This is the real answer. Every guy I know who REALLY has a huge axe to grind with online dating will show me their profile and they will have low quality photos with little effort put in to their profile itself. If someone can't tell what the hell you actually look like or get a good feel for your real personality then why are they going to be interested?

If anything money should be spent on improving the profile itself (you could hire a professional photographer to take some "candid" looking nice photos of yourself + go to a higher end hair cutter, get your clothes tailored, etc etc). All of these things would probably also help you in real life. Worst case you have some great LinkedIn photos or something to send your family and some great fitting clothes to wear to dinner with friends.

>"If someone can't tell what the hell you actually look like or get a good feel for your real personality then why are they going to be interested?"

You're absolutely right that most men could stand to improve their profiles. However in the article the writer mentions how the photos she saw seemed designed to fit some template of what is supposed to be attractive, and that she was a little wary of how professional they appeared, so this can go both ways. Overall, though, it seems far better to have higher quality photos even if they appear staged.

One of the biggest challenges, however, is that the nature of these apps means that to 'get a good feel for your real personality' people must somehow get that across in only a few seconds before the person on the other end swipes on to another profile. With margins like that, and so little to work with, it is daunting and seemingly impossible to try and write something compelling enough to capture attention in a consistent way.

I don’t know. For Hinge I definitely can instantly reject some people. But if I find them attractive I’ll look through the whole profile and try to see if I like who they’re presenting themselves as. They say it’s a numbers game - and quantity is important. But the optimal breakdown between quantity and quality actually still weighs pretty heavy on quality.

If I match with someone I want to be able to convey that this person gives me a strong vibe of compatibility. It makes the next steps of conversing and meeting a natural conclusion. I don’t think you can do this if you don’t know what you’re looking for or who you are or what life you’re trying to live. But this is all very straightforward if you can make it clear you’re looking for something specific - in my case a spouse to raise children with. Without a goal the path is not clear.

I found Hinge to be heavily skewed towards well-off professional women looking for well-off professional men. (Can't speak about the men since I only looked at women.) Other than that the mechanics seemed pretty typical. There were fewer bots, sex workers, and badly done profiles than on Tinder, which was nice.

> I did put a lot of work into my profile - going on dozens of dates, learning from the bad matches how I could signal incompatibility earlier, and generally just going head first into the trial-by-fire of online dating for the first time.

I think why so many guys get mad at the apps is they just don't have the resilience for that amount of rejection. It's very easy to get disheartened when you match with someone, talk for a few days and ask them on a date only for her to not be interested. It's so easy to get mad when this happens and just go "F this entire thing", but you have to keep telling yourself that it's part of the process and keep going.

I've had a rather positive experience on Hinge but I think one of the main reasons is I set the expectation for myself that there will be alot of rejections.

Right. What I’ve learned is that if they aren’t interested in having a conversation with you the day you match (back and forth, chatting for an hour or two) then it’s not going to go anywhere. If they’re not trying to meet up after that first conversation, it’s not going to go anywhere. If they don’t message back within a few hours of the first date, it’s not going to go anywhere.

Chatting for a few days before asking them out isn’t wrong - but you can get to the same natural conclusion much quicker and with less pain by trying to have a good conversation right away and then asking them out the next day.

As for fearing rejection - I managed that by putting myself in the position of being the rejector. I showed up to each first date looking for problems, not trying to see if things could work. If I didn’t feel like there was potential I’d reject them an hour or two after the date ended. If you are not being as picky as they are then you could give off the impression that you have low standards. What person wants to feel like they’ve been picked for their appearance alone?

Dang, I remember when SF was reputed to be a cis man's dating paradise. With all the gay dudes I had heard rumors that the ratio was something like 3 women to 1 man.

By Bay Area, do you mean SF? Because outside of that, you're going to exhaust your swipe supply pretty quick.

No, peninsula. I don’t swipe much. I feel more confident when I’m not doing all of the selling at the start. So I just sort through the likes.

I’m not an unattractive guy, but I’m also no movie star.