By Crystal Cansdale at The Inner Circle
Relationships on Female First
If you type ‘first messages on a dating app’ into Google, you get 161,000,000 results. Most of which are articles giving single people advice on what to say in their first message after matching with someone on a dating app.
Although over a million of these articles exist, I don’t think anyone is reading them because I’ve had every type of nightmare first message. The sexual one, the offensive one, the one that just says ‘hi’, the one that is a line of emojis and nothing else. Even the one three of my friends have already received. You name it, I’ve had it.
Working at The Inner Circle, a dating app, gives me a lot of insight into what does and doesn’t work in a first message and really, it’s just common sense. Simply saying hi, hello, or hey reduces your chances of getting a response by 45%. Calling someone pretty means you’re 31% less likely to get a reply and including someone’s name or commenting on something mentioned in their profile dramatically increases responses.
With that being said, if I’ve already swooned over someone’s profile because they’ve said something funny, showed me what they’re into by listing some of their interests and hobbies and I like the look of their photos, a simple ‘hey, how are you?’ message wouldn’t bother me. That’s why, for me, chatting on a dating app is about so much more than the first message.
I’d expect a flurry of lifeless messages if my profile gave people nothing to go off because I know I’m less likely to reply to someone who has nothing of note on theirs. For me there needs to be some character and grit to the conversation, something that is more than surface level chitchat.
I’ve never enjoyed messaging for too long either. When I’ve chatted to guys online for a week or more, while the first day or so is a heady mix of flirting and ‘what’s-your-favourite [insert generic thing]’ questions, we’ve quickly fallen into a ‘how’s your day going’ hole of knowing everything about each other yet having very little to say. It just doesn’t do it for me.
While dating apps give me the opportunity to meet lots of people from all walks of life that I might not have met otherwise, I want real conversations with people I want to date in real life.
I guess what I’m saying is, if we all put a little more time in to our dating profiles it would be easier for people to send first messages with substance, it would be easier for two people to decide if they’re going to get on or not and I’m sure it would lead to many more first dates.
tagged in dating