Meetup.com
I know, I know, but really, it’s better than any actual dating app.
this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2025
126 points (97.0% liked)
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meetup.com
Dating sites are there to make money off of desperation. Matches are intentionally superficial or completely off base. They won't give away a product that you are willing to pay for. Because then they lost two customers.
I never gave HER a dime but it was the platform I met my eventual wife on. However unless you're looking to meet other ladies, it's probably not the app for you.
I tried HER years ago and left unimpressed. I found my partner of 5yrs on OkCupid though
Yeah I should've specified I'm after guys lol I'll edit my description
I once had a date with a pole dancer off Her. I never mention it, constantly.
Im a 40m divorcee and I am absolutely out of my depth thinking about dating.
I have looked at the apps and sites and they never go anywhere for me. No matches or conversations that go no where.
I sort of think that meeting someone will happen when it happens, but I really miss that excitement of learning all about someone and talking all night.
Im also interested in meeting someone outside of my country, because Id love to experience something new, but that makes me look like a scammer.
May the chances be in your favor, brother. 🤝
I like OK Cupid. It works perfectly without paying and matches are better as they are based on questions you answer and profiles contain more info. So it's less evaluating lifestock like Tinder.
There's also Bumble, it used to be that the woman needs to start talking when matched within 24h otherwise the match disappears. This is so women won't get spammed by loads of men. I heard they would change it, but I'm not sure if they actually did. It works fine without paying.
There's Boo, which I think is mostly for autistic and introvert people. Works fine with the free version.
There's Feeld, which works great without paying. The focus is mainly on sex, not so much relationship material imo.
Bumble did chenge that. Now the woman decides who has to start the convo once they match. You can also set some prompts for the other person to reply to.
OKC is basically 90% bots now. I have 100+ likes. None are from my area or even my country.
Ok Cupid used to be kind that, but they completely butchered the question part of it, in my opinion it is no longer useful. Also as a white cis male you get spammed there by literally hundreds of accounts from the Philippines. Makes the whole thing useless in my opinion
Yeah that's true. About 60% of the women I see are from Asia / Africa / South America.
I wish they would disable the custom location feature to solve this clutter.
I live in The Netherlands, there are enough people here on the app to make it worth while. It's how I met my new partner.
I live in The Netherlands, there are enough people here on the app to make it worth while. It’s how I met my new partner.
Congrats btw
I wish they would disable the custom location feature to solve this clutter.
It's REALLY useful for travelling/migration. I made a penpal/IRL friend through there using this very feature. They should deal with it by reports and etc.
Yeah, that's how I met my current partner. She lives in Portugal but had her location in my city. It does have benefits, but it also extremely clutters the app with gold diggers from the other side of the globe.
There's Boo, which I think is mostly for autistic and introvert people. Works fine with the free version.
Oooo... I'm gonna have to try this one.
I'm not a big fan though. It's also a sort of social media. There are many people on there from Asia and Africa, cluttering the user base.
I had 3 matches which ended in extended conversations, but in all 3 cases (don't know if it's coincidence) they were trying to cheat on their partner. I'm poly, I don't mind sharing, but cheating on someone is not going to happen with me.
About poly, OK Cupid has the option to say you're monogamous, polyamorous (with account links possible) or open to either. So it's a great app for finding poly people or focus on mono people without matching with the poly ones (saves a conversation)
Yeah... I have been on there since making that comment and just looking in a 40 mile radius, a majority of the profiles I am seeing are unvaccinated red hats. 😮💨
The idea is still nice, but... You're still at the mercy of who is actually near enough to meet. And I live in dumbfuckville.
Sorry to say, but there's no app available which creates better people in your town haha
Maybe move to a city?
OK Cupid has the option to set your location manually. You can check somewhere else if there's someone nice. I hate this option, it clutters the app with Asian and African women wanting to meet someone abroad. But it may be nice for you to get better results.
Great question. Tried the paid thing (38f). Lots of decent (superficially) matches, none of whom shared my values or interest. It was a huge waste of money across apps.
Yeah it's a known thing that match bought all the dating sites and turned them in to tinder and made the algorithm to not to help you find someone but just keep you on the site. So they just watch your patterns to keep you searching and give you just enough hope so you don't leave / stop paying.
The question i have is not even about dating but just making IRL friends. Stuff like meet-up is full of scams and professional networking. Where what I'm looking for is a site where I can find people that share my hobbies/interests.
The question i have is not even about dating but just making IRL friends. Stuff like meet-up is full of scams and professional networking. Where what I’m looking for is a site where I can find people that share my hobbies/interests.
I'm struggling with finding this kind of culture home too. I feel like meetup used to have more events in my area—and I'm practically in the the city and near big metro area—but ever since pandemic, I have no clue where to find people. Not that I did before because I've been a shut-in for most of my life but hot damn, I feel like eventually I will just finally give up and show up to a board game/card game event even though I'm not good at them. I would love if there was a calligraphy type of group thing in my area but I digress.
Yeah im in a metro as well. It's a challenge with just showing up for me is my disability makes people shy away from engaging with me. Like they are not mean or anything but they just don't want to deal with the perceived awkwardness of interacting with someone who can't walk unassisted.
They are doing an awful job of it, if that is the case. Most of my last few relationships, serious and casual alike, were from tinder, and those few that weren’t, were surprisingly enough, from jodel. But tinder has been the cultural standard here for a longish while now, and most everyone I know, friends and acquaintances, have met their partners from there. And after passing 30, not many are single anymore, and only very few in casual/serial relationships. So most are in stable committed relationships, of which most were from tinder.
Personally I never spent any money there and I don’t know any that have (though they could just be omitting it or it never just came up, I digress), yet I don’t really know many single people anymore either thanks to it.
So if their intention is keeping people searching, they really make it way too convenient and nice an experience to meet people and fall in love.
Could this maybe be a thing that EU somehow makes better here, versus e.g the US that I can sadly imagine would actually give all the tools for the companies to actively make it an eternal search… it feels to me it’s too good an experience for most I know for our experience to be the outlier. Why would people use it anyway, if it didn’t work?
Jodel? The app used exclusively by my coworkers to post memes about their job, and seemingly not much else?
Well, it’s been a few years now, but there used to be a fairly active hookup scene in this town, though that wasn’t my scene. It’s all things local at least here. Often people would just message you for various reasons, whatever you post, and sometimes it’d just lead to things once you chat a bit. I don’t think you could post memes or whatever back then, you could only take pictures with camera, couldn’t attach arbitrary images (e.g memes).
I think the way you're supposed to do it now is to post one of the JD Vance memes into c/196 and try DMing the first person who comments. Rinse and repeat until the desired outcome is achieved.
Germans skip to ich_iel.
A similar question was asked about 2 weeks ago; I was going to link to that but it was since deleted; so here's a copy & paste of my reply instead. Note payment wasn't raised in that discussion; my response to that would be: is potentially meeting people interested in dating you worth the fee (to me that answer was yes)? If a service provides value to me I'm happy to pay a reasonable amount.
A lot of negative comments. I went through a divorce last year (male, mid 40s), and used dating apps when I was ready to start meeting people. I was apprehensive going in but ended up shocked by how positive the results were. After a week or two I would have several matches and pause searching while I talked with those and planned in-person meetings. Most profiles you’ll never get a reply. Of those you match again, half likely never respond to initial introductions / questions. But, if you live in a major metro area there’s still plenty of people looking for relationships if you’re willing to filter through that. I’m now happily in a relationship for the past few months so I’ve stopped using these apps.
I tried 3: eHarmony, hinge, and bumble. Here’s my feedback from best to worse.
Hinge: encourages discussion as an initial match prompt. I met the most people on this app and many matches led to in person dates. Met the person I’m currently dating seriously on here.
Bumble: costs money to send a comment / question, free to “just swipe”. Kept showing me profiles for people currently within my search distance, but who have listed another major city as their home (I guess they’re connecting through the airport and on the app?). Went on multiple dates with matches, fewer than hinge.
eHarmony: where I originally met my previous wife ~20 years ago. Now had the fewest matches and worst experience (and highest cost). I stopped checking this one after about a month. Went on only 1 date.
Feedback from my matches about the app: many men are using it to find people to cheat with / aren’t serious about a relationship. All of them told me actually holding a conversation on the app put me in the “top tier” of their matches. Many shared that matches just gave super short answers then asked for a phone number. Several noted that half the time they shared a number they almost immediately received dick pics. Multiple said matches tried to get them into crypto (?!?!).
For me (busy work schedule, and still spend half my time with kids) the experience was far better than any dates friends or co workers suggested. The profiles are not super deep… Yes everyone loves live music, travel, and The Office. I wanted to connect over something more specific than that. At least the people you match with are also looking for a relationship. Meeting people through my hobbies at 40+ most are in long term relationships or not interested in starting one. The apps are largely superficial… Half the first dates I went on one or both of us decided not to have a second date. Which is honestly expected… Even after filtering through the profiles and messaging in app you still only know the basics for most people.
For you specifically: many matches took issue with the recent timing of my divorce. If you’re separated (not divorced) expect that to be a deal breaker for many.
From my understanding (and experience) dating apps/online dating in general is dead, fucked up beyond repair by capitalism, toxic incels, predators, scammers, crooks and most recently AI. No technology can possibly survive such an onslaught and most of them wouldn't profit from doing so. They have a financial incentive to attract repeat customers.
In person meeting and dating should be the obvious alternative, but apparently nobody goes out socializing anymore since COVID and nobody can afford hobbies because of the economy and chronic social malaise and terminal online doomscrolling has broken people's ability to form human connection anyway so I think civilization is probably just ending after these last few generations, frankly.
If there is a useful option I'd love to know what it is too.
dating apps/online dating in general is dead, fucked up beyond repair by capitalism, toxic incels, predators, scammers, crooks and most recently AI. No technology can possibly survive such an onslaught and most of them wouldn’t profit from doing so. They have a financial incentive to attract repeat customers
Thank you for writing exactly what I was thinking.
I heard that Japan is starting to implement a government sponsored/made matchmaking app. The core advantage is that the intention of the platform is to actually match people and make people have babies. Plus, if someone is being naughty, the penalties can be much higher than a simple account ban.
I think civilization is probably just ending after these last few generations, frankly.
Probably for the best...
My coworker met someone on Hinge, I think it was, just a year ago and they're moving in together.
Not trying to say it's easy but I don't think it's useless.
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Alovoa is free and opensource.
Its the only one i know that isn't out to make money
I looked into this not too long ago. Got them to share their user profile numbers - 50k - but I've a strong feeling that the majority of those are dummy test profiles.
I guess mine was. I wanted to try it out, but I’m not willing to give away that much of my privacy to any website so it was pretty useless. There was literally nothing: fill out a form and I guess there are supposed to be emails of responses. I live in a major metropolitan area and never got any, but I refused to give details so that’s not a surprise.
I just thought there’d be something to see before I committed my privacy
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Plentyoffish mostly stinks but still has a free tier where you can message one person a day.
Also, on the page where you look at people who have viewed/liked you, the photos are blurred but if you use the Web Developer Inspection Tool you can see the unblurred photo:
Right click on one of the images of who you want to see and in the dropdown menu click "Inspect":
The Web Developer tools will pop up and should auto-locate you to the image in question. In Firefox you can just hover over the image location and view a preview of the image. You can also right click on the image location and "Open Link in New Tab" to view it.
From here, you can usually find them in your list of potential matches, in your "meet me" swipes, or in the recently online list. This way, if someone swipes right on you, you can find them without paying and can decide to match or message.
Cheers and good luck!
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