Hello everyone,
I tracked my dating activity January to October this year. I figured some of you might find this interesting. Context:
- I’m M28 and live in a city of about 500,000 in Germany. The goal of dating was ideally to find a relationship. I’ve been single for a little over two years. In terms of looks, I’d say I’m decent (athletic, tall, well-groomed), but not a model. I’m not shy; I’m more introverted, but I can approach people and start conversations.
- I used the dating apps Tinder, Bumble, and Hinge, and I also tried meeting people in real life.
- On Bumble, I had the highest-tier premium account for 6 months; on the other apps, I stayed on the free version the whole time.
- I put quite a lot of effort into my profiles, got new photos taken, and asked two female friends to help with the setup.
- Swipes and given likes on the apps are estimates/projections. I tracked them roughly, but not every day, it depended on when and where I swiped. Everything that's a match or later down the chain is counted accurately, though.
- My approach was to text as little as possible and set up a date quickly.
- “Ghosting” for me means the conversation ended abruptly because there was no response, I got blocked, or the match was unexpectedly removed.
- “Fizzles out” means the conversation petered out without an abrupt ending, so the last message was more of a natural end, where you wouldn’t necessarily expect a reply. This usually happened when she wrote with little interest and no questions, or agreed to a date but kept postponing until it never happened. Or when the vibe just wasn’t good, so the conversation never really took off in the first place.
- What’s interesting: I had almost no matches on Hinge, but 3 out of 4 eventually led to a date. On Bumble and Tinder I had many more matches, but there was much more drop-off at every step. In fact, I didn’t get a single date from Tinder, even though I had the most matches there.
- In total I had 3 dates from Hinge, 2 from Bumble, and 3 from real life.
- Approaching in real life was a mix of everyday situations, bars, etc. I always started casually by commenting on something situational, and only if the atmosphere felt good did I ask for a date/phone number at the end. The two times I was approached myself were in a bar. “Met organically” means we met through hobbies or mutual friends, so there was no real “approach” needed.
- “Hard rejection” means she ignored me and walked away or reacted harshly (e.g., “Oh man, just leave me alone”). “Polite rejection” means she reacted positively but had no interest in further interaction or was already taken.
- Overall, all this effort sadly led to nothing. At the latest, things ended after the first date. On one date, we made out a bit (followed by a rejection from her after the date), otherwise nothing happened.
Figures generated with sankeymatic. For tracking, I just used an Excel sheet, for counting swipes on apps I used two of those mechanical hand tally counters.
Disclosure: this is a repost from around a week ago, as the original post got removed after a few minutes because I messed up the time zones (personal data only permissible on Mondays ET, it was Monday but not in ET). I hope now everything is according to the sub's rules.
by Hopeful_Caramel_8027
23 Comments
Data source: Personal counting
Tools: Excel, for counting swipes on apps I used two of those mechanical hand tally counters. Figures generated with sankeymatic.
Go out to a club dude, that’s where I met my bird. And in Germany you have some clubs that attract some fuuunky ladies!
Thanks for the effort. Just one word: Oof. Hang in there! Good luck in your next endeavor!
If I’d summarise that, dating near 30s is way unnecessarily harder than early 20s and people should focus on themselves instead of grinding apps. Got it.
I’ve never been more glad to be out of the dating pool.
Online dating truly sucks:
* Tinder 0.24% conversion rate from profile view to chat
* Bumble 0.2%
* Hinge 0.15%
I say figure out a way to meet more girls in person.
The paradox of choice:
In a world where everything seems possible and everyone is a potential partner in principle, you can engage with tens of thousands of “potential” partners without anything going anywhere. Even if it does work out, the partnership easily breaks, because after all, there are millions of other potential partners you haven’t tried yet.
In a world where you know that your partner is going to come from a pool of a few dozen people in your village, you can quickly settle down with one of them for the rest of your life, and count yourself fortunate that you ended up with them.
Another passport bro in the making
How do you feel about it? Happy that you at least tried? Disappointed? I genuinely don’t think I could handle this amount of rejection.
This is why you never use dating apps (0.02 success rate), while approaching irl works in 30% cases.
Mutual silence, oof. Just reflection and rumination
Based on you matching with 60 out of your 3100 tinder right swipes, I’d say you are a 7.5 or so out of 10.
I don’t know about German women, but I don’t ever want to go on a date with a girl without first talking to her. What if we have nothing of interest to discuss? That would be awkward as hell
Not to mention girls can feel scared of going out with a guy they barely spoke to, just out of basic safety. Imagine your daughter going with a random dating app dude, wouldn’t you want her to spot the potential maniac first?
Other than that, your infographic is superb, probably the best I’ve seen on this sub. And the info with terms and methodology. You have a talent for this. But perhaps try to talk to girls for a while before going out on a date? Good luck!
I like to put my misery into data too, so respect for shared hobby.
Did you use an app for this? I would be interested in my stats but I am not going to log swipes by memory or hand.
Also I wish a woman would post something like this. My general sense from women is that they can’t manage online dating because of enormous volume. The ones they do meet and date are often really really bad guys.
From this data, the OP didn’t do that bad from his 60 matches. 40 messages, 20 chats persisted, 12 of them either responded or rejected. He got 3 numbers. 1 out of 20 numbers from matches isn’t terrible.
Getting only 60 matches out of 3100 is the ridiculous thing. What a waste of everyones time. About a .7 to 1.9% chance of any profile swiping back.
What a waste. If this were a job or something none of us would do it.
Flaw in the technology and the medium imo. We shouldn’t have to do that. It’s unnatural and no wonder the b.s. doesn’t work and has so many people frustrated. There has got to be both a cultural and a technical solution to that.
Hey, looks like my run before I just entirely gave up! Hang in there man. Lightning never struck for me. Hoping it lands for you, man.
Friend of mine used a premium Tinder account for a year or so. He’s no model either but looks good, has a well earning job, own apartment, almost mid twenties yada yada. Dude had a grand total of 4 matches. Zero dates. Zilch.
I used normal Tinder for a month and it had me so depressed I vowed to never use it again lmao
Lmaooo people sitting in their room all day swiping instead of going outside…. Seriously how mentally fucked do you need to have to swipe on EIGHT THOUSAND profiles…. Go meet people in real life
Oh I can finally share my experience haha.
TL;DR: Had the same experience as OP. Then went to Japan and had the opposite experience of TOO much success. I could not deal well with that at all and hated every second of it. Dating success is context dependent. Don’t give up, it’s not you, it’s the market and the context.
Long story: So I have been through something similar twice in my life, the first time I was in my mid 20s, then just after I turned 31. Both times I had thousands of swipes on tinder and bumble combined and barely any dates despite putting in the effort and I would give a similar self description, except maybe that I was maybe between skinny and athletic. If I got dates they usually went fine, but often it would not click for me, but in relation to how many profiles I liked, the matches were in a similar ratio (I kept an excel sheet because a good female friend would not believe me and I also got a match rate in the same ball park ( maybe a little lower)), while living in Hamburg, so a big city. Anyway I found relationships through them eventually – which didn’t last more than a couple of years but regardless. I was frustrated, felt worthless, unloved and sad. I tried my best to keep my head up but I felt like I will die alone and the universe is just unfair. This was reinforced when a female friend showed me here tinder and it was literally the opposite. Getting less than 1% match rates for months really starts chipping away your feeling of self worth. Most men (me included) don’t get a lot of compliments, especially not from strangers so it’s kinda difficult not to let it get to you. I think it’s kind of the opposite problem that a lot of women face who drown in them and they often feel objectified and just want to be left alone.
Then I moved to japan for two years and holy fucking shit that was the most wild experience in my entire life. I was dating a Japanese woman before moving there but we broke up after about a year and I installed bumble and tinder there a few weeks later after feeling lonely. I remember swiping for a good 30 minutes at 2am on a Tuesday while sitting in the bathtub and then eventually going to sleep. The next morning I woke up to – and I kid you not – more than 50 matches and about 900 likes on my profile, almost every single girl I swiped right on had swiped me back. I was in utter disbelieve. For a moment I literally panicked because I thought I was hallucinating or dead. And throughout the day a few more matches fluttered in. Not having ever been in a situation where I needed to talk to more than two women on those apps simultaneously I was WAY in over my head. I stopped further swiping and tried to talk to all of them and it was terrible. What followed was 2 weeks of complete exhaustion trying to maintain conversations with all of them, trying to organize my days around meeting them and then nervously trying to figure out who I told what. Every time I would open a chat I spent about 3-5 minutes figuring who that person was again. Multiply that by 50 people and you won’t have time to do anything else anymore really. After feeling like God in France for half a day it became such a chore and I hated every second of it because I felt like it was such a blur and I could not give the women the attention and headspace they deserved and I just felt so much worry I would screw things up or hurt someone.
Anyway, not having been in a situation to choose before, I would say “yes” to every single one of them when they asked to meet. So there were days where I had 3 separate dates almost back to back and that shit is neither fun nor cheap. I am not a person to sleep around or take advantage of women so I really tried my best to be sincere and keep up with it all while constantly worrying that I might have to make a choice at some point and I did not want to hurt anyone. And so after some of these connections fizzled out for one reason or another I had 4 women that I was about to have a 3rd date with and in japan there is a whole culture of confessing on the 3rd date so I was kinda forced to make a choice and since I never had to do that either I did not take it well. I chose one (which ended up being a rather short 1 or 2 month entanglement) but even now, a good year later, I feel so sorry for the other girls that were interested. If there had been a way to clone myself right there and then I would have made copies of myself. I know this sounds like I think of myself as very important and I promise you I am not. I was just on the receiving end of rejection after a few nice dates often enough when I was younger – probably because the women back then had this exact experience and only one will make it – and I remember who much it hurt me that I thought that even if there is just a small possibility they will be hurt then it’s awful!
After the short entanglement I went and installed these apps again, this time being mindful to only do 1 or 2 swipes per day so it became more manageable but I still felt bad. I was so lucky that the second women I met in that bout was amazing and we became a couple and are together to this day (and hopefully will be forever, god damn I love that woman so much). But I also remember that even taking it slower I still felt so much guilt for implicitly rejecting so many women. Again, I know I am not that important, it’s just that I thought of how much I was hurting myself when I was younger and didn’t wanna do that to anyone.
I think there are two takeaways here: The younger version of myself was desperate to have the opposite experience and then when I got it, it turned out to have problems that felt at least equally terrible to me. The other one is this: How well you do on the dating market is crazy context dependent. Had I not gone to japan I would have continued to believe I was just an unworthy ugly little shit. And while I might be, people there did not see it that way. Suddenly I was really popular with the women on these platforms. And I have no illusion that if I were to try dating here again (hopefully I will never have to do that again), it will be shit just like before. But I will find comfort in knowing it’s not all me.
Jesus christ what are you messaging when you message first?
The rejection rate is incredible.
Edit, Sorry read the sankey wrong, it’s still high though.
How do you people have so much time to go through that many profiles lol?
Daaaamn from 7520 only 8 dates and 0 second dates!! Never counted but my stats prolly were close to a couple of orders of magnitude less depressing and still had to quit wasting time vs such terrible odds.
Europe is doomed. Look south bro, a much better life awaits you. No reason to keep wasting your life.
dude… you have to hit the gym. For me match rate is way way way way higher
Ur defo not as attractive as u think