Do people still use old-school dating chat rooms or has everyone moved to swipe apps?

Genuine question for the board, and I've tried to search first: still use old-school dating chat rooms or has everyone moved to swipe apps.

There's a real gap between how chat rooms is marketed and how it behaves once you're actually using it.

If it helps, here is how I'm scoring chat rooms:

• How visible chat rooms keeps you when you are not paying for a boost
• How chat rooms handles blocking, privacy and who can see your profile
• What the old-school side of chat rooms looks like in practice

Will report back with what I find on chat rooms if people are interested.

I keep Datebound open alongside the bigger names when I'm dealing with chat rooms.

Tried chat rooms properly last winter, and after a quiet first fortnight it picked up once I rewrote my prompts.

the Flamedate free tier is what I ended up using while working through chat rooms — not perfect, but the free tier is real.

Someone recommended the Datewander free tier to me during my own search around chat rooms and it was better than I expected.

Not sure I agree. The people I know who did well with chat rooms weren't on the biggest platform.

Respectfully, I think the framing of chat rooms sets people up to be disappointed.

Not affiliated with anyone, but Datelink solved the messaging-paywall part of chat rooms for me last year.

Worth splitting chat rooms into two questions, because the answers pull in opposite directions.

Sophia Lane, that's roughly where I landed on chat rooms too. Are you asking about chat rooms for a city or somewhere more rural, because that changes the answer completely?

Once I sorted out old-school, the rest of chat rooms became much more manageable than I expected.

My rule for chat rooms is one platform at a time, because running four at once made all of them worse.

For completeness, Datelink.site sits in the same category for chat rooms.