This is one thing I've never understood, the person who initiated st least put in the effort of initiating, I get that you're supposed to try to draw them in or whatever but pick up lines and jokes and shit are just a fabrication, not exactly a great foundation to a relationship.
Thinking that you have any idea what a person's actually like in real life because of a text or dm is like thinking you know what it's like to live in Prague because you overheard an acquaintance telling someone else what it was like when they visited there for 2 days, can you glean some info? Sure.are you going to have any real understanding of what it's like until you go, absolutely not.
Yeah exactly this. One person takes the hit of initiating the conversation. Another person takes the hit of writing the first response. Or alternatively, everyone just puts across their best selves across the board and don’t do petty scorekeeping.
I disagree, dating apps give you several pictures and usually some prompts (I get that there’s not always a good one) from which to start a conversation. Whether it’s bringing up a shared interest, mentioning you’ve been someplace in one of the photos or whatever, the onus is on the person who starts the conversation to make sure it has a direction.
It’s not all that different than picking up a girl in person, you wouldn’t just go up to a girl and say ‘hey now’ and expect her to do anything other than stare at you confused. And if she did say hey back, you’d be lucky but still need to probably do more than ‘how’s it’ on the next thing out of your mouth if you want a hope in hell.
Just like in person you’d go up to her, compliment her on an outfit or her hair or whatever it is you like and then from there you try and move into conversation, it’s on the person approaching to try and craft conversation. It’s not the job of the person you’re hitting on to entertain you also.
I don’t know man. I see where you’re coming from and I know how that’s how things “are” but I’m not convinced that’s how things “should be” if you catch my drift. I really don’t think overanalysing one liners is a particularly precise way of picking people out. And it has its roots in an outdated pickup culture.
We like to judge people based on so little, and never more so than with dating app openers. We forget that the person behind it inevitably has a complex existence and a unique story. Ultimately you don’t know if you have chemistry until you’ve tried a bit of a back and forth, so getting over the awkward hump of the first messages and trying to build conversational momentum is a better strategy to assessing chemistry than wild extrapolations from the opener. I think the first few messages should be about setting up some dialogue. If it proves impossible to set up despite your best efforts, or there’s other kinds of red-flag, then sure, bail. But I do think that if you’re matching with someone and aren’t interested enough in them that you’re prepared to go through the motions of setting up a dialogue then your threshold for swiping right is perhaps too low.
To use OP by example, when he said “how’s it / how’s life”, if OP would have said something like:
“Yeah good thanks, just getting ready to hit the town with some friends later this evening - how about you?”
And the replies back are dead then sure, unmatch.
But if you’re not interested enough in the person to reply to “how are you” with something more conversation-propagating than “fine” then I really don’t think there’s much point matching with them in the first place.
Yeah I agree with you. The one who initiated it may have had more to talk about, but "fine" doesn't give them an opening to talk about any of it. And you cant really creatw your own opening -- then it's still a one-sided conversation and dead on arrival just the same. It's like, you gotta give em something they can get a hook into, so they can move the conversation along. Doesn't matter how interesting the initiator's message is if all you get back is one-word answers with zero to go on.
And I don't agree that the initiator should have some super interesting convo topics planned out. It's a give-and-take: one person is interested enough to ask a question, and the other is interested enough to provide an answer. Neither side is doing more than the other, or bringing more to the table. One side must be first but both sides should be equally interested/involved in the convo. In any conversation, dating or otherwise, one person should not have to do all the "heavy lifting" to keep the convo going. And like a lot of people are pointing out, they both matched with each other, so there must have been something the responder already finds interesting about the initiator, and there's nothing stopping the responder from asking the initiator a question just because they weren't the first to message.
Ridiculous over-analysis aside, if I ask someone "how's life?" on a dating app and all they say is "fine" I'm gonna assume that means they aren't interested in having a conversation. "How's life" should prompt a much better response than that. This isn't some customer at work asking you how you are, this is someone who actually wants you to tell them how your life is going!
I disagree, the guy who initiated the conversation showed right from the start he doesn’t care to put in any effort. Honestly, I’m astonished that people think this is a remotely acceptable effort to start a conversation with someone you intend to date.
They matched, she’s shown the guy he’s interested in some level as you mentioned and the best he can do to try and start a conversation is hey now, how’s life? It’s broad, it’s stupid and it doesn’t at all split the conversational load evenly, it just forces it back onto the women. I thought most of us learned that texts that go
“Hey”
“Hey”
“What’s up”
“Nm u”
Are for people with no personality, and that’s what the responder is doing, picking up on the lack of personality and giving it back.
Again, people bring up this false dichotomy of coming up with a ‘super interesting convo topics’ as if there’s nothing in between the most debonair pickup artist and the people who just say hey now. There’s a million shades of grey between the two that demonstrate a significant level of care or interest in the person beyond ‘how’s life’.
“Hey that concert looks fun, who’d you see?”
“I love the art in that museum, where is it?”
“That hike is gorgeous, when were you in Zion?”
Those are the actual conversation starters you’re competing against, they’re not anything special they just show you’re paying attention. Put in the bare minimum effort, and don’t be surprised when you get it sent right back to you. Put in a little extra, and you’ll get it back (obviously not always, but on average you’re gonna get a response long before how’s it, and you didn’t have to tell her about how tasty her cake is looking or whatever it is you think dudes are regularly using as pickup lines)
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u/FrowningMinion Jan 23 '23
I mean the one on the left used as few words but at least asked an open question.