole though if you get past that I’ve met some really wonderful people on dating apps, and had several good long term relationships. I can’t complain about my experiences.
More annoyed than anything to be honest, I hate how they make matching with people so difficult
44m It’s because online dating has become mainstream. I had more success before online dating went mainstream. I’m talking about early 2000″s when it was frowned upon and considered weird meeting a partner online (can you imagine that now) back then dating sites were for people who were shy or quiet and didn’t get out much and geeks. I met several of my ex’s that way. When I was 18/19 I even joined a dating agency where they’d send you matches via the post.
Not too terrible if you know how to use them and what they are for.
I usually line up 7-8 matches, schedule a date with the woman I like the most and keep the rest as back ups.
The problem is most of the women I date have less personality and emptional IQ than a turnip, so the turnover rate is high.
It’s kind of demeaning, I don’t think I’m an ugly dude but it’s hard, and even when you do get a match and send a message half the time you don’t get a reply. What’s the point?
was on pof, eharmony, and a few more until I met my wife in 2012.
apps were amazing. if a guy is: attractive, have social circle, athletic, job, college, can spend a little $ on dates; then dating was easy. and fun.
I had a few years of always having conversations going, could set up several dates a week, and even had times I couldn’t respond to ladies bc was busy w other ladies.
No hope, no humans on there just onlybots
Hinge made me feel awful. I think they systematically devalue certain people. I have never had a single match on hinge. Boo was ok. I got a few matches, some matches were even people I tried to match with on hinge which was infuriating. But the population on boo isn’t very large. But despite the matches I haven’t actually been on a date yet. My first match ghosted, even though we seemed really into one another.
And now my second match doesn’t talk much and I recently found out she’s asexual. So I’m now having to figure out an appropriate time to bring that up and discuss it with her, since asexuality is so different for different people. I’ve been single for nearly a decade, and am going to have to decide whether to give up on this seemingly amazing woman, or live a potentially sexless relationship. 🥲
I’m not bad looking by any means, and seem to have most of my shit together, as much as you can in this day and age. Still, dating in general has not been fun for me.
I feel like I’m cursed? Like no woman has any interest in me.
Like absolute shit.
I take care of myself, I am good looking, I can hold a conversation, I am not crazy, and its the same thing over and over
Match – I send a thoughtful message – zero response
Match – I send a thoughtful message – get one word responses
Match – we converse – responses stop
Match – we converse – do you want to buy my content
10 years ago it was great, now, it feels like a barren wasteland.
They’re the flat out most miserable results of the information age we have. They’re a soul crushing meat market and most people just seem to be bots or OF/instagram girls trying to build their following by directly targeting guys who might be alone.
I’ve had a woman tell me most women don’t bother using those apps so it leads me to think there’s no real point in them.
My wife and I met on OKCupid. It worked for us.
It kills my self esteem, i never really felt ugly and unattractive. But dating apps and dating sites makes me feel like a worthless piece of shit.
I never get any matches and the few likes i get are usually whales, mentally ill people or Asian women wanting a free ride out of their countries.
I have tried reaching out to people i meet through work recently tried asking a colleague out but was met with a swift no and sorry “im dating someone else” (i still see her on Facebook Dating, Tinder, happy pancake listed as recently joined and she changes pics frequently)
I feel unwanted and i recently noticed im spending alot of time feeling bad and being angry. Im not the person i wanna be, i want to be happy but i also want to experience love, build a family like my friends do.
Completely unwanted and unappealing. This even knowing that dating apps aren’t a fair representation of reality. Nothing creates resentment towards women faster than dating apps imo. I am lucky that I can deal with those emotions so nothing built up but yeah I have found its probably for the best to stay away from them. Just sucks as I guy who primarily likes to read as a hobby. If I want to meet women I would have to go out of my way to do so.
Realistic, I used one for a few months and it was the final proof that what the BPs were right about one thing: If you are not one of the top 5% of men then you need to learn to accept and learn how to thrive alone forever.
My point, I am ugly as hell and know it, i also respect that women hate being approached by ugly assed men like me and so I don’t.
While I was grateful for the closure it was also a painful truth to have to embrace.
Online dating sucks ass. It was so much easier to meet people in real life. Between the ages of 25 and 34, I was in relationships 90% of the time. Serial monogamist. Marriage ended Aug 2020 (COVID killed us). Been single ever since.
I met a girl recently and we’ve been hanging out but almost 5 years of being single is just sad and shitty
I get attention and matches on them so it does help me feel attractive. But it usually just ends up making me feel exhausted having to initiate, carry & fund every conversation and activity without a substantial amount of effort in return usually
As a deaf blind guy with no car, I’m worthless on the dating apps, so I don’t even try.
Tired.
Unless you’re a solid 9 or 10 in the looks department and have a six figure salary, six pack abs, six feet tall, and so on you’re better off staying off the apps. They are a waste of time and money for most men.
They made me feel bad about myself. Until I met someone in real life who is a lot of fun to be with.
I’m surprised at the amount of attention I get on the apps, and I am not even cherry picking my profile.
But what annoys me is how boring most of the women’s profiles are. Why would I bother match with you when you have no information on your profile?
It’s a waste of time and money. You can swipe everyday and still not get a match for weeks or months. Other guys may have it easier though. I do better in real life 🤷🏾
Like the biggest loser on the planet. It’s why I gave up.
Likes do come, but then you respond and they ghost you lol (girl here)
Dating apps remind me that in every city I go to, no matter what pictures I use, what my job is, or how i structure my profile, there are hundreds to thousands of beautiful women who are not attracted to me.
How do you think that would make someone feel?
Awful, but I found my fiancée on one, and there is zero chance we’d ever have crossed paths otherwise. So it was worth it.
Like I must be the worst guy in the history of humanity. Since I used online dating for 18 years and I never got a single match. Let alone talked to any women or a date out of it.
One of my friends found a gf on Hinge. Another also found his gf on the apps but said the apps were a nightmare. Another friend had little to no luck on the apps.
So it’s a mixed bag. You really have to go all out. The first friend hired a professional photographer to get some pics for his profile.
At best intrigued at worst, a little tired.
I think it’s pretty bad for women as well to be fair, an onslaught of likes/swipes from blokes most of who just want to get laid.
I’m sure it’s flattering but given the shotgun approach in the end kinda empty.
I didn’t mind okcupid back in the day (can’t say it was bad, it’s how I met my missus who is currently snoring next to me, though she denies she snores..) but the motives have changed behind how the apps are run/built.
They are fucked up.
As a girl, I hate it. I’ve only ever been on one first date with Dudes I get matches, but I feel like 90% of those matches were because they tend to swipe right on everybody. And I hate how bad men are at communicating on dating apps or they don’t even want a freaking relationship so i’ve given up on the apps
PS I decide that I didn’t wanna continue dating them. That’s why it’s usually one date.
I just signed up for tinder a couple days ago, and just deleted it. I would rather put my self through the anxiety of trying to approach a women.
Gave up on them years ago for the sake of my mental health. Like a lot of answers on here, I’ve been told by friends and family that I’m attractive and “what a lot of girls are looking for”. This translated into absolutely no success on the apps.
Being alone sucks, but the feelings these apps can give you sucks 100 times worse, so I swore them off for good. Since then, I’ve learned a lot of interesting things about how they work. In short, they exist to relieve lonely people (both men and women) of their money in the hope of finding a relationship. They don’t want you to actually find someone. They want you to keep shilling out money in the belief that “just one more upgrade” will finally help you find love.
Unwanted, unattractive, low self-esteem, bad about myself… the apps are just a waste of time
I appreciate you asking, I see you’ve gone with the “Mom” flair. I’m curious if maybe you have a son and he’s having some trouble. But don’t feel compelled to answer.
It can really take a toll on your self esteem. I won’t say I’m that bad looking, I get matches, but it’s hardly a lady I’m terrrrribly excited about. I’ve given up on dating apps and have just started doing it the old fashioned way, cold approach, warm conversation, a little humor and some light flirting. I prefer it that way, because at least in that moment, that woman is only talking with me.
On the apps, I can’t help but feel like women are just talking to every other guy and you feel invisible no matter how witty and charming you are and how good your curated photos are. Men and women have the opposite problems on dating apps.
Feels like im in the gauntlet where I have to say the right thing at the right time with the right selfies and the right type of life style or else its an immediate dud. My self worth tanks to the ground.
I spent almost 17 years on dating sites and apps with zero response messages and zero matches even with a year and a half of premium on a couple of them. How do you think I feel.
They’re geared towards woman. This means you’re the product.
Unless you pay, they’re gonna offer you the sweet service of fuck all.
I get zero matches online. I seem to do 10x better in person
It can be fun, if you go into it without expectations. The profiles let you find women who you have something in common with, which is great. But I find the women I meet in my day-to-day are significantly more attractive than 90% of my app matches, and generally less quirky and less likely to have baggage.
Like if I want to date someone who isnt objectively uglier and under my league I have to meet girls in different ways.
Lots of swiping, zero dates
Then again I can land dates if I first encounter women in-person, so it must be my online chatting manner that puts women off
Makes me feel unattractive. I feel like I’m trying to prove myself to people only talking to me out of boredom
I’m not a big fan of rejection so based on the countless stories I’ve heard I haven’t even tried downloading them. Closest I came is when I was nearly blackout drunk and thought downloading tinder might be a good idea, and then when I got to the account setup step that asks you to take a selfie, even my overconfident impaired decision making drunk self was like “hahahaha nope.” and uninstalled.
I don’t think I’m ugly, I just don’t think it’s worth it.
They’re fairly annoying because they are unfair playing fields by design, meant to get you to pay money to get a leg up, and the prospective partners on there are being bombarded with messages.
I have shitty pics and a crap bio and still manage to get a couple likes a week. I’ve even had dates, but not with women I actually find attractive. It’s frustrating because out of the hundreds of women who’ve swiped right, only a couple will be your type. Only a couple will reply, only a small amount will actually be willing to meet. I know if I presented myself better I would have more success, but honestly I’m not too sure I want to even try anymore.
In terms of me and dating. Online. It’s just like beating a dead horse
I watched a video yesterday on TikTok and it was a girl saying that you should put in your prompts on hinge that you want to go to festivals and then saying she got matches off guys begging her to come with to a festival. She said you can literally go to any festival that way or something. Or to put the name of the festival you want to go to.
Just when dating. Don’t be that guy! Don’t get used to go to a festival. For her to say I don’t see a connection between us!
Not for me.
I’m too much of an extrovert and I’m not afraid of confrontation.
I met my girlfriend and my ex on them, and did fine with getting matches in spite of being 5′-4″. Actually had a couple of my female friends trying to figure out what I did back when I used Tinder in grad school since I got 900 or so matches.
Apps are just a tool. And fwiw, I met a lot of women I’d see on apps at social functions I was going to at the time. Actually found a number of people were using them kinda as security blankets. Like I saw you at person at services- why didn’t you just ask for my phone number when you came to talk to me lol? Granted, I live in a big city with a lot of young people so maybe my experience is different. I’ve actually known girls complaining about trying to get dates with guys off the apps and saying they’re not matching or ghosting, or paying premium- and these are well credentialed, perfectly decent looking women mind you