Perhaps one of the few universal truths is that dating is rough. It’s hard to approach the cute guy at the bus stop or flirt with the barista.
Enter online dating: where you can meet prospective partners, hundreds in the city around you, without leaving the comfort of your home. Suddenly a computer can ask the questions you’d previously have to find answers for yourself, and can even suggest people it thinks you might get along with.
Signing up for online dating can be a daunting process. What sites you sign up for depend on your values, what you’re looking for, and whether you’re willing to pay for the service.
Keeping that in mind, this intrepid sex blogger waded into the vast world of online dating and brought you her experiences from the most used online matchmaking services.
For the past couple weeks, for the purposes of this blog, I’ve been casting out the net, shooting Cupid’s bow, swiping right, and . . . whatever matches on Christian Mingle are called.
I tested four matchmaking services: Tinder, OkCupid, Plenty of Fish, and to round things out, Christian Mingle. To even the playing field, I used more or less the same profile and photo on each site, written for me by a friend. I tested them using heterosexual searches, although three of the four sites were gay-friendly.
Tinder
I’ve written about Tinder before, and I can’t say my opinions have changed. I really don’t think it’s a bad app, but unless you get lucky it probably won’t yield anything with long-term potential. It is without a doubt the most superficial of the four sites I tested, providing only pictures and a short bio by which to gauge a potential match. There are also the shared “likes” (which they call interests) imported from Facebook, but these probably won’t lead to much. Am I interested in Humans of New York? Sure, but probably not enough for me to sleep with you because of it.
It’s a fun game, and they acknowledge that: When you match, the options are to “keep playing” or to chat. My general impression is that there are far too many pictures of guys with a hunting rifle and dead animals . . . definitely swiping left.
Plenty of Fish
This site is all the worst things I had in mind about a dating site, put together. The interface is ugly, and it has too many features that are too hard to use. To top that, it had several time-consuming questionnaires that made me resent the site.
Once I’d finished the 200+ questions about the superficial and arbitrary details of my life, I barely had any energy left to look through other people’s profiles. Once I got around to perusing, the trend seemed to be people looking for relationships. If you want a long-term lover, Plenty of Fish might be the way to go. It’s not entirely free, but I had a decent amount of success with the free options.
OkCupid
This is more in the ballpark of what I expected from an online dating site. OkCupid and I got off to a good start, with a selection of five casual questions for me to fill out myself. There is almost nothing you can’t do with the basic free membership, and it provides constant updates in your feed when people you might be compatible with revise their profiles. It has a well-designed app, and it shows you when people visit your profile, although that can be a little nerve-wracking.
The only downside is that it often shows you people in other cities, and some of the men can be creepy, although that could be another blog post in itself. It has a long questionnaire, but the questions are the kinds of things I’d want to know about in a partner, and often touch on moral and ethical topics that I think would lead to matches with more in common.
Christian Mingle
I got a Christian Mingle profile mainly for the sake of covering my bases. This was perhaps the least useful site, as there’s pretty much nothing you can do without a paid subscription. Every profile change you make has to go through a review process, and it was not gay-friendly. If you’re looking for someone who shares a lot of your values and you’re willing to shell out the cash, this is the place to go.
What I learned
OkCupid definitely steals the show for the best site. The questions it asks are broad in their scope, and cover everything from how I like to cuddle to my opinion on abortion. Basically, OkCupid asked everything I’d want to know about a guy before meeting him. It eliminated the awkward “Oh, so you think feminists are baby killers and Romney was a great guy” part of the date.
Another thing I loved about OkCupid was its inclusivity. There are over a dozen gender identity options, and it allows you to display five on your profile. People who don’t conform to the gender binary can often have an even more difficult time dating, so it was refreshing to see a site making such an effort to be inclusive.
All in all, not a bad go. While I still prefer the old-fashioned smile-and-hello routine, online dating has its perks. Flirting in my pyjamas, yes please. So next time social interaction seems like a little too much to bear, check it out. There are plenty of people waiting to tell you what a gorgeous smile you have.
Some tips I’ve picked up:
- Smile. Make sure, before anything else, that you’re smiling in your profile picture. And also, make sure you have one. A lot of the profiles I came across didn’t, and it made me unlikely to click onto their profile.
- Don’t take yourself too seriously. I started out by writing my own bio for these sites, and wasn’t seeing much in the way of results. Make a joke and tell people about yourself.
- The opening line is crucial. Keep in mind that the person you’re courting likely gets a lot of messages. How are you going to set yours apart? The worst messages I got (apart from the blatantly rude and uninvited sexual ones) were ones that simply said, “Hey.” The best messages were ones that commented on something in my profile, and made a connection “You like House of Cards too. Excited for the new episodes in a couple weeks?”
