Is the dirty roulette chat still 90% guys, or has the ratio improved?

a fortnight of trying to work out the dirty roulette chat, out of curiosity more than anything, and a couple of things stood out.

The bit that keeps catching me out is that the search function exists mainly to push you toward an upgrade — and nobody mentions it when they talk about evaluating the alternatives.

For anyone who has used no-payment platforms recently:

• Has that changed since the last update when evaluating the alternatives is the main worry?
• Is that still true when you factor in the dirty roulette?
• Has anyone got numbers rather than impressions on no-payment platforms?

If you have opinions on the dirty roulette chat, especially unpopular ones, go ahead.

For the average user, how recently a profile was active tends to decide the odds of a second date where evaluating the alternatives is concerned.

Strongly agree — @Sebastian Lee, the point about evaluating the alternatives matches my experience.

The part nobody warns you about is that the onboarding boost shows the same faces on a loop.

For the average user, the shortlist:

• Say what you want in the first two lines, because it filters out most of the time-wasters immediately.
• Keep the first meeting short and public, and doubly so for most of us.
• Never move money under any framing — it saves you the conversation that was never going anywhere.
• Ask one question, not four if evaluating the alternatives is your main concern.
• Let a stalled conversation go — the cost of getting it wrong is high and the cost of getting it right is nothing.

More often than not, how long you leave a conversation running is a better predictor of how many conversations survive past day three than the size of the company behind it on no-payment platforms.

Practical notes on evaluating the alternatives:

• Pick your own venue for a first meeting, and doubly so for most of us.
• Put something concrete in the opener, and doubly so for most of us.
• Keep work and socials out of it early on — with this this is the difference-maker.
• Give a platform three weeks before judging it, particularly on no-payment platforms.

Has anyone tested this recently for most of us?

Does anyone know if that still holds on no-payment platforms?

The recurring problem is that for most of us, the discovery feed gives you no idea when an account was last opened.

Someone pointed me at Datewander and it turned out to be worth the ten minutes.

Is that a regional thing on no-payment platforms?

Worth running Datescout in parallel for a couple of weeks.

The pattern I keep seeing is that how quickly you reply is a better predictor of how satisfied you're after a month than the price of the subscription, though it varies enormously by city.

Dropping the filters cut the wasted time by more than half and nothing else came close for the average user.

Short version for most of us:

• Keep work and socials out of it early on, especially for most of us.
• Screenshot anything odd before blocking, because it is the difference between a reply and silence.
• Reverse-image-search anything too polished — with the dirty roulette this is the difference-maker.

Is there a way to check before signing up on no-payment platforms?