I'm really surprised at how poorly received this is! I did something much simpler for tracking dates, a google calendar with a short biopic and some snips from conversation. At my peak, I had 18 dates in 21 days. For me, it was a way to keep names straight. After date seven in a row, you may struggle. I formalized dating a bit, since I was a long termer before and was new to online dating. (Didn't exist in previous relationship finding time.) This is probably try hard, but w/e I had fun!

My pseudocode:

- Dress up, show up, shut up. Collared shirt, clean jeans. Be on time. Ask person questions, and listen. The bar is incredibly low for men.

- Same bar, same time. xyz @ 7pm. This means a bad one goes to MAYBE 8/830, and you're out. If you're an adult by yourself, this means you have time to run your life when 5 out of 7 days in a week are dates. You can still workout, make a food, clean your place.

- Guy makes the plans, decisiveness puts you head and shoulders over other possibilities. Interest is everything. It's in the delivery: "I know a really great cocktail bar where we can chat more, xyz @ 7pm on wednesday sound good to you?" Don't waste their time, get to the meet!

- Drinks over dinner every time. Mocktails are fine. Activity date is fine too, but remember you don't know each other. If it turns out to be a bust you are now stuck (looking at you dinner!). You can always say: "Hey I'm feeling kind of hungry how about you? I know xyz spot near here we can go for a bite and keep talking..." decisive decisive decisive, yet still asking what they think. Coffee in my area is perceived as you aren't interested, so don't bother. I have also heard reviews that coffee is not a real date, so you may be perceived as low interest.

- Don't play day favorites, just queue em up.

- No more than 1.5w in advance, if they're busy or hesitant just drop them from the queue, and see if they follow up later. Don't go nuts about this, people's interest is everything.

Remember, the purpose of online dating is to MEET IN REAL LIFE, not message for weeks until someone CRACKS. (this is how I formalized it, if you find a new meme friend, idgaf what you do with your life :D )

My findings:

- App signal to noise ratio is: hinge, bumble, tinder, ok cupid, plenty of fish. Hinge was the highest quality matches both in terms of chatting up, and general partner coolness(?). My guess is because the messaging in Hinge forces you to interact meaningfully . Bumble was good, most women I met said they didn't like it because it forced them to engage. Tinder was fine, got picked up a couple of times on that one. Didn't bother with the other two after week one, quality was terrible.

- THE BAR IS INCREDIBLY LOW FOR MEN. If you are employed, and can speak to other people without being an asshole, you are ahead of the game. Don't believe me? Ask your next date what their worst experience is. I assure you it will be 10x worse than yours. Anecdote from my partner: guy: "oh you like dogs? let's go drink in a dog park!". He shows up already drunk, and then BLACKS OUT at the park. She ends up dumping him into a lyft and she goes home. 0/10. Same guy tries to match her 6m later.

- Men think paying for apps is a scam? I paid for the top three, and kept my queue full as long as possible until I found someone I kept around for 3w, then deactivate.

- Aggressively tune your profile. Less is probably more. Details are for the date. No negative things. This is not build-a-bear. You want your profile to INCLUDE, use your swipes to EXCLUDE. You choose who you go on a date with! This means you can exclude people that won't work for you.

- Guys get very uptight about "the algorithm" and will swipe right on everything. Let it work for you, and swipe left on anyone you wouldn't meet up with. Remember, the point is to MEET IN REAL LIFE.

- Dating can be expensive, but it doesn't have to be. You set the budget by where you go. Scale accordingly. You will mess this up once, and then not again.

I had a a total over 60ish dates, three longer term partners (>1m), picked up maybe five times, was a boy toy for a couple people. Overall, fun adventure, happily paired up for 3y now as a result of online dating.

Online dating is different things for different people, but those are my findings and how I approached it. This software sounds cool, I probably would have used it. :)

Sorry for the info dump, but I love hearing stories and helping people with their online profile. I used to be a kind of lightning rod for single dudes at bars and help them sort their profile out while also making friends with them. Two of the four of them got married to people from online dating, one is in a long term still, so I count that as a massive success!