So, you want to date online?
Lately, a number of my friends have asked for my advice on which dating apps they should try because they know I have dated online a lot. So without further delay, here are my thoughts and recommendations!
A couple of caveats first:
Everyone’s dating experience is going to be different. Whereas I may have had success or failure on a particular app your experience might be different, but my hope is that sharing a general overview of a couple of the apps out there will give you a better sense of what might work for you.
Give yourself grace. I’ve found that I have taken breaks from dating over the past four years when the cycle became too much. I define “too much” as several bad experiences back-to-back. I’m human just like everyone else and my feelings get hurt. And even though I talk a lot of mess lol, multiple negative dating experiences back-to-back can really wear on you. So, take your time and if it’s not working take a break.
Be willing to invest. The investment is going to be your time and engaging in thoughtful conversation with people to get to know them better. It’s going to be in how you present yourself when you go on an actual date because the visuals matter just as much as the mental. The other investment is in subscriptions. Most of the apps that I will describe below do offer additional features and all of these are behind a pay wall. My advice for apps that offer subscriptions is to give it a try without the subscription for a couple of weeks and see if you think having additional features would make your experience better. For some apps, the free version is good enough because the paid upgrades are not worth it, whereas for other apps the subscription will enhance your experience and will give you opportunities to search and sort by various characteristics that might be important to you such as racial background, education level, if they have children etc.
Now that I’ve gotten those out the way, let’s dish!
Facebook’s Dating section
If you’re like me, you may still have a Facebook account but are almost never on there because you spend most of your time on Instagram! Still, as one of the OG Facebook members (A.k.a. I joined when you had to have a college email in order to become a member), I’ve kept my account to stay in touch with friends from college, high school, elementary school, and a sprinkling of others along the way. It was during one of my random moments to check Facebook that I saw that they had a dating option in the menu, so my curiosity led me to creating a profile.
Pros:
It’s free 99. Like it costs absolutely nothing to see your matches, to sort by various parameters, etc. There is no pay wall. It will also show you if you have a mutual friend with that person, however it does not notify that mutual friend if you begin speaking to that person. Not a huge plus, but it’s always helpful to know where your networks might overlap, and depending on where things go, or your relationship with the mutual contact, you might have someone to contact so you can further vet your prospect.
The searching features are discerning. You could add parameters such as height, age, distance from you, education level, if they have children as well as what type of relationship they’re looking for (casual, serious, friends etc). Obviously the more filters you add in preferences the smaller the pool will be, but you can play around with those as you go and see what happens. The search parameters also allow you to say whether something is a dealbreaker or if it’s just a preference, so it will prioritize people who meet the criteria, but it won’t filter out everyone who may not meet one of those criterion.
Cons:
My only downside to the Facebook dating app is (and this will probably be a critique of most dating apps) the notification functions. Facebook’s management of notifications is a little clunky so that can make it difficult to ensure that you’re being notified properly when someone is writing you a message. The delay in that notification can hold up progress especially if you’ve connected with someone you are really interested in conversing with. Also, if you’re like me and you’re not that active on Facebook otherwise, once you turn on the notifications for Dating it is likely you’ll start getting notifications for all the other things that are happening on Facebook and you may not want that.
My other con is that for me the dating preferences I have given me potential matches outside of the New York City area. When it first started happening, I kept on messing with the parameters to see if I could get more New York potential matches but after a while I kind of gave up. So apparently my future is in the DMV area lol. This led me to start having a more open mind about a potential long-distance relationship which is not some thing I would typically consider just because most of my life and everything that I know is here in New York City. However, if I was to ever leave the New York City area I think that for my career as well as clearly the potential matches in single men lol, the DMV area may be a good fit for me. Don’t start planning my going away party just yet, I’m just saying I kept an open mind and so I suggest that you do the same if you end up getting matches that are not in your immediate area.
All in all, I would recommend giving this app a try especially if you haven’t done online dating before or that often.
Tinder
Good old Tinder lol. Its reputation precedes itself in most circles, even for people who have never used it! The biggest question that I’ve gotten from people about Tinder is whether or not it is truly a hook up app. I will say that any dating app can be a hook up app depending on the individual’s intentions. However, the number of people who are looking to hook up or are using Tinder to promote themselves in the sex work field is sky high lol. So is Tinder a hook up app? I guess yes? Lol From my experience, there are decent guys on there who are not looking to just hook up, you just need to be vigilant in your conversations to discern their intentions.
Pros:
The biggest factor in favor of Tinder is it’s ease of use. You can literally throw up a few pictures of yourself and not even add anything in the bio and you can start swiping away. The bio has a character limit so you can’t go into great detail about yourself but maybe it’s not that necessary if your intentions are only to do grown-up consensual activities. You can adjust your parameters for searching by age and distance for free. Tinder also gives you the option to “take a break“, which is great if you need to actually take a break from dating but do not want to delete your profile, or if you’ve met someone and may not be exclusive yet but are not interested in entertaining or searching for new people. This function allows for you to keep the matches that you have already made while taking you out of circulation for potential new matches matches. Recently Tinder added a verification process for profiles to help combat the scam profiles that are very prevalent on the app so that is helpful. When you see the blue check verification on a profile you know that at least the person is real. Their intentions may be funky but at least you know that you’re looking at is the person that you were speaking to.
Cons:
Do you want the alphabetical or numerical list LOL
I talk a lot of crap about Tinder but I’ll try to again remain unbiased. The enhanced features if you decide to get a subscription include being able to see who swiped right on you and then you can decide whether you want to swipe right on them. You also can go back a swipe if you mistakenly swipe right or left on someone that you didn’t mean to. This is great if you were swiping quickly and may have missed someone, but you can only go back one swipe not multiple swipes. You also get additional super likes, which you can send to someone you are really interested in while you’re swiping. I think the subscription cost is relatively reasonable.
Tinder doesn’t ask much in the way of biographical information. If you have a particular preference for dating certain kinds of ppl, ie only dating your race or particular races, you can’t sort for that. For me I personally prefer to date Black men and men of color, and Tinder does have a good showing of men who identify as such but they are a lot of white men lol… and there’s nothing wrong with white men, and I’m not necessarily against the idea of dating white men, but I would just prefer to date a man who has similar or adjacent lived experiences as me. I’ve also found when I have tried to connect with white men on Tinder they view me as exotic a.k.a. “I’ve never had a Black girl before“ like I’m a new restaurant in the neighborhood. So for those reasons I typically just date men of color and specifically Black men.
If you’re in a season of casual dating and not looking for anything serious Tinder is great because you don’t really have to share a ton about yourself in order to get started on the app. However if you are looking for purposeful dating that has LTR potential, Tinder could become very frustrating very quickly. I do personally know someone who got married to someone she met on Tinder and they just had their first child last month, and bought a house in NJ, so it’s possible to find your person on Tinder, you may just have to dig in the crates a lot.. like a lot a lot lol.
BLK App
The BLK app sells itself as a place for Black people to connect, and for the most part I feel like it accomplishes that. Every now and again I do see other men of color or white men, but the vast majority of men on there are Black. If that is your preference, then this app checks off that box. It uses the similar swipe right/left function of Tinder to like or not like a profile, and offers a super like feature to express a bigger interest in a profile. There is a subscription option if you would like to see who has liked your profile versus just swiping and hoping for the best. There is a weird glitch with the app though where you might randomly lose matches, and not just because someone deletes you lol. It’s definitely a bug in the app.
Pros
It’s brothers, and I love me some brothers lol. I appreciate that even if not all the men are attractive to me, at least I’m in a pool of mostly Black men to choose from. They also have made an improvement on the profiles to add more information about yourself in addition to the 500 character limit to freestyle your own thing, including your children status, and what you’re looking for, as well as if that profile matches on any of those aspects with you. The paid subscription mirrors features from Tinder, i.e. go back a swipe if you missed someone, see those who liked you, more super likes to send, etc. I
Cons
Like Tinder, the profiles and effort put forth can be lacking. Some people use their profiles to bash women on the app, others write poetry or quotes from movies, and some put nothing at all lol. Some men do actually put some thought into their profile, so as with all these apps, patience is key. The notifications function in this app can be a little temperamental as well, and I typically need to close the app completely and reopen it to see the new messages I’ve received.
Without more ways to sort through men, you’re left to make judgement calls solely based on photos. It’s not the most fair basis, as a lot of men aren’t great at taking selfies lol. I probably have missed my blessing on more than one occasion because of poor photos lol but here we are!
Hinge
Hinge is yet another app in the mix, and on the surface, it offers some of the best features I’ve seen on an app that can be used without a membership. It allows for profile customization with various prompts to talk about yourself, in addition to pictures and general profile information like your location, height, education, kids status, race/ethnicity, etc. With a paid subscription, you can sort more discriminately but even for free the options for searching is still pretty good.
Pros:
If you’re like me and prefer to date Black men but wouldn’t be completely opposed to dating otherwise, this app is good for that. You can widen your preferences if you wish to include Latinx, Asian, or even White men lol
Because of the profile prompts, I’ve seen a little more effort on men’s part to fill it out more fully, so you get more of a glimpse into who they are presenting themselves as is always good. I also think the notifications for the app are better than most of the previously mentioned apps.
Cons:
The subscription is a bit more than most phone-based apps but it’s not terrible. It also has had a growing scam profile problem, which is why I ended my membership earlier this year. I’m considering rejoining and giving BLK a break, so we’ll see if the problem has gotten any better or worse.
The way photos are uploaded on the site, it can crop the photos in a weird way, and there’s no way to edit it, so you might have to play around with your photo selection to make sure they look the way you intended.
Final Thoughts:
This is just a glimpse into a few of the dating apps out there, but if you take anything away from this article, know that you get out of it what you put in. If you put up a profile but are never active on the app, you won’t meet anyone lol. It’s the online version of staying in your home and expecting a guy to knock on your door to ask you out! You have to be actively interacting in order to meet people you might be interested in. Take it from me, it can make you weary at times, but that’s where those breaks come in. If the cycle is too much, take a break and come back when you feel ready. No need in stressing yourself or subjecting yourself to rejection or a guy’s foolishness back to back without a breather! I’m right there with you sis. Even with the highs and lows of my dating life, I’m still optimistic that the right person for me will find his way through all the mess to me. Until then, I’ll keep swiping!
Let me know what apps you’re using and your pros and cons below!
-m
