>>67212I don't have much in the way of advice but I am chiming in to commiserate. I am not the Irish anon you're replying to, I am the other Irish anon who replied to him (i.e. I am
>>66338).
I live in Dublin, which is about a twelfth the size of London. But I have actually used Tinder in London, albeit briefly.
I was able to get a decent number of matches/dates on Tinder before the pandemic (depending on your definition of "decent" of course). In the "good old days" I was getting the same amount of matches on Tinder that you are getting on Hinge today. IMO things changed after the pandemic. Tinder got a lot worse; it's like it just kind of "dried up"? Whether that was because of a change in people's attitudes, a change in the algorithm, or both, I don't know. I stopped using Tinder altogether ages ago because I just wasn't getting any matches anymore. I tried Bumble and Hinge and was able to get one date from each (respectively) before those "dried up" too. Now I just don't bother with dating apps at all anymore and am effectively celibate, albeit not really by choice.
Bumble used to the only one with a height field, but I know that's changed now. Back when that was the case, the only times women ever messaged me on Bumble was to berate me for "lying" about my height. I am 6'5" but they all thought I was lying about that, and they would be incredibly cruel and vindictive about it. One of them even told me to kill myself, lol.
>For me it's just hundreds of conventionally attractive women (who I'm honestly happy to swipe on), do you just have to swipe left 200+ times a day to get the big ladies?This is a complicated question but the short answer is yes (for Tinder and Bumble remove the word "left" from that sentence; for Hinge, leave it in).
I don't know what the algorithm is like these days, but it used to be the case on Tinder that if you swiped right on 200 skinny girls and didn't match with any of them, your "Elo rating" (google that) would get tanked and the algorithm would start showing you fat girls because it thought you were ugly (I assume this is more or less still the case but I could be wrong). However this is a double-edged sword, because if your Elo rating goes to shit, you won't be shown to other women. That might sound odd considering that we're talking about women whose Elo rating is also shit, but you have to remember that women (typically) swipe through FAR fewer people than men do, and that the algorithm favours them simply by virtue of being female (in other words a woman would have to be TRULY hideous to have an Elo rating as low as a slightly-below-average man).
The way I used to get around this was by "super liking" (pressing the blue button) whenever I saw a fat girl I liked. This actually worked most of the time, and this is how I met most of the women I've dated/shagged. I think this strategy would probably still work in 2025 but it would cost a lot more money now. You used to get 5 super likes per month included with the cheapest paid Tinder plan but AFAIK you have to straight up buy super likes now. The other way of getting around this is if you pay for the really expensive paid Tinder plan (I think it's called "platinum"), you can pay to be shown first on women's que. Of course, all of this is by design; it's designed to milk money out of you.
Anecdotally I have heard that Hinge will pick up on the fact that you prefer big ladies if you deliberately swipe left on all the skinny ones. AFAIK Tinder and Bumble just sort people into "ugly" or "hot" based on their Elo rating without factoring in their weight (beyond "fat" automatically equating to "ugly").
Finally, I will say that when you get to "the dregs", you are not guaranteed to see fat girls. Personally I saw a lot more girls with lazy eyes (a shitload of lazy eyes in particular for some reason), vitiligo, and things like that, rather than BBWs. I have attached a screenshot from Bumble of a girl I was "recommended" years ago as an example. Once your Elo rating gets so shit that you start seeing girls like this, it's usually time to start over and make a new account. Making new accounts is a whole topic all its own, and one that I am not up to date on the latest info/strategies on. A lot of guys will swear that it is a necessary part of your strategy (in order to reset your Elo rating - and, crucially, so that you can see girls who have newly joined the app), and I think that is true, but I have also heard that the apps have wised up to this and will penalise you for doing it.