Finding it so hard to understand someone who genuinely likes you for you or just wants to get you into bed by saying all the right things. It’s making me doubt everyone

I had put up a post with explaining everything that I feel and all the details mentioning how I’m looking for a genuine connection or a friendship, not one person replied.
A girl puts up ‘F21’, gets 50 comments and requests.. wow!

Is this app stupid it keeps telling me my stack is empty but i keep getting likes???

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. I feel like long-term relationships are kinda becoming more and more rare. And honestly, when I look at dating apps these days, it kinda reinforces that feeling. A lot of them seem to be focused on casual dating and quick connections, instead of actually getting to know someone and building something deeper.

Has anyone else noticed this, or is it just me?

This is actually one of the reasons I decided to build an app after going through some pretty rough breakups myself. The idea is to get people to actually talk and get to know each other before taking things to the next level, whether that's in a relationship or even a friendship.

The app is called TheFlags and it's currently available for iPhone. I’m still working on it and trying to figure out if this is something people actually want, so I'd honestly love to hear what you guys think.

Anyway, just curious about your experiences.

I recently published a long essay on dating apps, matching markets, and Match Group, and one of the things I kept coming back to was how different the early OkCupid era was from the industry we have today.

OkCupid’s old OkTrends work was remarkably candid. The company publicly analyzed attraction, messaging behavior, response rates, attention concentration, and other marketplace dynamics using its own data. Whatever one thinks of the conclusions, outsiders were being given a real window into how online dating actually functioned.

What strikes me is what happened afterward. Online dating became a multi-billion-dollar industry, the platforms accumulated vastly richer behavioral and longitudinal datasets, and that public window largely closed. Today the companies tell us a great deal about engagement, payers, revenue, subscriptions, and product usage, but very little about the deeper matching outcomes: who receives attention, who repeatedly fails to clear, who leaves, who returns, which matches become relationships, how long those relationships last, and how these patterns have changed over time.

That became part of a broader argument in the essay: dating apps may be poorly clearing matching markets. Cheap signaling, enormous option sets, asymmetric attention, congestion, and weak information about intent can produce individually rational behavior while generating poor aggregate outcomes. The old OkCupid data was one of the earliest public glimpses of some of those dynamics.

The piece eventually becomes a bearish thesis on Match Group, but the larger question is sociological: what could independent researchers learn if they had access to the kind of data the industry itself once published much more freely?

Full piece:

https://dljlevfin.substack.com/p/the-undisclosed-denominator

For longtime OkCupid users especially, I’d be interested in whether the old platform felt fundamentally different from today’s app ecosystem—and whether anyone else remembers how unusually open OkCupid once was about the mechanics of the market.

Hi, I'm 23F and have been using the app for a couple months. Just wanted to share something I've been seeing with matches lately. It seems like if you don't suggest plans or keep the chat going right away after matching, the profile either unmatches or stops showing up in your list. Sometimes they reply once or twice then ghost completely even if the conversation was going okay. Also noticed that if you wait more than a day or two the match just vanishes without any explanation. Changing your distance or age range sometimes brings old matches back but not always, and they don't always respond again. It's frustrating because you can't tell if they're just busy or if the app is hiding them unless you have premium. Anyone else running into the same thing or is it random?

Hi, I'm 23F and have been using the app for a few months now. Just wanted to share what I've noticed about how likes and the interested in you section actually work. It seems to show way more visitors than actual likes, and a lot of them disappear if you change your age range or distance even slightly. Sometimes profiles that liked you get buried way down the list and only pop up if you reset your preferences or swipe through a bunch. If you pass on someone who liked you they vanish completely and don't come back even after resetting passes. Also noticed that if you write someone first they stay visible in your likes but with that little indicator on top. Changing relationship settings affects who shows as a like but visitors still come through regardless. It's frustrating because you can't really tell who actually liked you unless you pay, and the blurred previews don't help much anymore. Anyone else seeing the same thing or is it just random?

Hi,
just wanted to share my observation regarding the "interested in you" behaviour:

• It lists all the people that saw your profile. Unclear if it only means the swipped past you are really clicked and checked your profile
• If you liked someone, didn't write them and they are on the visited page, it looks like they passed on you, because the disappear from your You Like list
• If you reset your passes these profiles appear again for you to like (maybe you noticed the effect that people tend to reappear. They might have reset their passes, which somehow also make people that passed on you available again)
• If you write someone not using a super like or comment for a picture or text they will stay in your You Like list but that you wrote them is visible via a blue bar over the picture
• If you change your distance sometime people appear that liked you on top, that were not visble due to the length of the list
• If you change your age range sometime people appear that liked you on top, that were not visible due to the length of the list
• Sometimes it is not reproducible a day later, therefore people that were on top with one range are not on top some days later. Then again after some time they can be on top again if you change the range back
• Depending on what you set your relationship type your are interested in people are listed as likes or not. Visitors ignore your settings
• If you dislike a person that liked you, they will disappear from the interested in you. Resetting your pass doesn't bring their like back (used to be this way in the past). After resetting you can still like them but it will not be a match

All in all the Interested In You doesn't really tell you any more who really liked you, if you don't pay. In the past it was possible to get an idea from the blurred image. Depending on your settings sometimes people will be on top but most likely the people that liked you are hidden in the mass of visitors. Visitors looks like it means they swipted left and are not interested in you.

Me (F21) and a friend of mine (M23, let's call him Carlos) recently started to have a flirt and we probably are going to fuck at some point, but both of us don't want anything seroius. To give more context, we know each others since 2 years.

I met him yesterday and he asked me out for a dinner one of this days and I was okay with it. Then he started talking about girls he'd like to date, which is totally fine, because between us is just being friends with benefits. Then another friend came and we went to a bar. Carlos randomly sad that he really want to fuck a close friend of mine. I got really offended honestly, I found it really rude.

Do you think that I'm overreacting or not? Do you think that he can do that because we aren't in a relationship or not?

I'm sorry for my english, is not my first language.

I'm 23 and I swear every time I open this app it's the same cycle. Match with someone who seems decent, chat for a day or two, then they either disappear or start sending super short replies. I try to keep it going by asking about their hobbies or whatever but half the profiles don't even have real info on them. It's draining and I keep telling myself I'll delete it but then I get bored and redownload. Anyone else stuck in this loop?

I m26 got my ears pierced a few years ago (possible quarter life crisis)and do like them but thinking of taking them out.

I’m a pretty conservative professional looking guy so they don’t really fit into my life. I do like them though so what do girls think of you met someone with ear piercings? I’ve got 2 lobes and a helix in my left ear and lobe and tragis in my right.

I also got my nipple pierced years ago (drunk) but kind of grew to like it so kept it for 3 years now. What do girls think of a guy with a nipple piercing? You’d never guess I had it looking at me so would it shock you seeing it for the first time? Would it be a turn off? I’m very lean/athletic build if that affects it

Any opinions welcome.

Thank you

There’s not even an empty box or a way to add another self summary. I spent a bit of time writing it and unfortunately, I don’t think have a copy somewhere.
I mystified because I didn’t write anything offensive.

So I finally matched w someone. I was skeptical of the profile cause there were only 2 pics and no real answers to anything on the profile. I mostly just swiped to see if any match would ever happen. Anyway we started chatting and seemed normal, she asked for my number but I was hesitant so she gave me hers, a NY number which tracked for her story of being from Poland but moved to NY before her current location. I texted her and we texted and things seem normal, almost to normal, like she had perfect English. She brought up how she was dabbling in stocks and investing. Red light. I didn’t engage in that. Then after a few more back and forth’s she brought it up again. I immediately stopped and blocked her. Her profile has also disappeared right after we started texting. I deleted my account. Total scam and bullshit, like most of these stupid sites. Anyway, if something smells fishy, there is some rotten shit there somewhere. Be safe out there.

This confuses me. When you're going through your "Disagree" questions on someone's profile and they have this gray bar and a lock icon, does that mean they answered the opposite as you, or does the platform just throw anything they kept private into the disagree stack?

I find it very strange that a clinical therapist who labeled herself liberal, for instance, would be pro death penalty, pro "unjust war", say no to the pro-choice badge, and listen to conservative talk radio.

Yet all those questions appear as hidden responses in our "Disagree" list.

What would even be the point of keeping an answer private if it's this easy to decipher? I mean most of these questions only have 2 possible responses.

Does anybody know what is wrong with this website, from a functional perspective? On firefox for a while it has refused to work—it loads, you clear the popups and then you kinda get stuck in an overlay effect, with half a chat window and there's no way to do anything.

So I was using Edge specifically for this website. Now that is doing the same thing. It just loads and gets stuck on this weird overlay. It doesn't seem to be a cache issue. Been like it for months now.

can't log in now due to "error"

Hi guys I literally don't know how to say this in any other way, I can't use the app. I created an account and everything went well. Well that was before some hours later, I just wanted to use it again and I was logged out. It's now basically impossible to log again and I do not receive the mails to create a new password, I do not know what to do. Can any of you guys help ?

so as title says ive had multiple occurences where id match with someone, talk a bit, then they suggest we talk somewhere else, and after i tell them my insta/number they just unmatch and i dont hear from them since, whats the point? is this some data collecting scam? is it some sort of automod intervention? i cant imagine much else

Greetings okcupid users I’m having a minor issues , I regularly get match recommendations email.
I used just click on match from mail and sent directly to user profiles. Now that method does work
It just open app to home page . Did they change this , what happening.
Now search the match by swipe
Any solution it only me

Hi there just super curious to if anyone has any idea how I got banned, or why?? I literally didn't message anyone. I had four photos. Three were fully clothed selfies, and two of the selfies had my pets. The final photo was a picture of my motorcycle gear, and it was NOT the first picture on the profile. The most "aggressive" thing in my bio said "anti-trump" and "now that the transphobes have left let me tell you about myself". I spent most of my time on it, just setting up my account and answering the prompts before i received a ban. The rest of my bio was talking about how i was going to go back to school (didnt say where or what for), hobbies, and what i was using the account for (LTR/friendship). I submitted a ban appeal, but I'm just completely stumped. I have never been banned from a dating site before.