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I've had pretty good luck with them. Can't speak to anyone else. There are plenty of duds that fade prior to meeting, and some that don't among to much after, but I've yet to run into one that was significantly below spec in person.
Generally tons of pics/videos are exchanged, phone calls and video calls are a good addition as well. I've yet to be disappointed in person, but I've definitely cut bait on or lost interest in people I started texting who were setting off my Spidey senses with how they took pics. (No social media, ever)
It might also have to do with my location, I'm sorta out in the country but within half an hour to an hour of many options, and two hours from an infinite supply. So maybe it works better for me because there's not the same expectation that we could meet tomorrow that there is in the same city?
I will say I once hit on a girl on Facebook, circa like 2010, who was just outside my friend circle. Showed up to her house to "watch a movie" and holy shit this girl was huge. I had to make an excuse to get out of there right away. In her pics she looked great!
I've been catfished and that's been an immediate ending to an in-person first date, but also I feel like sometimes it's just vibe/energy mismatch even if the texting is good and nothing's been misleading perse.
It's definitely a risk, though I haven't had that problem.
Maybe it's one of those times where the extremes work but the middle doesn't? Like the real rule is either do it right away or work at it for a month or more. Anything in the middle doesn't work? Idk.
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I mean...are you a tall dude that looks like he could be a male model? Are you a multimillionaire with yacht pics? Famous? Or...are you okay with women twice your weight? If this guy ain't conventionally attractive he needs a million a year and enough charisma for a career in politics plus the body of a Greek God, otherwise he's decidin' where he wants the ambulances.
Yes. I'm so good looking I could model female clothing and it would sell.
I have the face of a young Robert Redford, the body of a cruiserweight boxer, the charisma of Colonel Jose Aureliano Buendia after two drinks.
The ambulances can come nowhere near me.
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Okay, dude, this constant one-note refrain of "If you are not rich, tall and handsome you are doomed to settle for a morbidly obese chick there are no exceptions" is entering "egregiously obnoxious" territory. You are allowed to vent about your own personal lack of success with women (though the Wednesday Wellness thread would be better for it), and you are allowed to comment on dating as it relates to culture war, but "Only chads get acceptable women, everyone else has to settle for landwhales" requires more than just dropping it as a hot take.
I am sorry for not being insufficiently clear. For a lot of things, there are three (not two) levels. Rich, middle class, and poor. Attractive, average, and unattractive. Hell, strong as fuck, average, and puny. My intention wasn't to say the equivalent of "If you ain't rich, you're a hobo begging for spare change"; that is just straight up false. I meant to say that if you were unattractive (as distinct from average) your dating options sucked.
Also, there are exceptions. I knew one.
This took me less than two minutes to find and is just one example of you doing the exact thing you claim here that you're not doing, and going out of your way to be clear and explicit about it.
Also, I think much of the objection is not to the content but to the repetitiveness. Making a dozen to a score of posts saying essentially the same thing (including two substantively similar direct replies to the OP) in something on the order of 48 hours is pointless and obnoxious.
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