I tried a little experiment that I just intended to use to reply to someone, but in the end I thought the data was interesting enough to maybe be of interest more widely to the sub. Feeld has the same problem as all apps where there's a big disparity between the number of men vs women, leading to a vicious cycle where women are overwhelmed with attention and interact less and less, leading the men (who often can't understand how too much attention could be a bad thing) to become less selective about who they like in an effort to get any attention at all. Hopefully a little data case study might help us understand each other's perspectives a little more.

I'm a woman who, although bisexual, hasn't been actively dating men for the last few years. So although I have been through online dating as a woman looking for men, it's been a while, and the woman dating woman experience is much more similar to that of men dating women. It's normal for me to only get a few likes a month (unicorn hunters) and only match with someone I'm potentially compatible with every few months in my small pool. The last time I was dating men on Feeld the app was much smaller, and it was overwhelmingly kinksters where I lived, with a lesser amount of ENM. That's changed, lol.

Anyway, I was intending to see if I could escape the deluge of likes (and therefore avoid overwhelm) if I made my preferences so niche that few people would see me. So I set my preferences to men over 65 and a 3 mile radius (the highest/lowest settings the app allows) and put myself in a core location. Obviously, that didn't work. If you're not aware by now, Feeld does not observe your distance and age filters with respect to who it shows you to. Hence why many people have likes that never show up in their feed.

I have a niche profile, which I altered a bit to make relevant to men. I'd rate myself as cute rather than hot, mid-late 30s, photos are tame. Apart from the ubiquitous 'no couples', I state that I am demisexual and therefore uninterested in any kind of casual sex, FWB, ONS etc. I am also poly, and only looking for other experienced poly people for serious relationships, as well as completely vanilla. With those kinds of stipulations I shouldn't be too popular, right?

We all know how this goes. In 45 minutes I got 58 likes and one ping. In the middle of the day. Obviously people (or just women?) new to a core are boosted, so I would expect the rate of likes to decrease with more time, but they rolled in steadily until I was too uncomfortable to keep going and figured I had enough data.

Here's how that data breaks down:

76% of men were straight, 24% were queer(ish) - Bi/Pan were 7%, the rest were flexible/curious. One was an MF couple unicorn hunting on a man's profile - I counted them as straight, since that was the sexuality of the man.

Profiles were actually pretty complete, at least in terms of the minimums. Only 3% lacked a bio, 10% didn't have photos/no face photos, 7% hadn't filled out desires. One had a single profile picture I was sceptical was them/recent as they looked much too young for their stated age. Bios ranged from very good to extremely crude and graphic (and I'm no prude). Most were very generic, talking vaguely about 'connection is key', 'open-minded', 'exploration', 'fun', 'seeing where things go' etc. etc. Very few were kinky, other than referring to themselves as dominant, which is definitely not an indicator of kink experience these days. The lack of kinkyness may be reflective of kinksters actually reading my profile and passing, or just reflective of the dilution of the original user-base.

The age range was almost normally distributed, with the mean a few years younger than me, and a slight skew to younger, which is probably representative of the age distribution of the userbase in general. The youngest was 24 and the eldest was 59. Considering most were around my age and this was a weekday during work hours, that's a lot of horny middle-managers slacking off at work!

Since I was in a core I could see who was local and who was not. Interestingly, although 19 people (32%) were using the core, only five of them were a long distance away, and two of those five seemed to be locals who were travelling elsewhere and using the core to stay in their local pool while they were away. So overall the core is actually predominantly used by 'locals' (within 50miles, roughly), with a few exceptions - if we assume my 59 likes are roughly representative of the users. I myself deliberately chose a core more than 1000 miles away from me, so my location didn't seem to put people off, although it's debatable how many looked beyond my first picture before hitting like.

A whopping 80% of the men were Majestic subscribers. Considering some of the worst profiles I saw fell into that category, I have to wonder what these guys are thinking/expecting a subscription to do. Feeld is clearly making a killing off of some men who are too naive/dumb to understand that they are the problem, and that being able to see your likes means nothing if you have nothing to offer. Majestic subscribers can also like an unlimited number of profiles, so I am sure that is contributing to the epidemic of men spam-liking everyone in their feed, without regard to compatibility.

I also did a word cloud representing the tags from the 'relationship desires' section for all of the men who liked me (first pic). As you can see, the majority are looking for something casual/FWB. And while quite a lot are looking for dates and intimacy, only one person out of 59 used the relationship tag. I know Feeld isn't a traditional dating website (unsurprisingly, no-one picked 'monogamy' or 'celibacy') but I do think guys need to face the fact that far fewer women are looking for arrangements where they need to be emotionally available enough to provide 'the girlfriend experience', without the perks of an actual relationship. Guys seem to be looking for sex and intimacy on tap, without having to provide the vulnerability required to build a real connection. Don't get me wrong here, I'm solopoly and don't desire to climb the 'relationship escalator', so I firmly believe a relationship/friendship/connection can be meaningful without many of the traditional signs of 'commitment' like cohabitation, marriage, children etc. But I don't think 'meaningful' is what most men are looking for here either, despite the lip-service to connection. Novelty, distraction and escape are instead my overwhelming impression, so if you truly are looking for 'meaningful without escalation' think about how you can better convey that so as not to get lost in the sea of bland men who seem like they just have attachment issues.

Of the 59 likes/pings, 13 used the 'poly' tag in their desires section and an additional person mentioned it in their bio but didn't use the tag. A further seven mentioned they were in an open relationship, but didn't say poly. About half of those were looking for 'discretion' and were the profiles that lacked pictures. All seven indicated they were looking for something between ONS and FWB so I excluded them all as incompatible (including my ping). One further man strongly hinted that he was cheating (daytime meets only, no photos). And one man actually explicitly said 'no poly', yet still liked my profile. So all told that's 35.5% of my likes were from non-mono folks (not counting the cheater), and only 24% were 'poly'. So that's 75% of people who liked me either not reading my profile, or just not caring about my 'no to XYZ'. As a woman, I experience a lot of low-level (but frequent) crossing or dismissal of my boundaries in life generally, often by men, so it is frustrating to be very clear about what you're looking for and then be bombarded by people trying to sell you something different. The overwhelming take-away for me is that these men don't see me as human/real enough to read my profile (at best) and more worryingly, some probably don't care about a woman's consent at all. It definitely feels objectifying.

Additionally, the poly tag is very abused. It is often picked by people who think it's synonymous with ENM, who think it's all about threesomes/group dating, or who are only vaguely poly-curious but have never done any research. As a result, I don't take using the tag alone as proof that someone is poly, unless they also use the word in their bio. So of the 13 who used the tag, only 4 mentioned the word poly in their bio. With the extra one who didn't use the tag, that's a total of 8.5% of my likes that I'm potentially compatible with, before any other factors are taken into account. You can see how this degree of filtering could quickly get exhausting if you spent more than 45 minutes with your profile exposed to men! My scepticism about the poly tag was further justified by the bios of some of the people I excluded - two explicitly said they weren't looking for anything serious/relationships. One said they were in an open relationship, which are usually NOT open to polyamory, so I assumed they didn't know the difference. I did another word cloud (pic 2) of all the desires selected by people who used the poly tag (not just the 'relationship' ones), and as you can see it also indicates a predominant intetest in casual and group activities rather than relationships. Of course, polyamory doesn't exclude less committed arrangements or group activities, but they're definitely not the focus, so it's a yellow flag for me if they're prominently mentioned and other things are not. Only one person out of 14 (and out of 59) used the 'relationship' tag. Two further ones used 'open relationship' but again, that usually excludes poly so I assumed they think ENM = poly.

Of the five potential matches one was quite a ways outside of my usual age limits, and two were at them. Only two people mentioned their relationship status, which is pretty basic info for a poly profile, and none of them name dropped what kind of poly they practiced, what their housing arrangements were, how much time they had available, what they were looking for in a partner etc., which are all green flags that someone has poly experience and isn't just curious about it or a noob. I was left with the impression that none of them had ever handled multiple relationships before, although I would probably have matched with between 1-4 of them to find out more detail, had I been searching for real. That gives me a match rate of about 5%.

All of the five poly people (and quite a few of the non-poly ones) had good, interesting profiles, but very few gave much info about what their deal breakers were or really much about what they were actually looking for in a partner/relationship. Some felt padded (and I'm someone who likes detail) and the talk was all about them and their interests, what they like to do for fun/dates, their life philosophy etc. If you are trying to date in a niche field like polyamory or the kink community there are so many ways to be incompatible that it really helps to state some of those deal-breakers upfront so as not to waste women's time. Yes, you will lose some potential matches, but when a woman sees she is compatible with you in a rare way she will actually be excited to talk to you, and will probably pick you over someone whose profile is less clear about what they're offering. Poly men who have real, committed relationships on offer are actually in high demand, yet there was only one person out of 59 who made me think they might genuinely have that to give, despite five of them name-dropping poly on their profile. Don't sell yourselves short by trying to appeal to the broadest range of people, or you will be lost in the sea of boring men looking for something 'casual'.

Thank you for coming to my TedTalk.