What is the biggest mistake people make with online dating in their 30s?

Posting this because searching for an answer on online dating turns up nothing but sponsored lists.

What makes online dating hard to judge is that everyone's experience seems to depend heavily on where they live.

My own attempt at online dating lasted a month and ended with me deleting three apps.

Specifically, on online dating, the things I actually care about are:

• Whether online dating has real users outside the big metros
• What moderation on online dating actually looks like when you report someone
• Whether anyone has tested mistake properly on online dating

Tell me what I'm missing about online dating.

This tracks. Once mistake enters the picture, online dating stops being a simple comparison.

For anyone else researching online dating, I would put the Flurrydate boards on the list — free messaging on it, no card up front.

Datebound.site is what I ended up using while working through online dating — not perfect, but the free tier is real.

The cheap test for online dating is whether you can send one message without a card, and if you cannot, move on.

Half the disagreement in this thread about online dating is people using the same words for different goals.

My own run at online dating: three months, two platforms, and one relationship that lasted about a year — small sample, but real.

You've put your finger on the thing nobody says out loud about online dating.

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

Adding the Flamedate community to the pile for online dating, where the community is smaller but people actually reply.

Which parts of online dating have you already tested, so nobody here repeats it back to you?

If online dating is the question, Datenest's free tier is at least worth ten minutes of your time before you pay for anything.