What about OLD tactics?

[nospam99]

I send plenty of unsolicited OLD messages to women. The sites report (for an extra fee that I pay) whether my messages are read. Though I make exceptions, usually because I think the woman is a particularly good match, generally if 'she' does not respond, she goes on my ''don't send her another message'' list. Opinions?

 

Also I don't send messages to women with no photos or with nothing in their profiles other than their photos. And I rarely send messages to women with only one photo. Again, opinions?

[elaine567]

I don't send messages to women with no photos or with nothing in their profiles other than their photos. And I rarely send messages to women with only one photo. Again, opinions?

 

I know little of OLD, but many older women are not of the selfie generation, so one photo may not be a bad thing. I also guess that many older women apart from those obsessed by SM, will not want to post their pic on the internet.

She may feel it is a bit embarrassing to be seen as looking for a man "at her age" too, so no photo.

Just a thought.

[Gretchen12]

Also I don't send messages to women with no photos or with nothing in their profiles other than their photos. And I rarely send messages to women with only one photo. Again, opinions?

 

That seems rather arbitrary. You can also decide to not contact women with only two photos and insist on 3 or more, one of the photos must be a full face view with no hat or eyewear, at least one must be full body.

 

I had no photos or one photo. When I was on OLD I saw some men stated "no photo, no reply". They sound harsh towards people who did not do the profile "correctly". Some less harsh ones would message me to ask me to send him more photos (before he'll talk to me).

 

But I live in a big city and there are plenty of men who approach women every single day. So it's easy to meet men if I go out, which means I have no incentive to try very hard online, and of course I never pay for OLD.

 

I think there are people who take OLD too seriously. Can one be addicted to it? Maybe it becomes a way of living, or an activity, like hunting and fishing. Then even after meeting someone, the activity of the search itself is always something to return to because it is familiar.

[nospam99]

Plenty of women also state 'no photo, no reply'. My own rationale is that, shallow as it may be, looks matter and with only one photo it 'looks' like the profile is 'hiding' that they are not attractive.

[Hamos]

I just started OLD, and yes, I also send as many messages I can for free. I am talking about ones like OKC, CMB, Hinge, and POF. I have paid for the premium but they were not worth the cost if you never got likes in the first place

 

I always skip the ones with no or single photo. I have doubts that those who hardly made the effort to build their profile would be holding an engaging conversation with a guy who was not Chris Hemsworth or his equivalent. Also, there is a possibility of catfish. The only time I make an exception is if they wrote something genuine in their bio and their only photo looks genuine.

[Gretchen12]

Plenty of women also state 'no photo, no reply'. My own rationale is that, shallow as it may be, looks matter and with only one photo it 'looks' like the profile is 'hiding' that they are not attractive.

 

Yes I imagined it is the same for both men and women. It's just that I only looked at men's profiles.

 

And I agree looks matter. That's not shallow! Profiles with no photos don't catch my eyes when I'm browsing, and I have no time or patience to click on each one, but if a guy contacted me with a normal message I'd reply and see where it goes.

 

You're an older guy, right? Don't you remember these used to be called "Personals" and they were only a few lines in the newspaper (SWF etc). Of course no photos, and people still met each other (I think).

[nospam99]

^^^ Yes, I'm an older guy and I remember Personals in the newspaper. To my recollection there were not a lot of them and they sounded to me like another meme from 'the olde days', Lonely Hearts. I was 'young' and the Personals seemed to be 'old', often widows. I never placed nor responded to a Personal. What I did try, with limited success, was 'dating services'. I had great luck with dating services when I lived in a mid-sized city (100,000 people) and no luck when I later moved to a 20,000 person city. I ended up meeting my ex-wife through work back in the 'corporate man' years when no one was worried about #metoo.

[PegNosePete]

if 'she' does not respond, she goes on my ''don't send her another message'' list. Opinions?

Yes, don't harass people. No reply is a response: it means "thanks but no thanks".

 

Also I don't send messages to women with no photos or with nothing in their profiles other than their photos. And I rarely send messages to women with only one photo. Again, opinions?

No photos, I agree. It's not about looks. Having no photos would make it very difficult to recognise when you meet but more importantly it's about how serious they are and how much effort they are putting into the OLD process. No photos = no effort, NEXT.

 

Same goes for only photos. No effort from her = no effort from me. Having said that I did once send a message to someone with only photos, got a response, and met up. Although not a match she was nice, so according to my sample of 1 this may not be a good rule to stick to too rigidly. I would want something inspiring in the photos to send a message though: in my case she had a pro camera round her neck and was in an old building which implied shared interests.

 

Only 1 photo would not be a deal breaker for me as long as it's a good quality one and doesn't look like a fake. More is preferable though.

[LauraXX]

Tinder is the only OLD platform that I use, so I can't really talk about the others. What I like about Tinder is that both people have to swipe right in order to communicate. So there aren't really any "unsolicited" messages to begin with. I only use the app from time to time and don't check my messages very frequently. So when I do open it, I scroll through the pictures for a while, swipe right on the ones I like (I usually match with all of them... that's the part where OLD works very well for me.... it gets frustrating later on ).

 

Since I don't get notifications when somebody messages me (my kid sometimes uses my phone and I wouldn't want her to see that) it might very well happen that a week goes by without me seeing the message. And some of the more persistent guys might have texted me twice in that time.

I don't really care tbh. I totally understand that they might find it odd that I don't reply right away after swiping right on them and it's only fair that they double check. I wouldn't text a guy twice though if he didn't reply to my first message.

 

When it comes to your picture/bio question: I usually only swipe right when there are at least 2-3 pictures. I realize how superficial that sounds, but I'm honestly not looking for super attractive guys only. Don't care about height, don't care about how much hair they have on their head etc. But I still want feel some level of attraction to them. Plus - the kind of pictures they choose, how they dress etc. still tells a lot about them and it helps to get a better impression.

 

 

I don't care so much about the bio unless it's bad. It's hard to come up with something short and witty and I'm really bad at it myself. So I don't really care if it's mostly blank. What I absolutely hate (and would never swipe right on) are:

 

* those bitter, negative lists with everything they dislike in a woman

 

* the same old jokes over and over again ("Let's just say we met in a supermarket" "If you don't look like your pictures you buy the drinks until you do" :rolleyes:)

 

* general passive aggressiveness ("5.8 because apparently that's important to you").

 

* guys boasting about their jobs or income (and posing in front of their expensive cars or boats or whatever).

 

But that's not really tactics, is it? It's just what speaks to me and what doesn't I guess....

Edited June 26, 2019 by LauraXX

[nospam99]

If you don't look like your pictures you buy the drinks until you do

 

I happen to really like THAT joke. I chuckle at it every time. To each his or her own.

[OatsAndHall]

I use OLD off and on and here are a few of my guidelines:

 

 

1. If they don't have a pic, I don't send a message, mainly because it becomes an uncomfortable hassle. I message them, they message back, I ask for a pic so I have an idea of who I'm talking to and they get stand-offish. I don't think there's anything wrong with wanting to see a pic as, no matter what anyone says, physical attraction is a springboard.

 

 

 

2. I don't care about a bunch of pics but I'd like just ONE that shows some of their frame. I find many physical attributes attractive and curvy women are great but I'm just not into obese women. I had a date with a woman who only took selfies, listed herself as "average" on her profile but it was clear she was obese when we met. Call me shallow but but it was a waste of both of our time.

 

 

 

3. My profile is one long running joke with references to various movies I love and a little bit about myself in the last paragraph. Rewriting my profile this way has gotten me more responses and dates as it stands out. And, it's also a good filter for me as we're not going to click if they don't find the profile humorous.

 

 

4. My first message is always a random, odd quip and not the typical "Hey, how r u?". "How would you like to go liberate lawn gnomes with me? Just make sure you've got tennis shoes as we'll be running. -insert emoji-". This serves the same two purposes as my profile; it draws attention and serves as a filter. Kind of feast of famine; they either find it funny and respond or they think I'm a troll and block me.

 

 

 

5. I ask for a date quickly; within the first conversation. Nail down a date fast so I don't spend hours messaging back and forth on the site.

[chillii]

You know, l've been wanting to ask this for ages because l still remember the feeling and should l ever be there again God forbid, how to handle it.

And l suppose this is as gooda thread as any so hope you don't mind nos.

 

But what do you guys do when your talking to someone they show you more pics and then it's just wham. Oh no , sorryyyy.

You know so many put in their best glambed up pics that just weren't really them.

And one thing l discovered quick smart was ask for more pics but then you'd get more just everyday ones and see straight off they aren't your type you just don't like or whatever.

So from that second on you know the whole thing from there on is just a pointless dead duck.

 

What do you say to her, or even what do the girls say to him ?

How does it end how do you break it to them ?

Edited July 1, 2019 by chillii

[nospam99]

But what do you guys do when your talking to someone they show you more pics and then it's just wham. Oh no , sorryyyy.

How does it end how do you break it to them ?

 

My picker is so good that it only happened once. Coincidentally the first woman I met after Natalie dumped me. I don't know where this woman got the pics - maybe just they're years old. She also exaggerated her fitness level in her self-description.

 

Sad to say, she's a really nice person. We had a great chat. But she didn't pass the 'kiss test' - I'd no more want to kiss her than ... I dunno ... Joe Biden. So what I did was politely leave the meeting, being careful not to hint in any way that I'd be interested in seeing her again. She pretty much didn't react. FWIW, one of the things I do for sick entertainment is watch how various women I've met or who have declined my request to meet continue. She, along with the rest of them, is still on OLD months (16 for her) later. Either they haven't found their unicorns or no guy considers them (the women) to be their (the guys') unicorns.

 

Why am I still there months later? The unicorns I found (hmmm - six, Natalie among them) didn't think I was their unicorn. I suppose there's a lot of that going around ...

Edited July 1, 2019 by nospam99

[chillii]

Really nos , thought it'd be really common, you got off lightly.

Seemed a few l was interested on my site back when only had one or some glammed up pic.

Unfortunately though the way they'd describe themselves often didn't match up.

l never knew wth to say so l'd just be straight if l didn't like pics they'd send me later and just say sorry , but your really not my type. Pretty sure a few of them slammed delete contact so hard they broke something.

Always felt bad, wondered ever since what other people say.

 

 

PS , mind you l also got some very nice surprises , like my gf for example she only had one fairly crappy pic up , but man . She only put that one up to keep the numbers down or she would've been stampeded haha.

Edited July 2, 2019 by chillii

[nospam99]

Really nos , thought it'd be really common, you got off lightly.

 

I'm a sample of one and, as I've said before, I'm pretty selective so if I even contact a woman online her already posted profile pics 'pass'. I don't know who else may respond on this thread to your question (maybe ask again in another thread, maybe in Dating?) but the other guys may have much different stories.

 

Also I keep in mind that the shoe may often be on the other foot i.e. women being uninterested in me purely because of looks. I can remember ONE who I didn't meet but in a message said something like ''I don't think you're attractive''. Several of the women I've met cut off any dating with only suspiciously lame explanations. It goes with the territory. So it's the way I handled the woman I wrote about above. Also, now that I think about it, there was another woman I briefly dated and was not attracted to. She too had 'misleading' photos in her profile. I dated her because she was fun to hang out with but she could just as well have been a guy . She and I quietly just stopped contacting each other.

 

Since I've started babbling about it, and it is on topic for this thread, I've noticed three ways a 'relationship', even a fairly casual dating relationship, ends:

1) one party explicitly tells the other (reason may or may not be given and, if given, may or may not be true) that they don't want to continue to see them

2) one party stops responding to communication from the other (ghosting)

3) both parties stop communicating

 

I've experienced mostly #1 and #3. If I'm the one 'breaking up' I usually do #3. I'll do #1 if we've dated for weeks or months.

[chillii]

Yeah same as you might remember , extremely fussy, even at that time l only bothered with 4 out of the whole site and 2 unfortunately l had to finish up there and then like that, still feel bad haha.

But it was very specific things in profiles plus looking quite nice too, being why l contacted those two in the first place.

My gf on the other hand l could actually see photo wise in just that one very so so , that she could well be a stunning girl in other shots and personality traits in her profile had me thinking she'd actually done that on purpose and it turned out as l suspected , no surprises, she did.

 

Anyway , good luck with things eh.

[LauraXX]

What do you say to her, or even what do the girls say to him ?

How does it end how do you break it to them ?

 

 

That has never happened to me. I've never asked for more pictures after swiping right on somebody. I've never been on a date with a guy that didn't look like his profile picture either. Must be different with women. Probably because most guys are not into heavy make-up and filters

 

 

But what DID happen several times was that I started chatting with a guy only to realize that I didn't really like him very much after all. So then I'd just tell them "Sorry, I think we're not that compatible after all." Or sometimes I'd just let the conversation fade out. That's probably what I'd do in your ugly picture scenario

[chillii]

Yeah right , makes sense, women can change soooo much in looks with hair and make up, clothes.

l remember when l'd be browsing many a time you wouldn't even know it was the same person from their main photo.

l mean l suppose it's nice to be able to glam up so well but that can be a bit tricky looking at a screen instead of in person.

Anyway yeah, the incompatible line or fade out sounds a bit softer.

[mr_ybor]

I send plenty of unsolicited OLD messages to women. The sites report (for an extra fee that I pay) whether my messages are read. Though I make exceptions, usually because I think the woman is a particularly good match, generally if 'she' does not respond, she goes on my ''don't send her another message'' list. Opinions?

 

Also I don't send messages to women with no photos or with nothing in their profiles other than their photos. And I rarely send messages to women with only one photo. Again, opinions?

 

I don't really bother with this (or those kinds of sites much) anymore. I've easily sent thousands of personalized messages in the past, and got an ROI of a fraction of a percent at best... with huge time periods of absolutely nothing. I haven't even managed a date from the apps in going on seven years now. Yikes, now that I think about it.

 

On top of that, other than my last date (again: six+ years ago), every other date I got from OLD was a result of the girl contacting me first, not the other way around.

 

It's just not worth the time I have to throw at it. That's why I think the switchover to mutual-match apps really happened. I don't think I'm alone in that frustration. I honestly prefer that format. I don't quite understand why they need to be so lean when it comes to the details and filtering but there's really nothing fun at all about writing thousands of personalized messages and getting dead air.

 

I want to know the girl might like me first before I invest time into it. I'm a busy guy to a certain (normal, probably) extent, and sending rando unsolicited messages just seems like a stupid way to meet people online. Just my opin, of course.