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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   2113 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 6, 2025

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Does anyone have any good links to blogs or posts about how to use dating apps optimally? I figure someone has this stuff figured out

Cred

Back when I was on the dating app roulette, I was told by female friends that I had a great profile. Other women have asked me 'how to find men like me' and I have been called a 'what a shame he's straight' by a gay man. I haven't been on the market for a couple of years, but the advice should still be valid.

Most important - Be recognizable

Women go through a million same looking profiles. The worst thing to be is unrecognizable and vanilla. Have at least 1 thing about you that stands out. Discussing dating profiles is a favorite past time for women. It is good be a certain type of guy. 'The chef', 'the fashionista', 'the salsa dancer'. If you're just 'a guy', you will fall through the cracks.

My dating profile photo checklist:

  • I have friends -> group photo (Ideally mixed gender)
  • I am in shape -> full body shot (clothed)
  • I am not ugly -> face closeup front
  • I can look like a fuck-boy like if you need me to
  • I have a good heart. (opposite of fuck boy - pet photos, fun uncle, belly laughs, family photos)
  • I do fitness stuff
  • I do fun stuff & have hobbies
  • I actually am 6 feet tall (I am 1 cm off but eh, close enough)

Cheat codes: Wield them as you see fit.

  • Women love pets
  • Women love men who cook
  • Women love men who love therapy
  • Women love men who are loved by women (sisters are okay)

Prompts:

  • People aren't creative. All your photo captions and prompt answers should reveal something about you that leads to an obvious comment from the woman. For me it was my cooking and hiking photos.
  • Have high coverage. Be concise, but signal different information each prompt.
  • Don't be too humble. You can be self-deprecating to counter-signal if your photos already position you as high-status. Otherwise, be earnest about your achievements.

Dos and Donts:

  • Avoid fishing photos. Just post a photo of you on a boat with friends instead. Same idea, different messaging.
  • If you are posting sports photos make them active & outdoors. Cheering for your favorite team in a crowd or playing the game with a jersey. Don't post photos in full-kit from the sofa.
  • Have a social presence. Instagram is ideal. Makes you look sociable. Be google searchable.
  • Be strategic about having weird hobbies on your profile. I like anime, but wouldn't dare put that on my profile. I am transparent about liking it when asked, but don't advertise for the first 2-ish dates.
  • I have been told that doing standup and having a podcast are the 2 biggest icks for women. (I have been seeding the possibility in my girlfriend for 2 years now, and she fake? threatens breakup every time. We'll get there)
  • If you are on the heavier side, then wear layers. Don't fake edit your photos. There are ways to look good even if you're heavy. I'd prefer those.
  • If you don't have good photos. Then pay to get good photos taken. THIS IS NOT OPTIONAL. YOU MUST HAVE GOOD PHOTOS.
  • Hair - be bald or make your hair look good. Don't go around trying to embarrassingly rescue your impending baldness. Get a good haircut. Pay up 50-70$ for a good barber once.
  • Facial hair - Be well groomed. I have the world's worst beard genes. I still managed to persevere through months of growing some density to maintain a #3 on my trimmer. Be clean shaven or grow a half-decent beard/stache. Do not post pubes on your face. Please.
  • Have 1 suit photo - Suits are a man's bikini. Insanely flattering for all body types. Full suit please.
  • Limit sunglasses and caps in your photos. Immediately raises flags for ugliness / baldness.

Useful reddit links:

Contrarian take: if your goal is to actually find a soul mate and not just a number of short flings, don't do this. Be yourself, aggressively. DO mention your less conventional hobbies like anime on your profile, unapologetically. Be creative and unique and weird, in a way that turns off almost everyone EXCEPT for that rare person who actually likes who you are.

I did this for several years, and 90%+ of the women I messaged ignored me completely. I barely got any responses, and the conversations I did have usually didn't lead anywhere since I was a weird goofball. And then a girl who had D&D listed in her bio responded positively to my D&D inspired pickup line and we dated for several years before eventually getting married. And now we stay at home playing board games and playing with cats instead of having to do stupid things like go hiking or eating at restaurants the way I would if I had managed to convince a normal girl to date me.

Your advice is excellent for maximizing engagement. But you will spend a lot of time dating a lot of average people who like average things if you take it too far. Obviously some of your advice is just general good advice for emphasizing your positive traits that you already have and doesn't run into this issue. But I think being authentic in a negative way (by normie standards) is actually useful to help filter out the normies and find someone else who shares your quirks.

I still would avoid obvious icky hobbies on a dating profile. Anime has a very strong association with porn, child porn, and childishness. Video games tend to send immature and irresponsible signals. If you have a weird hobby that’s fairly active, creative, or social, fine. But the goal here is to get a woman to want to take a chance on you. It’s like searching for a job in a sense — anything that would make a woman hesitant to hit the “buy” button is probably not a good idea. One in a thousand find a gamer girl. But at the cost quite often of having hundreds of women see anime and gaming in the bio and deciding to not engage.

I still would avoid obvious icky hobbies on a dating profile. Anime has a very strong association with porn, child porn, and childishness.

This take is so heavily out of date I'm wondering if it was frozen in about 2011 and just recently thawed out and revived.

Anime fans aren't relegated to 4chan these days.

One of the most popular series on Netflix in 2022 was an anime series tied into the Cyberpunk:2077 universe.

Netflix has been producing a TON of original anime series themselves. They literally revived a series from 2001 to help fill out their roster.

Which should tell you they're finding viewership for this stuff, and not just among loli enthusiasts.

Now, you might be correct as to how the older generations view anime, but there's probably a similar number of female weebs as male weebs about in the younger gens. Now, if you're looking for someone who is NOT a weeb, then yeah, maybe exclude it.

Even if that take is outdated, liking anime and video games isn't something that women are going to find attractive. It's neutral at best, and you don't want to waste your limited real estate conveying information that isn't going to move the needle in your favor. A lot of guys make profiles that seem tailored toward impressing other guys, but girls do the same thing as well. I guess the female equivalent would be mentioning that they like reality TV. What guy is going to find a girl more attractive after learning that she's really into Real Housewives? It isn't something most guys are going to look forward to watching together, it doesn't make her seem more interesting, and it may give the impression that she's kind of stupid.

Even if that take is outdated, liking anime and video games isn't something that women are going to find attractive.

As stated by @MathWizard up there, if you want someone with similar interests to you, you gotta put it out there somehow.

And as per usual, if you're hot, you could straight up say you're into lolicon and hentai and you'd still get likes.

So are you optimizing for hookups, or something resembling a soulmate?

In the grand scheme, its probably not changing your odds much in aggregate, but somewhat increasing the chances of finding someone who likes what you like.

It's not about hookups vs. soulmate. It's about whether or not you expect a soulmate to have certain interests. If the answer is yes, you only want to be with someone who likes anime as much as you do and is attracted to guys who like anime, then I agree that you would have to put it out there. But that's not the way it is with most things or people. Just look at how much attention to sports men pay vs. women. Or woodworking. Or hunting. Or any number of other hobbies or interests. You can't expect your romantic partner to have 100% of the same interests you do, and most married couple I know aren't like that, right down to my parents. So yes, it's possible that you can be really into anime and have a girl who knows nothing about it and rolls her eyes at the idea of it and still have a successful relationship.

Indeed, once you clear the dozen other hurdles and expectations she'll have too.

I'm just pointing out that if you optimize for the 'wrong' thing, you could end up in a local maxima that gets you more likes in general, but actually filters out the women you'd really be happy to have.

And hey, if you get one and have to 'settle' a bit, its not so bad.

But if EVERYONE is optimizing for the same set of things, and the pool of women is fixed, you're really just creating a zero sum game that means you can get nothing at all despite (because of?) giving up on the things you really like.

I repeat, the pool of women is mostly fixed, so why do you want to optimize for the same thing every other guy is optimizing for?

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