How a person chooses to represent themselves in pictures can tell you a lot about where they find themselves happy (traveling, inside, outdoors), when they think the look good/feel confident (in a gallery, out clubbing, on a farm, in a mirror), and what their hobbies/work consists of from just a few frames. I much prefer this to reading a massive block of text, then trying to regurgitate it in the form of a joke on a more traditional dating site.
My main gripe with Tinder is that sometimes people are more aware of this than others, so I may get a false-positive match that appears great. But they are really just curating a very specific slice of their life, instead of it being a more representative sampling across it. Although, even this becomes pretty easy to identify once you've become familiar with the common memes (e.g. picture petting a tiger)
Just because someone is on Tinder doesn't automatically make them a "silicone beauty" with a vapid personality. People are people, and perhaps the problem is that you're immediately judgmental, especially when Tinder's "about me" section is what, 2 lines long? If you'd tried meeting someone in person, you may have been surprised.
The problem with sites like OkCupid is people are desperately looking for someone who they have that deep connection with. As your profile gives out so much information, you really dig into the personality of a potential match to see whether they check all the boxes - and in almost all cases they won't. Rather than risking going on a date, they just skip past and wonder how many cats they should buy. If I came across my fiancé on a dating site, I would of no doubt thought "meh", but here we are nearly 4 years later living together in another continent.
I think Tinder has a lot more potential. Rather than chatting for weeks before meeting someone, you can be a lot more spontaneous by just matching then meeting up for a date. It's a lot more akin to hitting it off with someone out of the blue, than with a dating site where you feel like you know half there is to know about the person before you even meet. I'd much rather meet someone on a Tinder-like service than a dating site.
As I understand Tinder is still very casual sex focussed, but as it gets more popular I hope it will turn into a more PG-friendly community. Most people are very materialistic and just want to be with someone who is attractive. This is what Tinder focuses on, so maybe it isn't necessarily the app for this.
I think you hit the nail on the head here. This is exactly why Tinder is so popular, IMO. (Almost) No one wants to waste time chatting online. And everyone (no almost here) considers beauty first and foremost when looking for a mate. It's just truly a shame that this is the only reputation the app has and it seems to be this way because people associate it with "shallowness" while they stand on a high ground doing exactly what everyone else is doing: looking at pictures and judging them on beauty. Regardless of the site (or off-site IRL), that's what happens. Let's face it, no one is spending time on okcupid or match deeply analyzing other profiles' text. The only people it matters to are the people creating the profile who think it actually matters (it doesn't). I would bet money that if the text part of profiles on a traditional dating site were put a mere extra click away, while the photos stayed on the main page, the visit rate would be abysmal.
The genius of Tinder has been to recognize this and remove the unnecessary garbage content. Really, in dating, before you've met anyone, all text is garbage, including the paltry meager pleasantries exchanged on the way to actually setting up a real date in person. The actual in person date is the only thing that matters and Tinder has realized that and done away with the rest. If it wasn't for the perception that it's only about hooking up, I'd say this is really the perfect dating app.
This might be part of the problem. You were on an app with a reputation for hookups, yet you're slut-shaming those using it.
It's fine to only want relationships, but you could do so without claiming that people who aren't shy about enjoying sex are scum.
But it's true Tinder app didn't work for me, and I am very happy for those that wrote success stories here. I would have different attitude towards it if I was say 17 again. Glad I am not :)
Or from work.
For some people, between work and other responsibilities there isn't much time to meet women in bars. Colleague of mine has pretty much no time left after work and school, he met his girlfriend through Tinder.
A friend of mine is a boatsman who's 3 months on, 3 months off. Finding a girl, dating and building a relationship is hard in 3 months. He used Tinder to find dates for when he came back home. He's now in a relationship with one of them.
It seems that dating apps / websites (much like real life from what I can tell) are more or less down to sheer luck. I've met a couple of amazing girls through there but, again, sheer luck and all, circumstance made further dates impossible.
A friend of mine was on OKC for about 4 years and it finally paid off - he met an absolutely brilliant girl there, and I'm really happy for him.
At the very least, online dating is good to take you out of your standard dating pool, and makes for some really good war stories to share with others who are doing it.
No, because you describe people you don't know jack about just like that.
I had tried OkCupid as well and had no luck, though I'm not sure that was the fault of the site.
Because of the efficiency and availability there is a chance of more misses and people not taking it as seriously, but overall I think it would be foolish to say real relationships cannot be developed by these sites.
Best of luck to you both.
As for French attitude, this is very subjective and local, so YMMV. Attitude of girls I met (not only dating, just friends) is that more you sleep around, the better. One girl for example was proudly saying that she did sleep with less than 20 guys, and how cool is that and I am so lucky! Or my current GF got uniform advices from her french colleagues when she broke off her last relationship, that she should sleep around for a while "to heal". Stories like these all over the place, consistent.
These are not some trashy girls I met randomly on some beerfest or in stinking old bar, but women holding significant positions in multinational corps. This is of course not a general talk about all french girls, just a little sample I had an honor to meet in Geneva & around. And it doesn't apply to swiss french, they're different species altogether :)
Yes, I got tons of likes, many conversations, a few dates that could be more if wanted, but women available via this were mostly... uninteresting. I am a bit picky (I am quite sporty type, and silicone beauties whose idea of perfect sunday is basically doing nothing while showered in luxury repulse me). Never been looking for one night stands or similar, that's for poor folks with daddy (and other) issues. Those kind of "relationships" tend to take more from person than give, and after some time, meeting such a person is rather sad story (or, more blatantly who wants to seriously date slutty used opposite sex).
Well, once you've got things to offer to women that they want, you can, and will be picky. I kept telling myself, it's just another way of meeting people, like all others. But for me, tinder crowd ain't doing the "game" seriously enough. Maybe location didn't help (Geneva, on border with France, and to be polite general French mentality towards relationships ain't compatible with mine).
So I found amazing girl via other ways (climbing), dropped whole tinder app into oblivion. Nice idea, and kudos to this guy for really getting max out of concept, but not for me. And seeing success rate around me, just going to a stupid bar, dressing nicely and just be a man women want gives you way more reward for any effort. But it cannot be done from couch, can it :)