I'm living part time in Cape Town and also happen to be in a polyamorous marriage - we both date others together and separately.

For shits and giggles (and mostly to find new friends that are NOT work-related), I decided to jump on Tinder this past week for the first time. I also been using Feeld for a few years both in CPT and in the US where I also live and grew up, which is a kink/poly dating app.

An important note is that I am black, with Shona and Zulu background.

One thing that was super interesting to me was the racial dynamics that surface on both platforms.

In one week on tinder, I had 22 matches and about 3x as many likes. 100% of them were with black women, as in fully ethnically black. The women I swiped right on were probably 33% non-black and 66% black. Ok, so far, not particularly surprising. I don't have a basis of comparison with the US because I've never used Tinder there.

A few things to note is that I do have a, lets say, very specific physical aesthetic - ie an incredibly strong preference for athletic women regardless of ethnicity. I do not have an ethnic preference - I've dated and slept with pretty much every flavor. Through this process, I also did note that women who like psychedelics and deep self-exploration tend to be very strongly drawn to me. Must be something I wrote in my profile (I use the same bio on both, except I remove references to kink on Tinder).

Note: I only paid for Tinder gold, apparently you aren't even able to see who likes you without that. That was $8.99.

On the flip side, Feeld, 90% of the women that matched with me were white and another 10% were non-white. 0% were black. To be fair, the population on Feeld is VERY white across the world, and also VERY small outside of New York City, Los Angeles, San Fran, and maybe Miami. I swiped on maybe 20 women total out of maybe 60 or so (if that) that I even saw on the app for both CPT and Joburg and matched with 18. And 6 of my matches were women who swiped on me first. About 40% of my matches were expats, notably. Of the white South African women, none were Afrikaans.

Note: I paid for Feeld's Majestic, which again allows you to see who likes you. That was $24.99

Between the two apps, I set up 6 dates over a two week period. Which honestly, given my work schedule and shit sleep, was probably more than I really should have. I used the same "strategy" on both apps which was to find a common interest that we could do in person as a date as quickly as possible.

While there was a good amount of interest from Tinder, I only ended up going on a date with one. The rest were/are from Feeld. There were a LOOOOT of women on Tinder who cannot carry a conversation to save their lives, or who don't really have any interests so very frequently I just completely lost interest in the conversation. On the other hand, women on Feeld that I matched with all tended to be cerebral, more "hippy-ish", and certainly very non-conventional in their overall lifestyles.

Won't go into sex other than to say that women lie on their bios about their dislike of one night stands or hookups. What I realize when they say that is its really about them wanting to control the emotional and sexual depth. Plenty of women on both apps who say they are looking for long term are DTF if they think you're hot. Regardless of how Christian they say they are. I love the profiles with ass on display in every picture followed with "Follower of Yashua" or other clear indicator of Christian (very infrequently Muslim) faith on the bio.

overall, for those who are sexually adventurous who have undergone genuine self discovery and EQ development via therapy, Feeld seems to be a great app for finding similar people. And certainly is an extremely differentiated dating pool from what you find on Tinder.