Are People on Dating Apps Weird?

Some are, but most are ordinary people who are bad at presenting themselves in a few lines and a handful of photos. The apps feel weirder than real life because they remove the context that normally makes people make sense, and because the strange ones are the ones you remember. A small group of truly off people exists, and they are easy to spot once you know what to watch for.

Look at who is on the apps: men and women who work, have friends, and happen to be single. They are on the apps for the same reason you are, which is that meeting someone through daily life got harder.

a dating coach describes a shift in how people meet. Communities used to be small and stable, so you knew people before you dated them. Now more people meet through the apps or through random meetings, and there is less information available at the time you choose. Many of the odd profiles you see belong to normal people who wrote three lines about themselves and picked the wrong photo.

Four things make the apps look stranger than they are.

• No context. In person, a woman who says something odd is standing in front of you, and you can read the joke. On a screen, the same line has no face.
• Anonymity. People say things in a chat that they would never say across a table, and some behave worse because nothing is at stake.
• Volume. You see more strangers in an evening than you would meet in a month. A small share of odd behavior still adds up to a story every week.
• Memory. You forget the forty normal chats and remember the one that got weird. That one becomes the screenshot you show your friends.

Not every awkward line is a problem. Real warning signs are specific.

• The other person pushes you to leave the app within a few messages and then asks for money, gift cards, or a "small loan." That is a scam, not a weird person.
• The photos and the story do not match, or the person will not do a quick call or meet in public. That is usually a fake or borrowed account.
• The messages turn hostile when you say no, or they get sexual after you have politely changed the subject.
• Her story keeps changing, such as her job, her city, or her age.

Anyone who does these things should be dropped and reported. Everything short of that line is just ordinary awkwardness.

Women have the same problem from the other side. Her inbox has a lot of men in it, and some of them send messages that are aggressive, sexual from the start, or copied and pasted. She learns to sort fast, and she sorts out anyone who looks like that.

You stand out by being the opposite: short, specific to her page, light, and polite. One normal, friendly message about a thing she actually wrote beats a clever line that sounds like a script. If she does not answer, do not send a second and third message. Pushing is the fastest way to become one of the stories.

You do not need to be paranoid, but a few habits remove most of the risk.

• Meet somewhere public and busy, in daylight or early evening.
• Tell a friend where you are going and when you will be back.
• Make your own way there and home, so nobody depends on anyone else for the ride.
• Hold the date to an hour or so. If it goes well, you can extend it.

A woman who sees you do these things reads you as careful, not suspicious. She will do the same thing for you, and a first date that starts that way tends to go well.

After a run of strange chats, it is tempting to decide that everyone on the apps is broken. It is a feeling, not a fact. The normal conversations did not make a story, so you did not keep them.

If most of your chats are going strangely, look at how you are choosing and how you are writing. Replying to every account that answers, without checking the photos, brings in more of the people you do not want. A short, personal first message to women whose pages look real draws a very different crowd. A coach can read your page and your chats and tell you which of the two is the problem.