Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
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I was reluctant to call you out by name specifically because I didn't want to make any untoward implications, so to the extent I may have done so, I apologize. With that out of the way, yes, I understand you're competing with hordes of other guys on these apps and your general desire to not waste your time pursuing women who aren't really that interested. I'm not going to criticize anyone's personal strategy if it works for them. My concern is more that the OP presented a specific problem and, from the 10,000 foot view at least, following your advice doesn't do anything to address the problem. The only one that does is telling him not to overmatch, which is fine on its face, but if the problem is with his selection criteria that's not going to help much. For example, if he's swiping primarily based on hotness, telling him to be more selective just means his match totals will go down and he'll have the pleasure of having hotter women flake on him.
So I'm dubious of everything you say after that because, if you are indeed only dating Type A women, then they probably would have shown up for the date regardless of what you did. As I mentioned in another comment, I never had a problem with cancellations, but I have no tricks to offer other than "assume people will show up to things they agreed to show up for". Beyond that, I understand that you aren't willing to waste your time with people who aren't showing a ton of interest, which is fine, but I don't know that it works as a universal rule. Maybe they aren't that interested. Maybe they aren't that interested now, but will be once the guy they're talking to the most stops talking to them. Maybe they've been having bad luck, are burned out, and just aren't checking for messages that often. I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt. I understand that the nature of these apps encourages bad behavior, and I'm willing to give people a little more leeway than I would IRL. The way I figure it, even if I think the chances are slim, while I wouldn't get my hopes up, cutting bait only takes them to zero. But then again, neither of us are complaining about any of this.
Here's the only point of serious contention I have. One of the benefits of online dating is that you don't have to worry about sending the wrong signals. It's not like some girl you meet at a party who ends up friendzoning you because you never showed any explicitly romantic interest; it's abundantly clear to both parties that the only reason you're even talking is because you're looking to date each other. If you're trying to differentiate yourself, suggestive flirting doesn't seem like the way to do it, since flirtatious guys are a dime a dozen. For a lot of them, it's pretty much their entire bag of tricks. I can't find any real data on it, but it's my understanding that the vast majority of guys either don't send messages with likes at all or don't send anything of substance. I have seen stats that suggest that the average message response time for guys is longer than for women. Some women showed little to no interest from the beginning, and I didn't expect much. But of the others, the ones that didn't end up with dates are ones where I wasn't entirely engaged, procrastinated sending messages, or wasn't very thoughtful with them, and they eventually stopped responding. I probably could have converted a decent chunk of these just by putting the work in.
Oh no offense taken, I'm somewhat tickled if anything that you think my serial monogamist self was like that. I'm going to tell my wife as soon as she gets home from work!
I married my first wife at 19, and stayed with her till she passed from cancer when I was in my 40's. Then raised my kids to adults then moved to America and started online dating in my 50's. Met my now-wife and don't intend going anywhere else.
I think maybe the disconnect is that while you would hope that indeed by being on Tinder or Hinge or whatever is a strong signal you are both looking to actively date, this does not in fact seem to be the case. So you do have to sort the wheat from the chaff (and the wheat and chaff is different for men and women), lack of messaging interest is in my experience highly correlated with lack of interest in actually dating. There are also many reasons as you point out the woman may not be putting a lot of effort into replying, but fundamentally, to the guy on the other end, he can't tell the difference. So either you must hang on to them all, spreading your attention thin, or move on. You might get lucky of course, but that's not really a strategy.
Like fishing, it might be the fish will start to bite after lunch, or there might be a pike under your boat and they aren't going to bite all day. Given you can't know which, moving on to try and find somewhere the fish are biting is a good option. Unless you are just fishing to drink beer and fall asleep in the sun which is the equivalent of people just swiping for fun with no intention of actually dating I suppose.
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