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I prefer carbon 14 to other methods.
Zircons are the new hotness
My advice will be as a guy who does not date men.
The dating apps suck but they are widely used. I will give some advice about them, because from what I’ve seen people are bad at using them.
You don’t have to spend money on them.
Write good messages. Don’t use AI. Don’t use the same message copy-pasted. Ready their profile, and ask a question about it. If they’re doing it right, the stuff on their profile is stuff they want to talk about. If they say they love Star Trek, ask if they watched the new stuff.
If they reply competently (ie: not a one word answer, some spirit, ask you a question back), repeat once or twice, clear any deal breakers, and ask them out. Too many people fart around chatting on these apps for days and then are surprised they’re not getting dated. They’re being preempted by people who actually show up.
About deal breakers: be up front. Don’t hide stuff. What’s a deal breaker is subjective but things like having a kid already.
You will be rejected far more than not. That’s fine. Once you swipe yes or send a message, put them out of your mind. Keep going.
When you get on the date, ask questions. Don’t interrogate them. I’ve had some where it felt like a job interview where they quickly brought up and dropped topics. If you’re talking all about yourself and not giving them space, they’re not going to have any fun. Follow up on topics.
Ask for consent. If it’s going well, you can just ask to kiss them. Almost every person I’ve been with has said they appreciate that a lot more than the “oh things are happening uh oh” default.
That’s all I feel like typing now.
About deal breakers: be up front. Don’t hide stuff. What’s a deal breaker is subjective but things like having a kid already.
In regards to this, if you put your deal breakers on your profile and they’re “young kids and dogs” 99.99999% of women will not be interested. I tested it and only after removing that stuff did I ever get likes and a small handful of replies.
Needless to say, 10 years later and I’m still single lol
If you literally put a line about dealbreakers in your main profile text, it can be quite offputting for the same reasons that the interview style dates are offputting.
Instead, write around the thing you want to say in a more positive way. For example: “I love to take sponteneous weekend trips. Where have you been last?” It filters out most people with fixed responsibiltites like kids and dogs, while opening up a conversation.
Or: “Unfortunately I meed to carry an epipen for when a cute dog does get to close. Fortunately my cat can snuggle with me all day”. Again, you filter the people with dogs, but provide an opening to people who are still interested.
The other person’s reply about how you present it is pretty apt. There’s a big difference between “I have a shitty two-year old spawn I have to see on the weekends” and “I have joint custody with an amazing toddler. He loves the park and Legos, and so do I, so that works out”
But also imagine how you’d feel if you only found out the other person has some deal breaker for you after investing time and effort. Probably annoyed, right? Don’t hide stuff or assume you’re so great you can trivially change their world view, trauma, allergies, etc.
lol what. all i meet is women who hate kids and pets.
most women on city want to be DINKs and just travel non-stop. they have no interest in pets or family.
When I take my pets off my profile my matches SKYROCKET. it’s crazy.
I guess it depends where you live. Unfortunately where I am women are literally obsessed with dogs, the vast majority of profiles start with some form of “I love my dog. I’ll steal your dog. Dogs are life. Live, love, dog.” then they move on to the rest of their profile. :(
I see those profiles but they are rare here, and it’s mostly people with tiny purse dogs. I own a 70lb lab. Basically no single women in my area own large dogs. Everyone woman I meet at the dog park is married.
Sometimes on dates I’m asked if I’d get rid of my dog and my cat. It’s horrible. And a few single women I met who had dogs… basically hated their dog and wanted to get rid of it. because TRAVEL TRAVEL TRAVEL. 90% of my profiles in my area mention travel 2-3 times on their profile and all their photos are traveling. it’s insane.
Meet people in-person and use FOSS dating apps if you have to.
There are FOSS dating apps?
I second that question !
There was this one on F-Droid called Alovoa with a mosaic parrot logo that I downloaded and tried out as a gag with my girlfriend. I didn’t get that far, because it looked like there was basically nobody – to the point that the UI showing me “people in my area” (as a sort of bubble collage) had to resort to duplicating multiple faces multiple times each.
At which point I decided I’d seen enough before creating an account. Maybe it works; maybe it’s nothing but catfishing. Beats me. Try it at your own risk.
Aren’t you OP? Are you giving yourself advice?
OP seems to just to be spamming questions and answers. wonder if they are a bot
There are foss dating apps?
Ya, the best one seems to be Alovoa.
Work on yourself, be a person that is worth someone else dating. You need a personality, you need hobbies, and you should be as mentally healthy as reasonably possible. Yeah, you should probably try to be physically fit, and yes, being conventionally attractive helps, but it only helps until someone gets to know you. Shitty, toxic people are pretty ugly no matter how conventionally attractive they are.
Also - if you want to meet people, you have to go where the people you want to meet will go. E.g., men aren’t going to meet many women at Warhammer tournaments. Don’t waste your time with dating apps; algorithmic dating is a lie. You can be a 100% match with someone on OKC, and just not be into them, and you can have wildly divergent interests and ideas and still be really into someone else. If you do insist on dating apps, move IRL ASAP, for something low-key, like a 45 minute coffee date.
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Meet actual people, not profiles.
I think this answer varies depending on how old you are. A 16 year old asking for dating advice is different from a 25 year old is different from a 34 year old.
When I was in my 20s I did a lot of sleeping around on apps. I had some personal tragedy, and being a slut was a way toxicly masculine society approved of a man expressing grief, especially since the hellscape of private insurance meant that it was a few years til I could afford to speak to a therapist.
I learned a lot of harsh lessons on apps. People will ghost you for no reason, even after a few weeks of sleeping together. Maybe you said something you didn’t think about, maybe they got a better offer, maybe it has nothing to do with you. That’s if you’re lucky, like I was, and got matches. The algorithm is harsh also, and these things become skinner boxes for incels (its no mistake the concept of “sexual market value” arose from the generation who learned courtship on these things). You take it too personal, or start looking at this system as a game to be optimized, and your already lost. I also callously ghosted some people, especially when they got too close. Maybe these were good fit.
In any case you learn to pick yourself up and move on. But you also learn to not to get too attached or invested. Which is obviously not a good lesson when it comes to relationships. Still there are some good lessons. In your 20s, you have to invest in yourself as a person. You’ll go to school, sure, but sometimes your degree isn’t really proof you know how to do something. So get out there and learn to do something. An artform, sure, like an instrument, or dance, but also any hobby that is not being mediocre at video games and shouting at a screen until the wee hours. Plenty of girls like anime, or D&D, or other traditionally “geeky” hobbies. The biggest thing you can do to up your game is learn to cook. Cooking and Writing have ingratiated me to most of my partners.
Literally anything to put you in front of real human beings in a social context.
The other thing I will say is that you’re 20s is for finding out what works for you sexually. Do you want someone to hit you? Tickle your feet? Shove something into your urethra? Do you have preferences for specific ethnicities or sizes? Do you get sprung when you see a posterior of a certain size? These are things you need to know about yourself, before you can start screening for a prospective partner who can check these boxes.
If you are in your 30s or older, apps have nothing to offer you at all. You should know by now what you like and what you do not. You really shouldn’t be looking for hook ups, especially with partners ten to fifteen years your junior, (unless you just got divorced and you need to prove yourself you still have it… the apps will not validate you). That assumes the apps do what they advertise, which they do not. They are there to annoy you into paying for premium services. The gender imbalance on something like Tinder is 80-20 (in case you were wondering where the incels got that number from) and its unknown how many of those are bots, or sex workers. Hook up apps, in this day and age, translate to a deluge of dick picks to any femme presenting user.
The last one I used was OKC, and that was in 2020. I was ghosted and I just decided I would rather be single. And I was, for about 5 years. I went on a few dates here and there but it didn’t go anywhere. I’m dating someone now and its going on 6 months. I really happy.
So I guess the last thing to say is, just learn to be okay being single. Keep accumulating experience, both in sexual matters and in life, and just understand that you might just be single and that’s okay. When the right one comes, you’ll know.
Avoid the apps like the plague. Go out to events where you can talk to people. Join hobby groups or go to hobby classes. Prioritize meeting people over finding potential partners.
Lots of people out there don’t want to date and if you strike out at a meetup or group then people are gonna pick up that vibe and avoid you. If you really connect with someone then either you or they will pick up on it and things will progress naturally.
That’s my method at least. If you want something more direct and with the end goal of dating, there are often singles groups/events that are more explicitly focused on that. Although at the risk of sounding judgemental, that sounds like the kinda thing where everyone is gonna be reeking of desperation and the people there will be less likely to live healthy independent lives.
Don’t forget to use the Bomb Pulse!
Don’t
Do your best to be a complete person on your own, and only date people who do the same for themselves in a complimentary way.
Of course you can’t know that if you don’t go out on dates in the first place, but if you can’t see at least a glimmer of that complimentary completeness in your partner by the third date, it’s probably not that person.
Don’t. Esp if you are a moral person.
People’s expectations are wildly out of whack with reality of what a relationship really is. This leads to incredibly awful behaviors and beliefs.
There is also a massive difference between dating, and falling into relationships with people you are friends with. The latter is the better approach. Dating-dating is the nightmare.
That said, if you are amoral, and comfortable with lying incessantly and other manipulative stuff, dating will be great for you. The people who have the most success in the dating real are def those who are willing to lie and cheat and do manipulate and are generally more desirable.
It’s fascinating how totally flexible people become with their morals and lies when it comes to romantic relationships in a way they never exercise in other contexts. All is fair in love and war, I guess.
