I finally gave in! Last week, I dipped my toes into online dating.
Bouncing from much too old (Jeanni) to much too young (Shirley, Cathy), I have decided that it might be time to turn to tech for some help.
Certainly, San Francisco seems like the perfect city to do it in. Everybody that I know seems to have successfully found their significant other on OkCupid. Hell, I know somebody who has even gotten engaged from off of OkCupid, and they seem like a lovely couple. Any of my notions that online dating is just for hopeless 30+ year old loners, does not exist here. In fact, online dating seems to be the preferred method of dating in the city for all ages.
If you can't beat em, join em.
However, I haven't totally gotten on the OkCupid train. It is just too big of a step for me right now, since the profile is too long and it seems you have to aggressively message others in order to experience any success.
Instead, I have been messing with Tinder, a very shallow app where you are shown pictures of women located near you. All I have to do is swipe right to "Accept" and if the girl also accepts me then a match is made and we can begin messaging. I have had five matches so far, but have not messaged any of them. Partly because everybody I know that uses Tinder just messes around with it. My coworker told me Tinder is where he A/B tests his pick up lines. Tinder is probably not the best place to find a significant other, but it is still a great way to pass the time and it's a nice ego boost to see that there are girls that "like" me.
More seriously, I created a profile on CoffeeMeetsBagel.com, a dating site that has been making some noise in the startup community. The concept is simple, you get one match a day and either you like or pass on your match. If both of you like each other, then texts are sent and you can start having a conversation. Hilariously, for my first match, I was given a guy! Turns out, while lazily filling out my profile I had selected seeking a male. Setting it to seeking female meant that the next day I did not get a match due to a gender imbalance on the site. Since the initial mismatch, I've had two matches with girls, but needless to say, they went nowhere.
Maybe, I'll have better luck next week. Keep you all posted.
-muffinman
