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I gave OLD another chances yesterday (I had used it before). Coffee Meets Bagel now requires you to link your account with your phone nunber. Where I live, you cannot get a phone card anonymously as you must link it to your real identity. When I had a look at the men on Coffee Meets Bagel, I can't help but notice how most are either unattractive, obese, or bald. There are also "blank" profiles with random photos of objects and no photos of the guy. Even finding a decent-looking guy with a "normal" profile is difficult.
I also had a look at Bumble and Tinder too. Neither of them have a phone number linkage requirement. I can't help but notice how the men there seems "better". Sure, there are also unattractive men there as well as men who give off fuckboy vibes but I occasionally stumble across men who are attractive (at least based on the photos they posted regardless of whether they are real or not). At least coming across a decent guy who appears to be normal is easier than on Coffee Meets Bagel.
I can't help but think the men on Coffee Meets Bagel show what the dating pool on OLD is really like. It can't be a coincidence that the men on Coffee Meets Bagel are worse than men on other OLD apps after the phone number linkage requirement. It's probably harder for men to catfish on Coffee Meets Bagel here given how it has to be linked to a phone number registered under your real name here. I also can't help but feel like the men who appear decent or attractive on other OLD sites are probably catfishes or bots.
I had played around with OLD briefly in the past. I noticed how before the pandemic, all OLD sites were full of men claiming to be pilots but they all disappeared after the onset of the pandemic. It's almost like men lie to be pilots on OLD to increase their chances of getting laid but stop doing so after many airline staff got laid off during the pandemic.
The smaller apps often have uglier men because they drown on the larger ones like Bumble.
I’m going to preface this with the OLD pool is usually shit. If you take the entire population of men, the ones who use OLD tend to be especially terrible.
That being said my observation aligns with yours, the ones looking for a serious relationship are usually hideous. Meanwhile the attractive ones know their advantage and want to play the field. They always have their options set to “still figuring it out” or “short term only” 🙄 it really holds true that men are only as serious as their options. This is why I put a little disclaimer that the OLD pool is terrible to begin with.
And I know there’s some debate about attractive men actually being better partners (less jealous, insecure etc), but I have found this doesn’t hold true with OLD. If you want one of those you’ll have better luck finding him organically.