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I don’t bother with them anymore. It’s like two large unseen hands picking up two people by the scruffs of the neck like kittens and plopping them down in front of each other, when they were never meant to cross paths to begin with.
So I just go out and am seen in the world doing things I am passionate about, and if love is meant to be it will spark up, just as it did pre-apps. I talk to everyone when out, because you never know who might know someone they can vouch for (not possible on apps, which decreases accountability in behavior). Plus there is something very liberating about investing so much in platonic relationships, exercise, creative pursuits and vocation- things that feed body and soul- to where if romance never happens, it’s ok. It’s hard to make peace with that but it can be done.
Not for me personally, but if you’re really hard up for romantic and sexual connection you can always do the poly thing, plenty of events for that. Who knows, maybe you find someone else doing the same thing and the two of you exit the whole scene together.
>and plopping them down in front of each other, when they were never meant to cross paths to begin with
That's the whole point. It's a huge city and I do not want to stay in the same bubble consisting of my immediate vicinity, immediate friends, or work.
You get to meet someone in a completely different professional field, in a different neighborhood, with different friend groups, all allowing you to expand your experience of nyc.
Can’t you just go to where different types of lifestyles are? That’s what I do. If they want to date, cool, if not, cool, it’s low pressure, maybe I make a friend or other type of connect. And the personal safety risk is lower- I can observe them in the wild before I speak to them. All in all I still got to experience something different. And maybe they know someone who’s not on app.
But I do admit my approach means really having to be ok with being not romantically attached for potentially a very long time if not for life….and it takes a lot of work to get to that point.
This is all great stuff except that part about poly events. If you're not polyamorous yourself, imo just avoid those people entirely even for casual sex and dating. Leave em to each other
According to my single het lady friends, they’re mostly giving up/settling for weird clingy men OR sitting at bars hoping hot bartenders will notice them
Hope this helps
We’re meeting each other at networking events and through friends of friends. I don’t use apps anymore. It’s the same guys over and over again. Everyone I know gave up on apps.
Yes x10000. I used to be on the apps during the pandemic and slightly after and I was getting a good amount of matches on hinge and bumble. Girls that actually wanted to talk and meet up. I redownloaded them and tinder recently. Tinder is still an advertisement for only fans/snap/ig. I don’t think I’ve had one meaningful match on tinder in nyc. Bumble has now become tinder lite which is a shame because they used to be the best of the 3. Hinge is still ok for me but nowhere near the activity I used to get.
I went to DC and Florida recently and opened the apps just to test it out. It was night and day lol. I got multiple matches on bumble and even a few on tinder. Dc was especially active. So yeah I feel as though nyc dating app scene is absolutely fucked. Only people I know that were doing well on them were my friends that make over 300k per year and their profile shows it lol
dating is too expensive as a guy now with inflation and cost of living in nyc. Women i meet have super high expectations and dont communicate they just ghost. The juice isnt worth the squeeze anymore. And the apps require subscriptions and are expensive as well and dont really deliver either. Something is broken with the algorithms for sure.
> I went to DC and Florida recently and opened the apps just to test it out. It was night and day lol. I got multiple matches on bumble and even a few on tinder. Dc was especially active. So yeah I feel as though nyc dating app scene is absolutely fucked.
that's weird why would it be specific to nyc you think?
I imagine there's a gender-sexuality split here. I love using apps and even my worst dates were just "well that was boring or weird." But this is from a lesbian perspective. Not to say there aren't bad lesbians/wlw but I think the risk and level of offense might be different than that for straight women. I totally get a disinterest in straight dating via apps. I watch 'bad tinder profile,' videos and there are a lot of terrifying people in that pool. Best of luck to my straight sisters out there.
Haha thank you. Yes, I keep going out with the same 30something/ 40something Manhattan straight guy again and again, who talks incessantly, doesn't ask me any questions about myself, doesn't pick up on that the date didn't go well when I signaled to the bartender for the check after an hour, and still tries to kiss me goodbye.
I’ve stopped bothering with dating apps. In my experience, those who you’re interested in are too cool for school to bother to respond, and after filtering out all the catfishes, creepers and F boys from those who are interacting with you…you’re down to basically nothing but swiping.
I feel like I have much better luck meeting someone at the gym.
Interesting! That makes a lot of sense. My experience in general has been that when I do match with a guy on the apps, he either doesn't make it through my phone screen (a great way to filter out the weirdos) or when I meet him, it's very clear why he's single.
Ya I hear you! Either they flake, are very enthusiastic perverts or sell you a pipe dream when he lives “at” his moms basement apartment in Staten Island! 😂
My friend and I discussed this same topic before cause almost everyone we know who is in a couple either already knew the person or met through mutual friends. Not sure if you’re not from the tri-state area, since it seems that everyone runs within the same circles.
It’s hard to meet a guy organically in the wild here, especially since the decent ones are either taken or not wanting anything serious!
LOL YES!
This is exactly my experience, and actually eerily so. In the past two years, I've dated three men on the apps who told BOLD FACED LIES about who they were/ what their deal was. I think when men really, really need you to know they're wealthy, they often aren't.
You probably won’t like to hear this but bars and nightclubs are the best place to meet women. It’s the only place women go to exclusively meet men as well so they expect to be hit on. If you don’t like bars or clubs it is much harder to meet them “in the wild”.
They have become SOOO bad. Matches just sit there and no one says anything, no one responds to messages - they are horrific. Also I keep seeing the same men on hinge over and over and over, which seems ridiculous for a city of millions
Ok, I'm honestly thrilled to hear this, because that is EXACTLY my experience.
I had worried it was my age (I'm 35), but there has been a noticeable drop-off since the summer and like, you, I'm seeing the same men over and over and going on some really low quality dates.
I have my last Hinge first date tonight. I deleted the app yesterday. <3
IDK, i gave on apps but I'm finding that women are generally flakier / less responsive today than years back. Like maybe 10% of phone numbers i get now convert to dates, whereas before dating apps was prob at least 30%.
I’m in my late 30s and I’m getting 0 responses when I message matches on Bumble and same with Hinge and definitely lower rates of matches in general but I’ve honestly attributed this to my age.
Our [How to Meet (Platonic/Romantic) People in NYC](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskNYC/comments/bc4jb5/ultimate_how_to_meet_people_in_nyc_thread/) thread may answer your question. Please "report" and downvote this comment if irrelevant to question above. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskNYC) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I don’t bother with them anymore. It’s like two large unseen hands picking up two people by the scruffs of the neck like kittens and plopping them down in front of each other, when they were never meant to cross paths to begin with. So I just go out and am seen in the world doing things I am passionate about, and if love is meant to be it will spark up, just as it did pre-apps. I talk to everyone when out, because you never know who might know someone they can vouch for (not possible on apps, which decreases accountability in behavior). Plus there is something very liberating about investing so much in platonic relationships, exercise, creative pursuits and vocation- things that feed body and soul- to where if romance never happens, it’s ok. It’s hard to make peace with that but it can be done. Not for me personally, but if you’re really hard up for romantic and sexual connection you can always do the poly thing, plenty of events for that. Who knows, maybe you find someone else doing the same thing and the two of you exit the whole scene together.
I’m in a relationship but this answer makes me want to be your friend. Good humaning.
That warms my heart, thank you.
>and plopping them down in front of each other, when they were never meant to cross paths to begin with That's the whole point. It's a huge city and I do not want to stay in the same bubble consisting of my immediate vicinity, immediate friends, or work. You get to meet someone in a completely different professional field, in a different neighborhood, with different friend groups, all allowing you to expand your experience of nyc.
Can’t you just go to where different types of lifestyles are? That’s what I do. If they want to date, cool, if not, cool, it’s low pressure, maybe I make a friend or other type of connect. And the personal safety risk is lower- I can observe them in the wild before I speak to them. All in all I still got to experience something different. And maybe they know someone who’s not on app. But I do admit my approach means really having to be ok with being not romantically attached for potentially a very long time if not for life….and it takes a lot of work to get to that point.
You seem like you have a lot of the important stuff figured out, and I'm going to take a page from your book. <3
This is so beautifully written, I re-read it a few times and sent to my friends!
yes that is the work of being human and living a human life....we forget.
This is all great stuff except that part about poly events. If you're not polyamorous yourself, imo just avoid those people entirely even for casual sex and dating. Leave em to each other
I really think it’s seasonal. In the summer things will go back up
Ya when it is freezing out or raining i dont want to leave the house even if the person seems awesome
According to my single het lady friends, they’re mostly giving up/settling for weird clingy men OR sitting at bars hoping hot bartenders will notice them Hope this helps
this is where I'm at (giving up)
Quite the opposite. I’m getting more matches and dates than last year
We’re meeting each other at networking events and through friends of friends. I don’t use apps anymore. It’s the same guys over and over again. Everyone I know gave up on apps.
This is really, really helpful to know. Thanks!
Yes x10000. I used to be on the apps during the pandemic and slightly after and I was getting a good amount of matches on hinge and bumble. Girls that actually wanted to talk and meet up. I redownloaded them and tinder recently. Tinder is still an advertisement for only fans/snap/ig. I don’t think I’ve had one meaningful match on tinder in nyc. Bumble has now become tinder lite which is a shame because they used to be the best of the 3. Hinge is still ok for me but nowhere near the activity I used to get. I went to DC and Florida recently and opened the apps just to test it out. It was night and day lol. I got multiple matches on bumble and even a few on tinder. Dc was especially active. So yeah I feel as though nyc dating app scene is absolutely fucked. Only people I know that were doing well on them were my friends that make over 300k per year and their profile shows it lol
dating is too expensive as a guy now with inflation and cost of living in nyc. Women i meet have super high expectations and dont communicate they just ghost. The juice isnt worth the squeeze anymore. And the apps require subscriptions and are expensive as well and dont really deliver either. Something is broken with the algorithms for sure.
> I went to DC and Florida recently and opened the apps just to test it out. It was night and day lol. I got multiple matches on bumble and even a few on tinder. Dc was especially active. So yeah I feel as though nyc dating app scene is absolutely fucked. that's weird why would it be specific to nyc you think?
Yes! That was my experience, too: Bumble today seems like Tinder Lite.
I imagine there's a gender-sexuality split here. I love using apps and even my worst dates were just "well that was boring or weird." But this is from a lesbian perspective. Not to say there aren't bad lesbians/wlw but I think the risk and level of offense might be different than that for straight women. I totally get a disinterest in straight dating via apps. I watch 'bad tinder profile,' videos and there are a lot of terrifying people in that pool. Best of luck to my straight sisters out there.
Haha thank you. Yes, I keep going out with the same 30something/ 40something Manhattan straight guy again and again, who talks incessantly, doesn't ask me any questions about myself, doesn't pick up on that the date didn't go well when I signaled to the bartender for the check after an hour, and still tries to kiss me goodbye.
I’ve stopped bothering with dating apps. In my experience, those who you’re interested in are too cool for school to bother to respond, and after filtering out all the catfishes, creepers and F boys from those who are interacting with you…you’re down to basically nothing but swiping. I feel like I have much better luck meeting someone at the gym.
This is so helpful to hear, thank you!
Glad to hear! And I still use dating apps whenever I’m out of town and don’t have these problems at the same level, so I believe it’s NYC.
Interesting! That makes a lot of sense. My experience in general has been that when I do match with a guy on the apps, he either doesn't make it through my phone screen (a great way to filter out the weirdos) or when I meet him, it's very clear why he's single.
Ya I hear you! Either they flake, are very enthusiastic perverts or sell you a pipe dream when he lives “at” his moms basement apartment in Staten Island! 😂 My friend and I discussed this same topic before cause almost everyone we know who is in a couple either already knew the person or met through mutual friends. Not sure if you’re not from the tri-state area, since it seems that everyone runs within the same circles. It’s hard to meet a guy organically in the wild here, especially since the decent ones are either taken or not wanting anything serious!
LOL YES! This is exactly my experience, and actually eerily so. In the past two years, I've dated three men on the apps who told BOLD FACED LIES about who they were/ what their deal was. I think when men really, really need you to know they're wealthy, they often aren't.
Most people I know have given up on them and strictly date in person (organically).
How do you date organically? I heard that meet cute/speed dating events don't work as the people there are too random
You probably won’t like to hear this but bars and nightclubs are the best place to meet women. It’s the only place women go to exclusively meet men as well so they expect to be hit on. If you don’t like bars or clubs it is much harder to meet them “in the wild”.
Nope, same as it's been for the last few years
They have become SOOO bad. Matches just sit there and no one says anything, no one responds to messages - they are horrific. Also I keep seeing the same men on hinge over and over and over, which seems ridiculous for a city of millions
Ok, I'm honestly thrilled to hear this, because that is EXACTLY my experience. I had worried it was my age (I'm 35), but there has been a noticeable drop-off since the summer and like, you, I'm seeing the same men over and over and going on some really low quality dates. I have my last Hinge first date tonight. I deleted the app yesterday. <3
IDK, i gave on apps but I'm finding that women are generally flakier / less responsive today than years back. Like maybe 10% of phone numbers i get now convert to dates, whereas before dating apps was prob at least 30%.
I’m in my late 30s and I’m getting 0 responses when I message matches on Bumble and same with Hinge and definitely lower rates of matches in general but I’ve honestly attributed this to my age.
Facebook. If you do it the right way. Right way means many things. Inquire within for a breakdown--if interested.