Does the profile pic still matter?

The right profile picture is usually critical to making a first impression on dating apps and websites — but during the pandemic, as many people are hesitant or unable to meet in person, profile pictures may take a bit of a backseat, says a Saskatchewan sociologist.

Normally, a connection through a dating app or site “starts more superficially and the photos are really important,” says Sarah Knudson, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Saskatchewan.

“But then it seems like we've moved this past year into a phase of dating where they kind of become more background than they were before.”

However, with restrictions easing up in Saskatchewan, a lot of people may be eager to put themselves back out there again this summer.

Saskatoon Morning host Leisha Grebinski talked with Knudson about the experiences of people dating during the pandemic and some of the challenges they may face going forward.

The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

How important are those profile pictures, those first impressions online — especially during the pandemic?

The ironic thing is on one hand, with online dating they're super, super important, because people use online dating tools as a visual way of screening for what they're looking for.

But … something else that's been happening during the pandemic is a trend toward a lot of “slow dating,” where even though people might be using those pictures to make really quick decisions,…

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source http://www.forcesalign.com/does-the-profile-pic-still-matter/

You can deal with these annoying dating trends …

Online dating: It can run smoothly in 2018, but unfortunately is also difficult. Shannon Smith of the dating website Plant of Fish lists the latest, most annoying trends.

We don’t want to discourage anyone, but there is even more unwanted dating behavior besides ghosts (suddenly disappearing from the radar) and breadcrumbing (putting someone on a leash online). According to Canadian relationship expert Shannon Smith, this is also good news. “In many cases, annoying behavior during dating can be avoided by communicating openly with another. He also states that we are more aware of the way we behave online. Keep these golden rules in mind and she says that you are armed against heart-breaking as a result of these five relatively new trends.

Of flexibility

When someone brags about themselves while chatting.

People promote themselves and show their good sides without hesitation, before you actually meet the person. Solid example: “I ran a half marathon yesterday and saved a kitten (am I not that fabulous anymore?)” According to dating site statistics, 47 percent of members have already suffered from this behavior. Most of them are women.

Cricket

When someone waits long to answer.

You send a message to your crush, he reads the message … and it lasts for some time. Sometimes it takes days before a response comes from the other party and the ‘conversation’ can continue. The word comes from nature, when a cricket (cricket) suddenly falls silent…

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source http://www.forcesalign.com/you-can-deal-with-these-annoying-dating-trends/

It may be a good idea to take a break from the dating scene

I was searching for a client on Match.com recently, looking for men in her age range whom she might like to send a message to, and I came across this profile below (written verbatim):

“I'm tired of being rejected on this site by conceited, snobbish women who proclaim they are looking for an honest, humorous man, when in reality all they are really looking for is a man who has money. The code word they use is “financially secure” or “independent.” I'm a good man. I don't play games. And even though I live in the Bronx, I am not poor, as most of these women assume I am. I consider myself married once, but my finance [sic] died after living with her for 10 years. I really consider myself a ‘widower' for those among you who wonder why I was never married. But there was no category for that here, so I checked “never married.” I'm looking for a serious relationship, eventually turning into marriage. I'm tired of being alone, and I'm tired of rejection. Am I too ugly for these women? They think they are all God's gift to men. They post 1 or 2 fuzzy photos and think that's enough. They try to fool you mixing in 10-20 year old photos. I keep seeing the same women when I do a search. Where are the new ones? Are there any good women left in this world? Let me hear from you.”

There is so much I want to say about this atrocity of a profile, but the thing I want to focus on is knowing when it's time to take yourself out of circulation for a bit.

This man is venting. That's clear. He's…

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source http://www.forcesalign.com/it-may-be-a-good-idea-to-take-a-break-from-the-dating-scene/

Are Dating Apps a Way to Find True Love?

I didn't set out to write a book telling singles to ditch their dating apps.

The focus of Make Your Move: The New Science of Dating and Why Women Are in Charge isn't online dating. It's flipping the script on dating's traditional gender roles—rewriting all those archaic “rules” that tell a woman she can't ask a man out on a date or can't ask her boyfriend to marry her.

But something else emerged from my interviews with women who had found love by bucking the rules: They hated online dating.

So many women I spoke to had these amazing stories that would have gone unwritten had they not quit the apps and found soulmates at work, in church, through friends, or at the dog park. Inspired by their stories, I even added a chapter to the book called The Make Your Move Offline Dating Challenge, a step-by-step plan for finding love in the real world instead of the digital one.

“A Doubter's Game?”

Mia, a 49-year-old divorcee, was a one of those unhappy app customers.

Why? For one thing, she described online dating to me as “a doubter's game.” Mia just assumed most men online were lying to her—about their careers, about their marital status, or about whether they were looking for a hookup or an actual relationship. (According to a Pew Research survey, Mia's right: 71% of daters report it's “very common” for people to lie on dating-app profiles.)

Tired of being deceived and taken advantage of, Mia would spend first dates trying to find all the holes in the men's stories. That didn't lead…

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source http://www.forcesalign.com/are-dating-apps-a-way-to-find-true-love/

The dos and don’ts of online dating apps

If you’re single, there’s a chance that you’ve either tried online dating or you haven’t convinced yourself enough to sign up. There are a number of popular dating apps available, such as Bumble, Tinder, Plenty of Fish and Hinge, but there’s always a common factor when you’re swiping for your potential partner. It can be an intimidating feeling talking to a stranger online, no matter what stage you are in with your love life. But it’s important to look at these dating apps as an advantage: you’re looking for your next partner more quickly and right at your fingertips.

Though I’m not a total expert, I’d had my fair share on these dating apps over the years. And while there are several elements to the dating experience, these are some tips that I learned from my own experience and my friends.

Don’t

Pretend to be someone you’re not.

Being yourself is an essential key to dating so if someone doesn’t like who you are, don’t be afraid to let them go. You’ll be much happier with someone who accepts your whole self.

Sometimes online dating can be disappointing because it seems like you’re swiping on a list of potential people who don’t live up to your expectations. Either if you’re getting rejected or rejecting someone, always remember it didn’t work out for a reason. You may have liked this person a lot but if that person you’re talking to isn’t interested, you can’t force them to change their minds. Instead…

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source http://www.forcesalign.com/the-dos-and-donts-of-online-dating-apps/

20 of the best Tinder pickup lines for 2021

It’s difficult to say whether e-dating has weakened or boosted the pickup line game. It probably depends on who you ask.

To get to the bottom of it, we ventured on over to Reddit to check out the general state of cheesy one-liners to be deployed in an online dating setting. And the results are, well … the results kinda speak for themselves. But as far as we can tell, pickup lines, like cockroaches after an apocalyptic event, have survived the shift to online dating and are doing just fine.

From the looks of r/pickuplines and other threads we dug into, they continue to be as prevalent — and face-palm inducing — as ever.

To determine the honor of which lines appear on our list below, we looked to Reddit’s point system, which allows users to upvote posts and responses, signifying popularity, which is how we selected our top 20. Some of these zingers weren’t necessarily used on Tinder originally, but if we could imagine them feasibly being used in an online setting, they made the cut.

Cringe warning: Viewing these Tinder pickup lines may cause you to recoil away from the screen in secondhand embarrassment. Using these pickup lines on an actual human in an online setting may result in a swift block — a digital severance of communication from the person you’re talking to — because your pickup line was just so damn cringe-y your intended couldn’t bear to talk to you anymore.

Could the target of your pickup line turn out to have a fond appreciation for…

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source http://www.forcesalign.com/20-of-the-best-tinder-pickup-lines-for-2021/

8 Ways to confess love over text without saying ‘I Love You’

Confessing your love for someone is indescribable and complicated as it takes a lot of courage to tell someone you love them. It is this nerve racking feeling that you cannot simply avoid but convey. Here are 5 different ways of telling someone ‘I Love You’ without making it too obvious.

Love is a rare feeling that occurs in various ways that one can’t simply explain. It is a beautiful yet complex emotion that captures your heart and mind leaving you feeling helpless and ecstatic. People often fall in and out of love and convey this feeling to others in multiple ways through everyday actions. It could be through various gestures, a touch or an act of kindness. However, in today’s day and age of online dating, teenagers have taken down to texting to confess their love. 

With the pandemic not leaving us anytime soon and lockdown being a perpetual state for time being, it is difficult to meet someone and confess your love in person. Social distancing norms being followed strictly, it is getting difficult for lovers to meet often and express their love for each other. 

Fret not, as we are here to give you tips on how to confess love over text without being too direct.

Flirt

Flirting is the first step to show someone that you like them. Healthy flirting goes a long way. Make them feel nice and appreciated by complimenting them often and show them how much you are into them by dropping subtle hints.

Reciprocate

It is all reciprocating energy, efforts…

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source http://www.forcesalign.com/8-ways-to-confess-love-over-text-without-saying-i-love-you/

New research shows online dating can cultivate a rejection mindset

A group of psychologists in the Netherlands have discovered that we have a tendency to gradually close ourselves off when dating online. In other words, the more dating profiles people see, the more likely they are to reject them.

The findings, published in Social Psychological and Personality Science, indicate that the seemingly endless stream of options can increase feelings of dissatisfaction and pessimism about finding a partner, which in turn leads to rejecting potential mates.

“We know that being and feeling loved is a prerequisite for a happy life, and I’ve therefore always been fascinated by the ways in which people look for love,” said study author Tila Pronk, an assistant professor of social psychology at Tilburg University.

“How do people search for a romantic partner? What makes them interested in one person, and not in the other? This question has become even more pertinent since the dating landscape so drastically changed the last decade.”

“Thanks to online dating, there are more possibilities to meet new partners than ever before, yet at the same time there have never been more people single in western society,” Pronk explained. “I wanted to investigate this paradox, and did so by developing a dating paradigm similar to the most popular online dating application: Tinder.”

Pronk and her colleagues conducted three studies of single, heterosexual individuals. They focused on those aged 18 to 30, as this is the age group most likely to be…

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source http://www.forcesalign.com/new-research-shows-online-dating-can-cultivate-a-rejection-mindset/

Does your dating app want you to stay single?

It’s 2am, the tingle in my right wrist threatens long-term damage (RSI – repetitive swiping injury), and I’m not sure I’m even blinking.

Yet I keep going, staring at my screen. Why? I’ve sent 35 messages so far – to men of varying attractiveness – and they all remain unanswered. I look for another match, hoping he’ll appear on my next swipe.

I’ve been doing this – on and off – for the past five years. Why am I still single? It’s a horrible thought that leaves me reeling. But then another idea springs to the surface… what if the apps want me this way? We’re in the age of the tech giants: Deliveroo and Uber are making billions off us. Yet food and transport are commodities, we’ll always need them (yes, I know I could learn to drive and cook…), while dating apps rely on me not finding anyone – I’d delete them as soon as I did. Dating apps boost the UK economy by £11.7 billion a year, thanks to a steady influx of singles and repeat business. If apps have monetised dates, and most technology is designed to keep us on it, could it be that the apps are hoping I’ll stay single? It’s time to find out.

 

The first thing I discover is that getting dating apps to reveal their matchmaking algorithms is like asking KFC to share its secret recipe – it just isn’t going to happen. But what I can do is ask coders and engineers for their theories when it comes to how our most-used dating apps are designed. There is a consensus…

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source http://www.forcesalign.com/does-your-dating-app-want-you-to-stay-single/