The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
PSA:
For the love of all that is unholy, avoid Tinder if you find yourself at a point in your life that dating apps are appealing.
Hinge and Bumble are much better, at least from the perspective of a guy.
Why so?
Well, the women on Tinder are, in my experience, spoiled brats who expect male attention to be handed to them on a silver platter, as breakfast in bed. The design of the app, while more egalitarian than Bumble (which requires women to be the ones to approach you first, unless you pay), incentivizes much more mindless swiping. You are one cut of meat among many others, and the 1% of guys who are prime Wagyu are pulling most of the women (a mild exaggeration, it's probably more like the standard Pareto deal of 20% getting 80%). Even if you're lucky enough to match with a bored girl looking at all the options, they're congenitally lazy. Why wouldn't they be? They've got a million horny men to choose from and can afford to be picky.
In contrast, Bumble, by forcing the woman to make contact, is actually doing guys a favor. A hi or hello means a lot more when you know for a fact that she's into you, and trust me that low bar counts for a lot.
Even Hinge, with its focus on limiting matches daily (cynically, a ploy to make you pay for more), means that your profile is likely to get more consideration than a surface judgement. You can expect people to actually read the damn bio.
Your time and attention are far better rewarded on the latter two, though of course anyone blessed enough to be handsome will likely get what they desire on any platform. I'm hardly ugly, just average in terms of facial attractiveness (optimistically a 7 out of ten when I've grown out my beard and lost weight, as I have now), but I find that charm, wit and general markers of intelligence (like the ability to write a bio more entertaining than a dictionary), are more viable ways to stand out.
I'd rather not brag, but I'm frankly stunned at the sheer disparity. I tentatively wager that this isn't an India-only phenomenon, and if anyone is soured on online dating, branch out from Tinder. If you're a handsome Chad, by all means carry on, but if you need to sell yourself with something other than just looks or a Ferrari, give it a whirl. This presumes you don't have the option of dating in the workplace or hitting up bars, but you wouldn't be reading this if those were the case.
(I have a longer draft from when I was very drunk, and it's surprisingly well written, slightly more sober yet hungover me is impressed, but it says much the same)
PS: It's a damn shame that the OG OkCupid is dead and a conglomerate is wearing its corpse. But I wouldn't have been legal to use it when it was actually good, so what do I know.
Personally, I've had 0 success on Bumble, and some moderate success on both Tinder and Hinge. Which app works best for an individual isn't very easily predictable.
I certainly can't claim with confidence this is universal, but at the least, your comment shores up my point that you should branch out and try the different apps instead of fixating on one.
I do know Tinder has a particularly bad reputation for anything but hookups, whereas Bumble and Hinge advertise themselves as at least modestly more cerebral.
My policy was to only swipe right on people I actually would be willing to date, based off both looks and what inklings of a personality could be gleaned from a bio. Hitting the maximum number of daily matches (without paying) on all 3 apps, and being picky with it, I get more matches on Bumble and Hinge, and said matches are also far more likely to progress further.
I've certainly become more attractive, at least comparing broke-ass med student me from 7 years back to slightly less broke doctor today, and being older is a good thing for guys till you're into the wrong ends of your 30s. I've got better pictures, I look better, and being a doctor does count for quite a bit. That all being said, my Tinder experience still remained roughly the same, namely god-awful, whereas I'm suffering from success on the other apps.
I must apologize if that comes across as bragging, but it's necessary to demonstrate my point that there genuinely seems to be major differences in the dispositions and desires of the girls on the different apps. An app being overly popular can be a bad thing too, from the increased competition, and by choosing an app that doesn't have the same rep as Tinder, you're also filtering for women who aren't themselves happy with Tinder.
And frankly speaking, Indian men have fucking negative rizz. I made all my previous longterm relationships by sliding into DMs outside dating apps, but the odd peek I get into the conversational skills of even the guys hotter than me makes me glad the competition is that trash.
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And locations either. Sometimes your value changes on the interstate/international markets, one way or the other.
Silicon Valley CS majors and engineers NGMI 🫡
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