Perspective

[Wiseman2]

Please consider the AI chatbot virtual GF solution. You'll have more fun than talking to an obvious scammer and get yourself in less trouble. 

[ExpatInItaly]

7 minutes ago, ZA Dater said:

I am going to scale the conversation right back and basically say I am not actually looking at this time

Just block this person altogether. You have no clue who you are actually talking to, or if it's even a woman. 

You really stand in your own way a lot. Chatting with a random weirdo online who used an AI-generated pic is not an effective way to approach dating. You need to be smarter than this, man. 

[ZA Dater]

37 minutes ago, ExpatInItaly said:

Just block this person altogether. You have no clue who you are actually talking to, or if it's even a woman. 

You really stand in your own way a lot. Chatting with a random weirdo online who used an AI-generated pic is not an effective way to approach dating. You need to be smarter than this, man. 

Well I can't argue with you. I am limited by the matches I get for the most part so I need to roll the dice and see in some situations, this I guess was one of them.

Not sure I have ever found a very effective way to approach this.

[Sony12]

Lol maybe you can call that CatFish show up and see if you can get on it, lol. Maybe some hot chick will see you on TV and want to date you just because she saw you on TV.

[ZA Dater]

22 minutes ago, Sony12 said:

Lol maybe you can call that CatFish show up and see if you can get on it, lol. Maybe some hot chick will see you on TV and want to date you just because she saw you on TV.

Decided to break off communication, reading some of the replies here made me think a bit more. I do see her profile pic has changed on Tinder to the same one she uses on WhatsApp but I have to question that picture too. When I think about the "story" part of it certainly do not gel that well, my game is numbers and when she told me about her job the numbers she used did not make sense, especially as her industry is one I know very well.

I suppose though this will make some laugh "you know I am so attractive I have men following me to my car when I go shopping" ,  my degree of loneliness was clearly high because I did not see through that one.

Suppose in essence I am a prime example of someone to catfish, few options. 

[Sony12]

18 minutes ago, ZA Dater said:

Decided to break off communication, reading some of the replies here made me think a bit more. I do see her profile pic has changed on Tinder to the same one she uses on WhatsApp but I have to question that picture too. When I think about the "story" part of it certainly do not gel that well, my game is numbers and when she told me about her job the numbers she used did not make sense, especially as her industry is one I know very well.

I suppose though this will make some laugh "you know I am so attractive I have men following me to my car when I go shopping" ,  my degree of loneliness was clearly high because I did not see through that one.

Suppose in essence I am a prime example of someone to catfish, few options. 

Yes to be honest if you decided to start talking to a profile like that where both her summary of the type of person she was and her pics both seemed suspicious. You obviously aren't talking to the number of people you would like to be talking to if you got canived into talking in to them and aren't getting what you want to get out of these dating sites. Apps probably aren't the best avenue for you to spend your time or money on.

Edited March 5 by Sony12

[mark clemson]

Respectfully, you don't even know if this person is actually female. Even if they are, what reasons would they have for resorting to tactics like this? None particularly good that I can think of. And you know all this.

Ask yourself why you bothered to even do this. You don't seem quite sure yourself. Perhaps part of your brain is looking for more training/practice interacting with women or "some level" of validation? But agree with others above, this is simply a waste of time. I think you might perhaps benefit by focusing on this question and doing some introspection - then "what you are really looking for" here can become conscious for you.

At any rate, when it comes to greener pastures - maybe seek out volunteer opportunities, meet ups, or hobby interest groups, and "be inspired" by the one that has the highest proportion of reasonably attractive women floating around. At least you'd have some idea who you're talking to.

[ZA Dater]

3 hours ago, mark clemson said:

Respectfully, you don't even know if this person is actually female. Even if they are, what reasons would they have for resorting to tactics like this? None particularly good that I can think of. And you know all this.

Ask yourself why you bothered to even do this. You don't seem quite sure yourself. Perhaps part of your brain is looking for more training/practice interacting with women or "some level" of validation? But agree with others above, this is simply a waste of time. I think you might perhaps benefit by focusing on this question and doing some introspection - then "what you are really looking for" here can become conscious for you.

At any rate, when it comes to greener pastures - maybe seek out volunteer opportunities, meet ups, or hobby interest groups, and "be inspired" by the one that has the highest proportion of reasonably attractive women floating around. At least you'd have some idea who you're talking to.

Agreed it was poor judgement on my part, though again I did wonder who would do this which is perhaps why I swiped right, of course not expecting to be liked. Maybe I was looking for some sort of interaction, in fact that is quite like to be the case, feeling quite lonely at the moment after some pretty pronounced disappointments. I guess it did it for some interactions and curiosity.

Sure in person would probably benefit me as I think it probably would for many people on OLD. Perhaps in part what I was looking to do was to maybe look if maybe behind the obvious catfish if there was an interesting person. What inspires me is a good question, I'll think about that, I did actually find that but ultimately it proved to be a massive disappointment probably because the inspiration was "is this possible" and from that went some deluded line of thought "ok, why not I might just be able", as it turned out that was not the case which lead me back to OLD and looking for some kind of conversation. 

I wonder if in part people who catfish have similar ideas, merely getting attention at any cost, perhaps two sides of the same coin in some respects? More often I am seeing profiles where the person has no picture of themselves, what would be the motivation to do that? Perhaps the motivation being that some intellectual ability may make up for a lack of physical attraction, I catfished once and that was my motivation for doing it,  it of course proved fruitless.

 

[ZA Dater]

Assume you match with someone, you send them a greeting. What would be a reasonable time to allow them to respond? Two days, three days? 

Assuming 3 days pass do you follow up or do you simply just move on and forget about it? Lets say you then match and the person responds maybe 6 weeks later, do you engage or do you simply nor respond. 

I understand this is subjective but what are the opinions here, my view is if the person is interested and the prioritize communication with you they will respond quickly. I had one instance where I got texted late at night "OMG I forgot to respond I am so sorry" I responded the next day, there was one response, I sent something back and now nearly a week later no response.

Do I bother connecting again, consider she might be busy or do I simply ignore and move on?

[Acacia98]

Simply ignore and move on. You have no way of knowing why she didn't respond. But I think it's safe to assume that, if she's too busy to respond, she'll be too busy to meet.

[ZA Dater]

2 minutes ago, Acacia98 said:

Simply ignore and move on. You have no way of knowing why she didn't respond. But I think it's safe to assume that, if she's too busy to respond, she'll be too busy to meet.

That is where I am leaning towards though I might send one more text and see, if no response I can then move on knowing I am not very high up her list of priorities. Too much texting can also be an issue so its a very fine line.

[Alpacalia]

You're online dating. I assume it's par for the course.

Albeit, someone I became acquainted with (not via online dating), we exchanged texts and phone calls for a few weeks before our first date and dated for a few months.

Responding 6 weeks later though? That's indicative they don't take the app very serious and likely have gotten into a relationship since matching. Don't waste your time.

 

Edited March 6 by Alpacalia

[ZA Dater]

6 minutes ago, Alpacalia said:

You're online dating. I assume it's par for the course.

Albeit, someone I became acquainted with (not via online dating), we exchanged texts and phone calls for a few weeks before our first date and dated for a few months.

Responding 6 weeks later though? That's indicative they don't take the app very serious and likely have gotten into a relationship since matching. Don't waste your time.

 

Oddly I have had people I meet organically (i.e. not on OLD) also take ages to respond in the past, granted 99% of my interaction is off OLD.  I suppose I find this odd because when I get texts/mails I tend to try respond fairly quickly.

[FredEire]

If someone doesn't respond the same day I'll usually assume they're not very interested.

I went on a couple of dates recently with a girl who got back to me after two weeks and was super slow responding to everything.

We actually ended up meeting eventually and hooked up but I didn't hear from her again and wasn't especially surprised or disappointed. I think if someone is replying but it's taking days they see you as an option but definitely not the first one or the most interesting.

Edited March 6 by FredEire

[Alpacalia]

34 minutes ago, ZA Dater said:

Oddly I have had people I meet organically (i.e. not on OLD) also take ages to respond in the past, granted 99% of my interaction is off OLD.  I suppose I find this odd because when I get texts/mails I tend to try respond fairly quickly.

Yes.

The woman that didn't reply for a week, safe to assume she stopped coming online, the other option is that she is playing messaging rules or if she is talking to someone else and had to come back after it didn't pan out. Or, not likely but still possible that she's just super busy.

It's fine that you sent a friendly follow-up message initially. Given she hasn't replied in a week it's probably best to move on and focus on other matches.

If she reaches out and it seems like there's a real connection and interest, go ahead and keep talking. But if you don't feel that way, it's totally fine to kindly say no or not reply. We all have different opinions on dating etiquette, we're all gauging our own individual interest as we go along, so trust your own instincts. If her way of communicating doesn't fit with yours, it's better to move on and find someone who clicks better with you.

Edited March 6 by Alpacalia

[Wiseman2]

Indefinitely. No one on an app owes you anything in any timeframe. If they don't reply you can assume they're not interested. 

[Ami1uwant]

1 hour ago, ZA Dater said:

That is where I am leaning towards though I might send one more text and see, if no response I can then move on knowing I am not very high up her list of priorities. Too much texting can also be an issue so its a very fine line.

Everyone operates differently.

 

one might only go into the site once a week

if they are currently early dating someone they might hold off communicating till they see how this goes.

 

here in the USA in March you get into “ spring break “ time. Between now and Easter schools usually have off a full week.

those without kids might do some sort of travel trip for a long weekend or a full week.

[ShyViolet]

6 weeks later?  That's ridiculous.  I would assume they were dating someone else for that 6 weeks, broke up with them and now they're circling back with you as a plan B.  I would probably ignore that, they're not serious about you.

[ZA Dater]

All very interesting! Thanks everyone and I assume much the same opinion would apply to texting, no response within a week would to me indicate no interest? Sometimes you go from the app to WhatsApp and texting suddenly becomes lot slower.

[BaileyB]

What does your common sense tell you about their interest if you send them a message and they don’t respond for three days, or six week? High or low interest? 

It’s online dating - you don’t know these people, you are simply expressing interest and reaching out based on a photo and a profile. I would say, assume that it’s not going anywhere until the other person clearly demonstrates interest… That, for me, would be a few messages, a meeting, and perhaps a date or two - if they are consistently showing interest at that point - that’s when I would become invested in the possibility… A match, a message, a proposed meet-up, or even that first meeting mean nothing when you are using a dating application designed to provide a volume of matches with little to no investment by anyone… Plan your expectations accordingly…

[Alpacalia]

To be fair, how much interest can a person gleam from a picture and a pro forma message.  With a picture you can tell if you find the person attractive to some extent but unless their profile is written in such a way as to make you very curious, is there enough there for you to reply with more than a 'thank you.'  T

Going from APP to WhatsApp now gives them a slightly more in-depth view of your profile and can make them more curious to learn more.

So yes you can follow up a few days after you have initially messaged them and remind them it is you from xxxx APP, 'hoping to continue the conversation.'  Some may be put off by that, some may appreciate the persistence, because they have actually taken the time to view your WhatsApp profile and find that they have more in common than they thought. 

More than a week? I would say that is pushing it a bit. 

Edited March 6 by Alpacalia

[Weezy1973]

I always advocate striking while the iron’s hot. You should be asking them to meet for coffee or a drink within the first few messages back and forth. If they don’t answer that, cool they’re not interested. Next!

[Alpacalia]

I agree with this reasoning. It's more strategic to take a shot early on, because even if you don't make it, there's still a possibility to recover the ball and try again. But if you wait too long, there's a chance that someone else could potentially steal the ball and take the shot, or the opportunity could pass altogether if the other person loses interest (like getting bored) and thus lose the chance. If there's no response, it's a sign that they probably weren't that interested in the first place.

Of course, it ultimately depends on the flow of the conversation. I think it's a good idea to ask once you've exchanged a few messages and there is a good chance of connection and your intuition also tells you she is comfortable unless the topic of conversation naturally revolves around an activity and it feels appropriate to suggest that 'we should' do such and such.

Edited March 6 by Alpacalia

[smackie9]

If it were me I would throw my line out there to multiple people and let it ride without any expectation. 

[ZA Dater]

2 hours ago, Weezy1973 said:

I always advocate striking while the iron’s hot. You should be asking them to meet for coffee or a drink within the first few messages back and forth. If they don’t answer that, cool they’re not interested. Next!

Yeah I thought about this and then looked at my own actions and it was interesting to try apply this directly and actually you probably helped more than you may have realised in the sense I never actually do this because I am never really that interested in the first place. I needed that extra perspective from this point of view.

Basically I actually never start anything I just chat if they want to chat for no specific purpose.