Early 30's M looking for LTR. Using Hinge only in a male-surplus tech hub city, using the apps for the first time and… its kinda going good?
By going good I mean I met 3 people in 2 months, all of them are reasonably good looking girls, with one of them we had no mutual in person attraction whatsoever, with one of them I went to so many great dates I lost count (waiting for her to commit) and another girl I went to 3 dates that I enjoyed a lot and would ramp things up quite drastically if not for the other girl.
I had fair number of matches — not a lot, but 1-2 girls every week I could see myself putting in effort for. Raw likes I receive are higher. I could probably meet with many more girls if I was going that direction.
Biggest factor for me though… comparing to real life dating, every person you meet is effectively a giant dice roll as to who they are, what they do and what they like. Online dating profiles at least give you a glimpse of these pretty handily, and a few exchanges of texts tends to be enough to get a vibe of the other person very easily, and most importantly, I know they're trying to date since they're on the app.
I'm very well aware actually getting to know someone takes many months, but even with this superficial information and the fact that they're also trying to date, I feel it helps a lot assessing whether I could click with them.
Not trying to brag or anything, I saw a metric ton of posts here blasting dating apps, it has been quite the opposite experience for me and wanted to share.