Ask Lemmy

Disclaimer: I’m not straight, but when I used the apps I mostly matched with women, who were mostly cis and mostly het.

It sounds like you’re looking for a LTR. Tinder is mostly for HUs. Everyone I met on there was casual-only or wanted long term but like, desperately. Bumble wasn’t a significantly different crowd when I tried it, in spite of the hype. Hinge I heard was better for LTRs, with a questionnaire system and everything, but never tried. Overall, my impression was that lots of the “looking for something real” folks in the apps probably should’ve been prioritizing therapy and learning to love themselves before throwing themselves into another LTR. This leads to my main point at the bottom.

For more swipes/matches, top rec is almost always better photos, especially for straight men, but I would modify that recommendation slightly. I think you should first ask yourself some questions about your target audience.

Why: Let’s say you’re advertising yourself as a kind stable safe and hard-working man looking for a LTR. That profile, to be successful with your target audience, will easily scare away the casual crowd for lots of reasons. The sincere and detailed bio, the high quality face shots and full length profiles with your hobbies carefully framed in the background and at least one fancy outfit and picture of you and your dog, etc etc. All that will earn you high praise in the OLD profile support groups but IME can sometimes telegraph expectations that are daunting to many people you’d probably like to meet if given the chance. Depending on the level of polish on that LTR profile, you could inadvertently limit your marketability to a very specific subset of users who mostly lurk and windowshop, vet candidate pools thoroughly, and tend to bring a surprising number of their own expectations, many of which seem to have to do with your “stats.” Again, that’s if they even pull the trigger and I suspect many of them are skilled at talking themselves out of it.

As an alternative, just for kicks think about a hypothetical “fuckboi” version of your usual profile, complete with poorly lit bathroom selfies, lots of shirtless outdoor photos, badly cropped group pics at dark venues, and a bio that’s just a line from a Tarantino film. As unpolished as that profile is, I guarantee this alter ego will get more swipes than the one I described above, not because he’s prettier or fitter (it’s the same guy) but because he’s approachable to a greater number of users, many of whom are specifically looking for simplicity, zero long term expectations/possessiveness, and someone who won’t make them feel guilty for not calling. They also tend to match with others far more frequently. Those users are everywhere, so if you’re not getting matches at all, maybe ask yourself what of that fuckboi alter-ego actually expresses aspects of your personality, and consider incorporating a bit more of him.

Ultimately the apps weren’t built for courtship rituals. It’s just hard to generate chemistry with text and photos alone. Casual relationships are a totally valid and IMO more natural path to a LTR anyway. Those relationships can evolve with time and tend to be healthier, because fundamental aspects of compatibility are already explored and they begin with everyone’s cards down. Just my .02… GL

Edit: clarify wording to sound less like “go forth and be slutty”