How to avoid giving the wrong impression when you write a dating profile.
I’m angry. I keep seeing inadequate profiles on Feeld. Sometimes these people list desires that in theory might match me, but because their profile is inadequate, I have to reject them. My experience on the dating apps have demonstrated that I’m most likely to be wasting my time with them.
Let me explain a few things before we move on. I’m going to talk about Feeld for two reasons. First, this is the main app that I use. Second, some of my behavior may not make sense if you are on another app. Some apps, for instance, require that you like someone or reject them right away. Feeld allows you to pass on them for the time being. That’s a third option. Please adapt my reflections as needed for the platform you are on.
Feeld presents to you your prospects in something I call a stack of prospects. The app allows you to do the following when a prospect’s profile is presented to you:
- Reject this profile. It is removed from your stack. You won’t see it again.
- Like this profile. (Either with a plain “like,” or a “ping.”) It is also removed, but the person at the other end knows of your like or ping.
- Don’t do anything. It remains in your stack. You can see this person again.
- Report the profile. This is for profiles that violate the platform’s rules. It will be removed from your stack once you report it.
Likes are free, but if the other person is not paying for Feeld, i.e. they are not a Majestic member, your profile will appear blurred to them. However, a ping will make it so that your profile will appear unblured, even if the other person does not pay for the service. Contrarily to likes, pings do cost money. You get one free ping per day with your Majestic membership. You can also buy pings. At the end of the day, you pay for pings, one way or another.
On Feeld you can put a prose description of yourself in your profile. In addition, you have a list of desires. This list can be populated from a standardized list of terms: “poly”, “MMF”, “BDSM”, etc. You also have a list of interests, the interests can be anything. You’re limited to ten desires and ten interests.
Let me make it clear to you. An inadequate profile does one of these things:
- It makes you look like a scammer.
- It evinces some self-esteem problems.
- It paints you as an inconsiderate asshole.
I’ll note here that a lot of the people who have inadequate profiles do not pay for the service. This is where inconsiderate asshole comes into play. The chances that you’re going to like us if we don’t ping are pretty slim. You’re hoping that people are going to maybe waste a ping on you. Pings cost money. So you’re hoping that someone will take a chance on your inadequate profile, and most likely waste their money.
Let’s now look at the problems I’m seeing.
Empty profiles
For the love of god, fill out your fucking profile. I don’t care how hard it is to talk about yourself. Write what you want in your profile somewhere else (LibreOffice, Word, Google Doc, …). When you are ready, take that text and plop it into your profile. This is exactly what I do. I did this because I got tired of writing dating profiles on multiple platforms. This may help those who have trouble writing about themselves. Even better, ask a friend to read your profile too to look for problems.
Here are some questions to ask yourself:
- What do you like?
- What are you into?
- What are your dealbreakers? I think everybody has dealbreakers. Mine are Republicans, TERFS, cops, folks in the military, etc. List them so that we don’t waste time on you. It is fine to have preferences. If you don’t want facial hair, say so! If you’re allergic to cats, tell us!
- Where do you live? No, you don’t have to be super precise. The closest town, or the closest neighborhood if you live in a metropolis will do.
I’ve liked people with an empty profile in the past, but it has never ever been fruitful. Even if they liked me back, the chat went nowhere, or worse, they revealed themselves to be a scammer.
This is where you can easily appear like a scammer, even if you are not. Scammers do not want to put up any obstacles between themselves and you. Why? Because they want the shortest and easiest path between themselves and your money. So they put up an empty profile with pretty pictures and generic desires.
If the rest of your profile appears contradictory, resolve the contradiction in the prose section. It has happened a number of times that I’ve seen profiles with people having “poly” and “monogamy” in their desires. Generally, these don’t fit together. However, some people are ambiamorous and may be okay with both. Just put “ambiamorous” in the prose section, and you’re done! This was just one example.
Oftentimes, if I see a new person with an empty profile, I won’t reject them right away. I’ll pass on them, for now. However, if they never fill out their profile, I’m going to eventually reject them.
I’ll also note here that if your profile is empty, then your pictures are what is giving you appeal. If you’re tired of people objectifying you, having an empty profile is an awful idea. People only have your pictures to make a decision and will objectify you. Think about the quality of your matches.
Profiles with a social media handle
Feeld forbids social media handles in your dating profile. That’s one reason not to put them there. However, this is not the only reason. Again, my experience is that people who put a social media handle in their profile are scammers, or they are on the dating app for the wrong reasons.
See, I’ve matched with people who did not have a social media handle in their profile, but they immediately asked me to go to Snapchat, or Google Chat, or whatever, right after we matched. These were all, without exception, scammers.
Some scammers will put the handle right in their profile. Why wait until you match to try to scam you?? Note that if you contact them using their handle, all of your interactions are off platform. So the platform cannot do anything even if you complain to the platform about those scammers. That’s why they immediately ask you to move off platform in chat. What better way to get you off platform than putting their handle right into their profile?
Once in a while, I run into a profile that appears to be by someone real, but has a social media handle. I reject them. Scammers have various levels of sophistication, and I’ve run into a few sophisticated scammers that managed to write nice profiles.
I also suspect that some people just use their dating profile as some form of advertisement for their Instagram account. They want followers there, end of story. They won’t ever talk to you.
Profiles without pictures of yourself
Show your yourself, and show your face. No, I don’t care that the people at work will ostracize you. I’ve had two bad experiences with people who did not want to show their faces. Preferences are fine. It just so happens that they fell outside the big bucket of my preferences. I saw their faces, and it was a big fat no from me.
I did have one good experience with someone who did not show her face. She quickly posted pictures of herself in chat. She was gorgeous. We had a nice, and substantial chat. However, the chat that started well became a disappointment. She disappeared. I waited a good six months. She had talked about depression. So I did not think that waiting that long was unwarranted. Well, she never came back. This is where self-esteem issue come out.
If you hide yourself, chances are that you have problems with your own self-esteem. All the times that I liked someone without profile pictures turned out to be failures.
Use the platform’s filters
It irritates the hell out of me when I see a profile saying something like “I’m looking for women,” or “Please be between 25 and 35.” These two statements exclude me. Fine, you can absolutely have preferences. However, why not use the platform’s filter to make it so that neither of us see each other. Feeld does allow filtering by age or by gender. Use it!
Conclusion
The observations above constitute my advice to write profiles people won’t toss into the garbage bin. Also, a reminder, if you have a terrible profile, don’t be surprised if you attract terrible humans. You’ve asked for it.
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