I prefer web over app. I tried a site which was said to be free. signup was fine so i started to use the site only to realise to see my matches or start chats i had to pay for a “premium” account or something. that really annoys me and it’s a waste of my time so does anyone know any good dating sites which are actually free, as in i don’t have to pay to use the site for what it should be used for? thx in advance 👍

oh and I’m looking for men, forgot to specify lol

  • lordnikon@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    38
    ·
    16 hours ago

    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.

    • thatradomguy@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      2 hours ago

      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.

      • lordnikon@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        2 hours ago

        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.

    • orgrinrt@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      12 hours ago

      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?

      • knexcar@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        8 hours ago

        Jodel? The app used exclusively by my coworkers to post memes about their job, and seemingly not much else?

        • orgrinrt@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          7 hours ago

          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).