Ian H.

The idea of tinder is basically a game of "would bang?" based on looks. Many users don't have a bio and it's easy to get into a mindless groove of left-swiping.

It gets worse.

They added in-app ads that came up as "profiles" every so often. I got to swipe Jason Derulo and his new song left.

Maybe it's my location, whatever, but I'm pretty sure I've swiped through everyone in my city. I started to get weird out-of-state profiles, or someone who was 300 miles away but "swiping in your city!"

Also.

SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAMMY PROFILES EVERYWHERE. 90% of my 10 matches were "hi Ian, I'm looking for local singles to have crazy sex with something something spam spam spam oh here's a URL." Or girls who were obviously "too good to be true" would have a few nice pictures but either the last picture or their whole bio was only their Instagram or snapchat handles. SPAM SPAM EVERYWHERE.

**ProTip: sneaky spam sometimes disguises itself with an intro along the lines of "I'm new to tinder and not really sure what to expect." Or it'll say "message me on here" which isn't an option unless you're swiped right too (which you won't be).

I saw this in a facebook ad and thought the jackets looked cool, so I checked out the site. They have a great selection of clothes that look really good in the pictures. I ordered two jackets, for an unbelievably low price (always a red flag) and selected standard shipping because expedited was almost half as much as the subtotal. Turns out everything comes straight from the factory. IN CHINA. A MONTH AND A HALF LATER.
1) the sizing is WAY off. I ordered an adult medium and they look like kids' sizes (couldn't even try it on).
2) they are cheaply made. The material is thin and looks cheap.
3) they look SIMILAR to the jackets in he pictures on the website.
4) you can't track your order unless you want to find your order number on the factory's website. Getting to the tracking page was difficult enough to find, but the only information you can get is if it has left the factory. Until it eventually shows up at your doorstep, you have no idea where it is.

Avoid sammydress.com!

I love Redbubble, but you better buy before the design disappears. It's a community powered by RedBubble with user-made content for sale. Whatever issue they keep having with copyrighting, designs need to be tested for infringement before they're available for printing. Tshirt prices range between about $22 and $28 (add 6$ or so for shipping) which is an almost expensive tshirt. But the designs are all 100% unique and the site is full of great finds. Just buy when you find because it probably won't be there later.

I love this site. The tablet/mobile site is just as great. You're not going to spend more than 10$ usually for an awesome pair of sunglasses and it's always FREE TWO DAY SHIPPING. Great designs, great quality, great price.

Great site with great merch. Prices are a little high, especially for licensed products, but sales are frequent and useful. Only downside is this site takes too much of my money.

OkStupid is... well, alright. Compared to Lots of Whales (Plenty of Fish) it has a good layout, good ideas, and good premium features. The problem is the people on there suck. Really, the culture of online dating is why OkStupid does not work. Anyone 18-24 is usually not serious about finding an actual relationship, and anyone older than that WILL NOT date younger. I can't tell you how many profiles I see where the girl says "if you are are out of my age range I will ignore, block, and report you." Note, this is NOT an unreasonable request. It is simply the assumption that there are no exceptions to any standards any user has. This narrows their own selection pool and no one wins.

Fun Fact: if you are a consistent user for 4 years (or whatever) you will get a new message! Oh, boy! Someone finally messaged me for a change!... oh... wait... what the... OKCUPID WILL MAKE YOU A MODERATOR OUT OF PITY FOR YOUR CONSISTENT USE OF THEIR SITE. I doubt this is the actual policy but it happened to me and I did not feel great about it.

Admins do not discipline or ban abusive users. I've been told and shown by other (female) users, that their messages frequently go like this:
"hey, harmless first message, how are you etc."
1 hour later
"B****"
Yes, there are these kind of guys on OkStupid, and by the plenty too. There are also other users, like myself, who have had an account for a few years. Naturally, you recognize people by their pictures or usernames after awhile because accounts come and go, and it's generally the same people in the long term. These people, unlike myself, have a tendency to "welcome back" returning with harassing messages somewhere along the lines of "have you changed your mind about me yet... no?... b****!" and it loops.

The main problem with online dating, ANYWHERE, is that it's always one-sided AF. As a guy, I have to compete with the literal hundreds of other guys viewing and messaging any one girl. Since there's a great crafted art to "the first message" there must exist some combination of words that 1) intrigues, 2) connotes harmlessness and normalcy, 3) provides some witticism to show intellect which 4) differentiates me from everyone else 4.5) in a few sentences, which 5) warrants a profile view and then 6) a reply. Note, this is a conditional probability (a very small one at that!). I have yet to discover this miracle combination of words and ideas. But. It would probably still go unnoticed. People are impatient, and just like with the disaster called Tinder, when people have a LOT of messages and choices, they will not take the time to consider and read, especially if a pattern emerges (like they're all some iteration of "hey how are you") and no one will get selected, and the user logs off disappointed and unimpressed.

Free features are also slowly becoming premium features. The most recent is you can no longer view your entire visitor list: just the latest 5. Since I've been a user, you could have pages and pages of your entire visitor history. Now it's just the last 5. Premium access /can/ be worth it (like for read receipts and invisible browsing) but to buy it to see your visitors is just silly.

Basically, free online dating sucks. The websites are okay. OkCupid has some good ideas, plenty of match questions (they give you a flying pig picture when you answer them all!) but the people are what make it suck. Lots of Whales (POF) is far more hook-up oriented than OkStupid, which is why I rate OkStupid more than 1 star because I feel the creators sincerely provided a platform for relationships to start and love to happen. But the people who use it just suck.