I Tried Out Every Dating App For A Month During Covid-19
Trying to date during a pandemic is one of the hardest things anyone can do. With many single people stuck inside and slowly running out of things to do, they consider downloading a dating app to kill their boredom and possibly find the one when the world is on fire.
After seeing hundreds of dating apps trying to advertise their services to my lonely ass. I decided to try out seven dating different apps for a month and see if love can be found during the apocalyptic year of 2020. I did not include Tinder on this list, because I am sure you did not click on this article just to read about my experiences on a dating app that literally everyone uses.
Before I Begin…
Just to give you a good idea of who I am and what kind of profile I am going to be using for these apps for the next month. I am a straight 5'10 Asian man who lives in Los Angeles, California and some of my hobbies are exercising, eating, nerd culture, and drinking. In addition, I going to be following some rules to try and get the best experience out of this month.
- I must have the app for an entire month.
- I will not subscribe to any outrageous charges while using these apps.
- If an app offers a free trial. I will abuse the living hell out of it.
Also for those who are curious, yes I did download a bunch of dating apps and tried them all out at the same time.
Bumble
Bumble is an app designed where women make the first move instead of men. The app’s interface resembles a lot like tinder and it brings a new take on the dating app scene. As it allows women to pick and choose who they want instead of being bombarded by unflattering pics of genitalia and raunchy pick up lines (Unless they are into that kind of thing).
My first observations going through the app, a lot of the photos on the profiles well taken, almost instagram model like. Nearly every profile had pictures with the best possible lighting and the most exotic backgrounds that makes you wish you traveled more. Throughout the past month, I found myself swiping right very often, however it was very lackluster. I went through half a month without any matches and I started to wonder why.
Then it finally hit me, the pictures I used for my profile were way too basic. I needed to take better pictures for my profile to match these instagram model like profiles. So I had to take extremely photogenic pictures of myself as if I had 15 million followers on social media. I’m not exactly rich, so I had to get creative with angles and techniques. After a couple of days updating my profile, I eventually got some matches.
However most of them never made the first move and it makes me wonder if they are swiping out of boredom cause you know… quarantine. The ones I was able to get a conversation going didn’t go anywhere, because all of them gave me only one worded answers from the get go. I couldn’t tell if they were shy, bored, or simply lost interest.
Hinge
Advertised as the app to be deleted, Hinge offers a clean and slick user interface with a matching system of sending likes from the pictures you post on your profile. In addition, the app offers many prompts and talking points for users to add to their profile to encourage means of starting conversations other than “Hey” or “DTF?”
Throughout the month I have used this app, I truly believe that it is designed to be deleted, because 90% of the profiles I saw were some of the most “unflattering” profiles I have ever seen. Not to be mean, but I have seen everything from missing teeth, thick unibrows, lazy eyes, and even men in thongs.
Just for context, I had the distance out to 50 miles from my location and even changed my location to areas such as Santa Monica and Beverly Hills to see if it made a difference. It didn’t. If Bumble was the dating app for instagram models then Hinge is the exact opposite. I would go through ten or more objectively unflattering profiles before finding someone objectively average as hell.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not trying to be mean here. I understand that people of all types need to find love, because:
“If you don’t believe in love, what’s the point of living?”
-Ron Swanson (Parks and Rec)
However, the ratio of objectively beautiful and ugly are unbelievably skewed. There would be times I would shudder in complete shock at the sight of some of these profiles and makes me want to delete the app immediately. However, I pressed on for your interest and entertainment at the cost of my emotional suffering.
Similarly to Bumble, the month was very lack luster. In the very few cases I have matched with people, not much has went on. The women I matched with did not talk back whenever I try to start a conversation and the ones that did, only did so to persuade me to spend $200 for sex. Not gonna lie, I was tempted after scrolling through wave after wave of unflattering profiles.
Hily
Hily is a social media and dating app mixed in together, it offers users to create stories to be posted publicly along with a simple like and dislike system. Throughout the entire month using it, I have noticed that the app is entirely filled with people who weren’t exactly my type.
Again, trying not to be mean here, but similarly to Hinge the ratio of objectively attractiveness is off. The app does offer a filtering system to narrow down those searches, however there is so much that the filters can do. One thing is certain, these dating algorithms are no way perfect by any means.
On the occasion that I did match with someone, the conversations went averagely well, but suddenly they never reply back. It’s around this point I started to wonder if my race has to do with anything, there have been research where one’s race can be a deciding factor. As several statistics stated that Asian men and Black women get less responses from dating sites. I started to wonder if dating apps are just naturally useless for me?
Donut
Donut is a social media app that combines several elements from popular social media and dating apps in one and advertises meeting new people for dating.
My first experiences with this went as following. I opted in for a three day free trial and somehow got charged $119 soon after. I immediately got a refund for this trickery and my phone instantly blew up with messages from the app. Women all wanting me to send them virtual roses by buying in app coins and sending it to them. They all also wanted to instantly meet me and have crazy amounts of sex. I know I’m good looking to a point, but I know I ain’t like those guys at Chippendales.
After going through a wave of fake profiles I was able to find two actual human beings (I think). One of them had the app for a week and was able to find hook ups and she told me women wanted these virtual gifts, because they are redeemable for cash. I continued to get messages for hookups in exchange that I send them gifts. I eventually started to come up with creative ways to separate bots from humans.
However after a while, the sudden explosions of matches stopped and some profiles that I matched with were continually sending me the same exact messages like an automated system. Safe to say I did not find anyone worthy in the app and the only enjoyment I found was asking absurd ways to figure out if people are real or not like asking for potential names for my fake pet turtle.
Badoo
Badoo offers a lot of different talking points on its app design and it has a really smooth interface. It also has a popularity meter, so you would know how many people are looking at your profile and checking you out. In addition, it feels like you have more control over your profile compared to other dating apps.
In the month I used Badoo, it was more eventful than the other apps, I matched with users who lived outside of the United States. Apparently there are many people out there in the world who just want to talk to Americans. I matched with people from Mexico, Russia, Indonesia, and Crotia, all of whom I thought lived in California until they told me. At the end of the month, I was able to find more pen pals than dates.
Clover
Clover is another dating app where you either like or reject profiles that you come by. The interface is colorful and extremely simple, it also introduces a feature where you can play 20 questions in order to narrow down the matches on a more technical level. However the app design feels like a discounted tinder that everyone eventually abandons.
Throughout the month, I was able to match with many different profiles, but all of them never messaged me back when I tired to start a conversation. Like literally… no one replies at all. The only times I was able to talk to the profiles I matched were the ones who listed their snapchat. I soon found out that all the matches I gotten were mainly women advertising their premium snapchats and only fans. Safe to say, my snapchat is filled with women trying to sell me their premium snaps.
Coffee Meets Bagel
The app takes a disciplined approach to the swiping mechanic as it gives a limited amount per day exactly at noon. In addition, it also offers in app points for logging in daily. Users would be able to spend those in app points for messaging advantages on popular profiles.
For instance, one of the profiles I ‘liked’ was really popular and it asked if I would like to spend 200 points so that my ‘like’ would be seen instantly, if not then I would have to wait several days for the profile to see the ‘like’. The more popular the profile is, the more in app points you have to spend, and if you refuse to pay then the longer you have to wait to have your like seen.
The app also takes a methodical approach to its matching algorithm. Once you have swiped all of your suggestions, the app then takes the results of who you swiped left or right and adds it to the algorithm for the next day of suggestions. So for instance, one day majority of the women I was interested in were Asian, and the next couple of days nearly all of the suggested profiles were Asian women.
Despite this unique algorithm, nothing literally happened when I was using the app. Like I cannot put enough emphasis on how “nothing” really happened in this app. Literally, one person matched with me, and they did not say anything when I tried to talk to them.
Did I Find The One?
To put it bluntly, no. I did not find the one on any dating apps. Which goes to show that dating apps can only do so much and it varies from person to person. For my case, it was a rollercoaster of all many different emotions. Mainly hype, disappointment, horror, and temptation. Throughout this tiny month long experiment, trying to date during a pandemic is really not the ideal time.
If anyone wishes to try their luck with dating apps and don’t know which one to use. The only ones I recommend from this list are Badoo and Coffee Meets Bagel. Maybe Bumble if you are attractive enough and got the pics to back it up.
Despite everything that has happened over the past month I still remain optimistic about my romantic endeavors, because I feel as if this experiment could have gone way worse. I could have not matched with anybody throughout the entire month and that would have been a depressing realization. If anything I just can’t wait for quarantine to be over so I can get out there and romance the fuck out of someone.
