My advice to those starting their dating app journey would be to time box your usage; give yourself at most a few months a year on the app. Uninstall in between those periods and let the dating pool recharge while you invest in yourself.

She still gets on them occasionally, because there's no alternative now.

Guys in the post-#metoo era just won't approach a girl at a bar the way they used to.

https://www.statista.com/chart/20822/way-of-meeting-partner-...

To be fair I'm actually shocked by how high bars are on that chart, at least given my anecdotal experience.

Even back in 2015 or so, it seemed that the overwhelming majority of people met IRL, whereas just a few years later everyone was meeting online.

Might be a changing demographic thing (I was 22 in 2015, and 26 in 2019), but something definitely happened.

It's unfair to blame #metoo, but it isn't unfair to blame a modern version of PC that expresses itself as puritanism. This is the least sex-having generation of all time. They're afraid that saying the wrong thing to each other is genocide or rape, especially the wrong sexual thing.

It reminds me of the Solzhenitsyn quote about knives. If a criminal is caught with a knife he doesn't know any better, it's his tradition. But if you're caught with a knife, this is a serious crime, and you must be harshly punished.

Approaching girls in public has high social consequences. I've read enough reddit [0][1][2] or seen enough news articles about people banned from businesses because a guy was seen as creepy.

Men need to learn what is ok and not ok when communicating with women. This is already an challenge because what is ok with one woman is not ok with another. Add in the shifting society view of what is appropriate turns it into an impossible task.

It just seems safer to do nothing and wait for the girl to make the first move.

My read on it is that, like cold calling and door-to-door sales, this is a skill. You can be naturally good at it, you can develop it, or you can be self-aware that you suck at it and do something else.

As someone who has met all his partners in places other than bars/tinder and without any dramatic public approaches like what you're describing I would say that it's important to keep in mind that there are plenty of ways you will meet people. Obsessing over the ways that you won't meet people is counterproductive.

If you mess up, you could lose your job, kicked out of your social safety net, or lose access to your favorite business.

For the most part girls will not do this. Any woman who has ever dated men eventually learns that if a man is interested he'll make it known and if you have to chase him he's not interested. For that reason most eventually give up on making the first move because those situations never go anywhere, whereas when men make the first move they do. It's not necessarily fair but it's the typical dynamic so waiting around for girls to make the first move is very unlikely to work out in your favor. Also, the thing about men being creepy for approaching is very overblown online. In real life as long as you're pleasant and polite and willing to take no for an answer most women will be happy and gracious if you approach them. Go for it!

Bars were not a good place to find dates decades ago either. That’s more of a tired movie trope.

The bigger issue is that people just don’t seem to get out and do things as much as they did in the time before we all had unlimited entertainment options at our fingertips from the comfort of home. As soon as you do break the cycle and start doing activities in the real world, you discover that there are a lot of interesting people just a few degrees outside of your friend groups and activities.

This is why people advocate to have hobbies (i.e., not-monetized ways to spend your time) outside of work, or at the very least a "third place" where you can meet new people in low-friction ways.

You can still ask to buy a stranger a drink. You're allowed start a conversation with someone you find attractive. But it's long odds. It's much better to do something with a group: join a choir, go to yoga class, take art or cooking classes, etc. It's a win-win too, because you won't meet someone right off, and while you're building that community you still get to sing/exercise/create/eat.

I do think that people, particularly men, of my generation have completely lost the concept of going out to meet people and have an idea that it's apps or nothing. In many ways this gives the ones who are willing to step up IRL an advantage. I know women also hate the apps, even though they are bombarded with matches. Meeting someone face to face is always an advantage.

I know the solution is to focus on in-person dating and building genuine connections with people in the real world, but I've had no success with that either. I asked my friends if they knew anyone they could set me up with, but nobody did. My job and my hobbies are male dominated. Every activity in my area (a large US tech hub) that I've tried is male dominated except for yoga. Maybe things will change as I get older (I'm in my early twenties), but if things continue as they are now it will take a minor miracle for me to find a relationship before I die. I just feel so lost, I don't know what to do.

Maybe this is oversharing, but I just wanted to get it out there. Thanks for reading.

It will. Men in their 20s are disadvantaged for the same reason that women in their 40s are: there's a lot more younger women dating older men than the reverse. The numbers will gradually shift in your favor over time.

And yeah, Tinder is usually a bad deal for everyone except the most attractive men, and women who prefer hookups to relationships.

Just keep enjoying and putting effort into your work, family, friends and hobbies, and you’ll be a more attractive potential partner at 30 than the guys who mostly have their looks to offer.

And maybe try learning how to knit.

Women also have the advantage on these apps ('putting the pussy on a pedestal') whereas IRL its far closer to equal.

Then once you do start getting matches the more formulaic it becomes and the more disenchanting and antiromantic it is until you've surpassed some high watermark among your sample size of interaction.

It's not how we're meant to function. Of course it works for some, that's a statistical certainty. The worse the sorting (or the more egalitarian) is the worse the experience will be, which is why Tinder is more of a hookup app.

The more 'serious' dating sites encounter the same initial problems despite better sorting. You're selecting for a certain kind of people who for whatever reason have low satisfaction in their personal social lives. Race to the bottom.