Number one, prepare yourself emotionally. You will be hurt. Your feelings will hurt. Your ego will be bruised and broken. People will flake on you. People will ghost you. People will lie to you. It happens. You’ll likely get your heart broken once or twice before you have good experiences. Maybe you’ll get lucky and find a great one right away, but I won’t lie: it’s rough out there. Especially as you age.

Number two, there is no correct app, the ideal strategy is to just rotate through them and see who’s out there. Don’t take it personally if you don’t get matches or if people dump you mid-convo. It’s like a giant slot machine. They literally use gambling principles in their app design. They’re not meant to find you The One, they’re meant to keep you coming back to date more. That said, Bumble seems to be the most benign, or it was when I was using it. Tinder seems to be more oriented towards hookups, and the rest felt interchangable. Oh, and be prepared for a lot of people on the other side of the world setting their location to somewhere in the US in pursuit of finding an American husband to sponsor their immigration for them. Don’t spend too much time on them. And definitely do not use all of them at once. Install one at a time, maybe two, and try your luck for a month or two before moving on. Ideally, if you have other social connections, try to avoid the apps entirely if you can. They will take a toll on your mental health over time. They’re literally designed to.

Number three, don’t put too much pressure on yourself. Keep a casual mindset towards it and figure things out as you go. Don’t go around advertising your lack of experience. It’s literally nobody else’s business. I mean, if things go well enough it might come up but you’d be surprised just how much of it comes naturally.

It’s been a long time, but if I recall:

The apps suck. They sucked when I was dating and everything I’ve heard since is that they suck more now. Go in with low expectations, and look up how to create an engaging profile. Online dating is part marketing, which is probably why it sucks. The point is to get to meet people you wouldn’t otherwise meet, but it’s got a lot of drawbacks.

In the real world and with online dating, best thing to do is to go have fun and genuinely get to know people. Not just people you want to date, either, but generally. You will vastly increase your dating pool if you increase your overall exposure to other people, and if you have fun doing it then it won’t feel like a chore. That, and lots of women will be attracted to someone who is a good hang. Find activities with mixed genders being done by people in your age range.

In either case, don’t take things too seriously. It’s okay to tell someone you like them, and if they’re not interested, let them know it’s not a big deal. There’s a lot of social pressure built into dating that doesn’t need to exist. If you can be forward in a respectful way, and also take rejection in a way that shows you’re not getting weirdly overinvested, you’ll feel better and more confident in being vulnerable. If you do it right, you’ll also get a good reputation as someone who won’t play weird games or get overly dramatic.

The people who are good at dating and actually enjoy it are out having fun with other people and then occasionally following the signs when there’s chemistry. If you treat it like a chore or an existential crisis, it’s going to be unpleasant. I think that’s why you hear stories of people “giving up” on dating and then ending up meeting someone shortly thereafter. The lack of expectations and pressure makes it easier to be authentic, which is what people are looking for in the first place, whereas being too overtly focused on finding sexual or romantic partners can come off as desperate or aggressive.

So yeah, make friends, men and women, try to go outside your current social circle, and do it in ways that you find fun and interesting. In many ways it’s a numbers game, and you just need to meet enough people.

Doesn’t hurt to take care of your physical appearance, either. Groom yourself properly, wear clothing that fits, and dress in ways that signal the types of women you want to meet. If you like preppy women, dress preppy. If you like punks, get punk. If you like normcore, be normcore. Just be intentional and women will notice.

There’s no science to this, but it does come naturally if you let it.

i met mine through a dating app a long time ago, get rekt nerds i got it before capitalism hypermonetized it

even then i got spammed with proto-incels. dating apps are filled with this baseline level of incel/evil dudes that will lead with sexually harassing, negging, and insulting you and wonder why they dont get dates, they’re permanent fixtures in the system. if you dont get any dates, don’t take it as some jab against you, its likely many women are being spammed by bots and incels and cant even see your message. i got around 1000 messages a month when i clearly stated i was a trans woman and a communist, i had to filter through them with a fine toothed comb to find my SO. glad as fuck i did though theyre hot and amazing

remember that for a lot of people dating has replaced bullying as an arena in which they can treat other people like shit to try to make themselves feel better. so when it happens to you (ie when you get ghosted or stood up or whatever), it’s about them, not about you

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if you are going to use the apps, make an effort to be communicative and specific in your profile as much as you can (without subjecting people to impenetrable bricks of text) and try to message people who do the same if you are looking to cut down on unpredictability. I have not used an app in ~3yrs but always liked OKCupid for being more text-forward and giving users basically as much or as little space as desired to explain who they are / what their deal is. remember that people can see you too and need something to go on, and if you’re in a major urban center there’s potentially a lot of you!

as a cishet man most likely you will have to shoot a lot of shots for using the app to be in any way worth your time. IME to do this and not lose your mind I found it helped to 1. limit my app time to specific stretches of the day and 2. immediately mindflush profiles after messaging until or unless one gets a reply, which will be maaaaaybe 5% of the time if you’re lucky and/or have a good hook somewhere in yr profile.

just by sending a message that indicates you actually scrutinized some sort of detail in their profile and made an effort, and by not being immediately gross/aggressive/defensive in chats, you are already improving on many of your fellow cishet male users so consistent effort will likely pay off in terms of getting dates. from there just trust your instincts every step of the way as you assess the situation / the other person, is the only advice I feel comfortable giving.

above all else, beware the overall (potential) mental hazards associated with placing oneself in a “market” so directly, and just the overal shittiness of the execution.

Am I really that out of touch that I think dating apps are a waste of time? For me, the strategy for finding a date was always the same as finding friends. Join social organizations and meet as many people as possible. Apps make it seem like a personal problem when most people are perfectly dateable, the problem is that they know 6 people and two of them are ones elderly neighbors.

If you meet enough people, you will click with some fraction of them, and a fraction of that fraction will be dating material. Maybe an app helps with those numbers but it just seems like unnecessary extra work to me.

Even years ago when they were less bad I (trans, bi) found the apps good for flings and bad for relationships.

I would say, if you’re doing any dating, most dates won’t end in anything lasting. If you don’t enjoy the process of dating you are going to have a bad time. Even when it’s going well it’s full of just not clicking, awkward bores, and creepy weirdos. To even get to the point that you’re talking to someone involves a lot of rejections.

If you are trying to get dating over and done with then you are going to get very frustrated and possibly very bitter.

So just… try to enjoy it. I know that sounds ridiculous but like don’t burn yourself out sending greetings, stop when it sucks. Don’t try keep conversations going with someone who sucks at them or isn’t feeling it cause you’ll get hurt. Say hi to people (not literally just “hi”), enjoy a chance to see people from different slices of life and find out a bit about them. If something doesn’t go where you want it try to focus on the bits you did enjoy and don’t beat yourself up.

You walk past thousands of people every day without making a connection, you don’t wish those people ill you’ve just got your own life going on. Don’t take disinterest in you personally and don’t be cruel to people you’re disinterested in.

It’s bad, I’d say skip the firms operating it for profit or just have profiles up assuming it won’t work or only by chance. They are not trying to pair people up and lose them. These things can function, it’s been done, but there are some obvious conflicts of interest. OKcupid though owned by Match has been mostly neglected and at least allows anyone to message anyone, and have it show up and you can just respond and exchange phone numbers. If you’re already in the zuckbook DB, and the option is available, might as well use their “Dating” feature. They have no significant incentive to fuck with people, there’s no subscriptions or anything they try to sell.

The most success I ever had with meeting people online was not in dating centric spaces, like I had much more luck meeting people through local interest groups where you have a chance to be seen interacting with other people and there’s a good well of common interest to dip into, dating apps are death imo. Ive known people that do ok on them but they’re good at finding partners anywhere.

All the straighties I know in electronically forged LTRs seemed to use hinge.

Dating apps all sucked for me, met my fiancé IRL completely unplanned, so I don’t have any advice on that front.

What I will say, is be honest and genuine, and treat your date with respect, like a human. I know that’s obvious, but from the women I’ve spoken to, cishet dating is hell, period, especially with all of the PUA nonsense.

Just go on dates hoping to have fun and make a friend (or not), and if the vibes are great, try to go on follow ups!

be 18-22 at a university with a gender ratio that doesn’t kneecap you.

Get some nice outfits and have someone take nice pictures of you for your profile.

Also, the new meta is spawncamping. When you install the app immediately swipe no till you exhaust all your local options. Then wait a day and swipe yes on the new profiles. All those profiles will be new, you can hit them with, “it’s so cool we both just found each other so quickly it must be ment to be”

Took me about 1month to get my first date (and relationship via a dating app) I used 2 different apps on an almost daily basis for small amounts of time daily like 20-30mins.

Be ready for this to take some time. Its unlikely you will find a relationship within one month of using a dating app like I did. Mention basic stuff if you have pets etc. be straightforward about stuff like that weeds out people that want/dont want stuff like that. Im not sure how important it is for you to date other radicals (but if it is) make that clear in your profile and/or straight up state your a communits/anarchist etc. My first date and I talked about palestine in our first exchange. I will say its probably easier to date (find) someone who is less radical then you just as a warning.

Dont fall for scams.

I know its obvious but if you got some decent photos use them.