Why Is OkCupid So Bad?

It usually comes down to four things: settings that have shrunk the feed to a handful of women, free likes that run out, a page too thin for an app that reads, and a city where few women are active. The first three have a free fix, and they decide how many matches you get and whether your messages are answered. If you have fixed them and still get nothing, the app is the wrong one for your city, and that is worth knowing too.

OkCupid only shows you a woman who fits your age, location, gender and orientation settings, who is looking for someone like you, who has not blocked you and who has an active account. Anyone who misses one of those never appears.

Tighten a few settings and the pool collapses. A narrow age range, a short distance and a small city can leave you with a feed that feels empty by Tuesday. Then you pass on the few women who appear, and the feed runs dry because the women left in your area are the ones you already skipped.

The fix is free. Widen the distance to how far you would really travel for a woman you liked, add a year or two to your age range, and reset your passes in the Privacy section of your settings. Change one setting at a time so you learn which one was doing the damage.

A free account can like, send intros and chat, but it does not give you unlimited likes, and it does not show you who liked you before you like them. A man used to a swipe app, where he can like a hundred women on a Sunday, runs out of likes and decides the app is broken.

Treat each like as a choice. a dating coach has coached men who showed interest in almost every woman they saw, and when they became selective they sent far fewer likes and got far better results. Like the women you would be glad to take for a drink and skip the rest.

OkCupid matches people on their answers to many match questions and shows a Match percentage for each woman. A swipe app lets one good photo carry a thin page. OkCupid asks her to read what you wrote and compare her answers with yours.

A page with one photo, three answered questions and a line that says "ask me anything" gives her nothing to work with. a dating coach says that on a longer-form app your page matters more than it does on Tinder, and a page built the way you would build one for Tinder gives the app less to work with.

Fix the page. Lead with a clear photo of your face, add photos of what you actually do, answer the questions honestly and write a few specific lines about your life. "I cook for friends every Sunday and I am bad at it" gives her a reply. "Easygoing, funny, loyal" gives her none.

Every dating app has some fake accounts, and OkCupid gives no figure for how many. A man who writes to ten women and hears nothing often blames fakes, when most of the silence is real women who did not answer, or accounts that went quiet long ago.

Do not let that stop you writing. Send each woman one short message that picks up one real thing she wrote, and ask a question she can answer in a line. Block anyone who asks for money or pushes you off the app within a few messages, and keep going.

a dating coach's rule for choosing an app is that your results depend on whether the women on it are really looking to date. That is a local fact. An app that is lively in a large city can be quiet in the next county, and no review can tell you which one you are in.

Browse Discover for ten minutes. Count how many women appear before you see repeats, and whether their pages are filled in. If you see a few faces and mostly empty pages, the pool is thin, and another app is a better use of your evenings.

Use the app daily for two weeks with your best photos and honest answers. Write down four numbers: women you liked, mutual likes, chats that started and dates you set. If the likes come and the chats die, work on your first message. If the chats are good and the dates are missing, suggest a drink at a specific place within four to seven short messages.

If almost nothing comes back after two honest weeks, run the same photos and the same short page on a second app, and keep the one that gives you replies.