Mistakes on Dating Apps

Are there ethical issues to giving people tips on how to represent themselves on dating apps? Shouldn’t people just be their authentic selves, and what happens happens, and anything to change the game adds noise away from authenticity that ruins the game for other people?

The few people who I have ever given advice about their dating profiles, unsolicited, inside a dating app, did not care at all. They were getting what they wanted and had their own game they were probably playing. And so given how little most people apply tips anyway, I don’t feel too bad about it, though if you wish to debate this feel free to in the comments.

Show different facial expressions, in different settings

One of the main checks on a dating app, and these days especially, is “are you a real person.”

To show that you are a real person, don’t do the thing where you have five pictures, of yourself, making the same exact face, against five different walls. Instead, have some variety.

That being said, you want to look like you are the same person in the pictures. If in one picture you have long hair, in another short hair, in another you are fat, in another you are skinny, in one you have a beard, in another no beard, the variance can add up to being high enough that it is hard for the viewer to triangulate what you actually look like. Most people do not fall into this error, but I see it on occasion. The “not enough variety” is the error I see more often. You want to use up all your photo slots, even if you think you might not have “enough good photos” because other people will be using all the photo slots, that is standard, and the ability to “make a decision on you” is more important than if every single photo is the best photo of you that’s ever existed. In fact every photo being way too good is itself kind of odd.

So you want to aim for something in the middle — enough variance, and not too much, such that the viewer can go “alright I see what this person is like and can determine if I’m vaguely into it or not.”

If you want to be texted first, have something in your bio

Look we’ve all made that mistake of writing that we are “way into Nietzsche” and then ending up with 20 unsolicited and unique bad Nietzsche takes.

But you still should make it easy, if being texted is what you want.

You can actually even get fancy and have a few different things, in entirely different registers, to know when somebody messages you, what vibe they liked about you and what stood out to them.

For example, if you write that you are into “Emerson, diner milkshakes, and playing rough ;)” you would have one kind of guy texting you about literature, one kind of guy texting you trying to make a date with you at a diner you like in town, and another kind of guy texting you about how he plans to toss you around.

If you get a million texts, and have a kind of guy you are looking for, one of these can be a red herring. For example, if you don’t want to be texting all day and just want to be tossed around, the above would help you see which guys just plan to toss you around, and you can respond to those, versus the guy who is giving you his hot takes on Self-Reliance. Or if you want a slow burn, you can reply to the Emerson guy.

You want to be careful though about how you set this up, and I wouldn’t actually lie about the red herrings. I would be honest, and then see what your authentic feelings are about the messages that come in, and if you are happy with how people are engaging with you and your ability to have conversations you want to be having at the pace you want to be having them, and then tweak accordingly.

Not paying attention to stakes

I am an overswiper. If I might be interested, I just swipe right and move on. I also never message first (the experiences I have had in which I messaged first, ended up being bad ones.)

In consideration of this strategy, I make my profile a bit worse than it could be. I do not want people to actually get way too excited about me given my reply rate. I have had profiles before, and I would get messages like, “WOW your aura is incredible!!”

And then I would go and change it a bit. I do not want to be doing seduction magic on the apps, actually, or get people I don’t know to be obsessed with me. “You seem really interesting” is about as far as I like going.

That being said, something like having a strategy of “not trying at all” (very few, bad pictures, just messaging hi, hi, hi, good morning, hi, hey” which I have seen) is also not considering stakes for people, in that it “recruits somebody else to do all the work.”