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As I get older, I increasingly find mindkilled flag-waving from my own camp just as distasteful. I don't want to be friends with someone whose Prius sports an "8647" bumper sticker, but nor do I want to be friends with someone with "Liberal Tears are Delicious" on the back of their truck.
I've never dealt with online dating, but I always imagined that the "no MAGA" is a blessing in disguise. It outs people as shallow thinkers or deranged partisans and makes it easier to sift them out of the pool. It would be much worse to go on several dates before finding out the truth.
But after filtering them out, is there much of a pool left? My gut feeling is that the answer might be no, because I'd guess that stable, happy, conservative or grill-pilled single women probably get enough attention IRL that they don't need to use apps. And that any woman who apparently fits that profile might be playing a character (wheat field tradwife) or have some baggage. Is that the case?
I live in a blue suburb of an ultraviolet city, and filtering for women mid-20s to mid-30s, no kids, want/open to kids.
Maybe half include some sort of information indicating progressive politics, and 1 in 10 or 12 have something along the lines of "no MAGA" or "conservatives swipe left." It's really not as bad as you think, especially when you realize the apps specifically prompt you to list your politics and pick from a list of causes that are important to you (that are noticebly lacking in right-of-center options), and half the women affirmatively opt-out of including it. I've never had politics come up while talking on a dating app or on a first date off one. I get way more shit for not having social media to stalk than I do about my politics.
I've also noticed that the women saying "no MAGA" tend to not be particularly attractive anyway.
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Yeah, it's a quick "No" for me, but I live in the Portland area and the women in my age range (40-55) are basically the Pussy Hat brigade from 2016-2017. It does limit the options when an entire geo region is a meme. There are a few conservatives, but I don't fit in well with them, either, unfortunately: I'm not religious or outdoorsy, I'm blue culture with greyish-red politics, and I'm not a masculine ideal. That leaves me mostly with the silent cohort of women who simply don't care about politics, which also sounds dull.
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I haven't been on the dating apps in a few years, but you don't get how hard it shuts down potential matches to put conservative on your profile and also how many of those potential matches are actually open to conservative beliefs they just have this strange conception that anybody identifying as conservative on a dating app is literally a Jan 6 attendee.
Though probably the metagame has contributed to a case where since most rational people stopped ticking that box, the boxtickers left are the MAGAest MAGAs who have no tact.
On your second point I'd generally say it's other way. I know plenty of 'good conservative women' who are absent of red flags, but a combination of a fairly conservative (Massive age skews, lack of fresh blood coming into their churches etc) social circle, workplace flirtation not being what it once was and frequently a lack of meaningful experience in courting means they just kinda get stuck in a loop when waiting for prince righteous to sally into their mortal life.
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Maybe it's the contrarian in me (I was a Paultard in high school/undergrad, so being at political odds with pretty much everyone is nothing new even if I'm more into Nixon than libertarianism these days and less ideologically committed in general.), but I'd take "no MAGA" as a challenge. Then again, I've always found blue tribe dilettantes to be charming, especially if they're smart and argumentative.
On a totally (not) unrelated note, I remain baffled as to why the bar I used to work at (which aspires to cater to grad students/professor types) hasn't followed my suggestion to do anything they can to market to the university law school. FFS law students might be the last group of young people that actually drink!
I wouldn't. I live in an area where a disproportionate number of the pretty young women on dating apps were liberal (at least a decade ago when I was single, probably even more true now) and I have liberal friends so I never thought it was anything worth filtering out. Two things have changed my mind.
One is that my wife is more liberal than me and this causes friction, both from her being annoyed that I am not more anti-Trump (I am not MAGA and do not like Trump but I remain a conservative and push back against TDS type stuff) and us not always being on the same page for child rearing.
The second comes from a young woman I met on OKCupid. We had a first date that went well, and then at the end of the second date after I kissed her she explained that she had seen I was a conservative and she was a liberal and she was looked for a long term relationship and didn't think it would work out. In hindsight I'd say this was very mature and correct of her (though waiting until AFTER I'd wasted my money and time on the date instead of canceling beforehand was pretty shitty), but at the time it was soul crushing. She was not the prettiest girl I'd met on the apps (due to shyness, confidence issues, and not liking to drink I had better luck on the apps than IRL though if I had it to do over again I'd work to change that) but she was up there and she was definitely the one I had the most in common with. And what is very clear to me is that after our first date she liked me a lot and happily accepted the second date and then went to look at my profile again and found the dreaded right wing thought. It is one thing to be filtered out up front by by blue haired harpies with problem glasses, having something with manifest promise cut off at the knees was a gut punch.
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