#swipingright

After some meaningful conversation with your match, either one of you will ask about exchanging IG handles. As a girl, I got asked a lot by the guy... Except for one who ended up being my boyfriend (lol). So don’t be too alarmed when the guys take a more straightforward approach and ask you off the bat.

Most of the time I will give my IG handle, but mine’s on private so I don’t necessarily have to accept him right away. Instead, I can use the opportunity to check out his profile (since he would have probably added me) before I choose to accept his request.

Now, what should you look out for?

Followers Mutual friends. Mutual friends can tell you a lot about the other person - their social circle, their schools, CCAs etc. If you happen to see a mutual friend that you’re pretty close to - score! Time to ask them more about your match and find out if he’s really worth your time.

Following This applies a lot to guys’ profiles because I think it happens a lot more frequently than girls (but ofc, just my observation). Some guys like following influencer profiles... namely those skimpily clad, #sponsored, #ad kinda gals. If you think you can swallow the tough pill, go for it. If not, book it. (after subtly asking your match more to understand his thought process).

Photos (duh) Get a chance to see how he was like before puberty! Did puberty do him good? His older photos may have pictures of his ex too, as well as the school / CCAs that he attended. Use that knowledge to your advantage.

Tagged photos If your match is a hype beast and a super social media guru, there’s a high chance that there wouldn’t be any tagged photos of themselves. But most people don’t really care, and tagged photos are where you can find gold. You get to see them in an unglamorous position, sprawled out on the sand during beach day when they are taking an OG shot.

IG highlights See what kind of highlights they post to see a glimpse of how they are like on the daily. Bonus? IG highlights doesn’t show the user who viewed their stories - so you can investigate without a trace :-)

Bonus: Facebook Chances are, you have his full name now (or at least, a Christian name and a surname) and there is *bound* to be at least one mutual friend. Cross your fingers, pray to the gods, and search him up on Facebook. If you are lucky, he would have a public account and you can see his past profile photos, pictures, and posts.

What makes a good photo? To be honest, I’m not sure. Because I use the app and filter my matches to “guys only”, I have no clue what other girls have been posting. And I didn’t think it was polite to ask my dates how the photos of the other girls they have matched looked. To be honest, I don’t think I could have competed with them in terms of looks, lol. There are insanely pretty girls out there, and skillful ones who know how to make their makeup work wonders. Not to mention, girls who are slim and work out a lot. None of the above are myself (hahaha sad reacts only)!

Despite that, I still managed to get quite good swiping results so photos aren’t the most important? But they are still important nonetheless. I remember posting a decent selfie for my first photo, followed by a full-length one in my second picture.

... I think that was it? I didn’t see the need to post so many photos of myself because I thought 1) that just makes me look incredibly narcissistic and 2) I didn’t have that many nice photos to begin with.

You sometimes see other guides / tips / people saying that it’s good to post a group photo, or to post one that has you with an animal (this mostly apply to guys). I am not sure how true those are, because personally, if a group photo was posted, I would just be looking at the other guys apart from the profile on Tinder, and I’m not sure if that would be a good idea to pit yourself against your friends.

Then do girls really swipe right on guys with dogs? Not me, but my friend does. So I guess it then depends on what kind of girl you are looking to attract. If you’re wondering why it doesn’t work on me, I mostly look at the writeup to determine if I really want to swipe right on that person or not because that tells me way more about his thoughts and personality.

And that, my folks, brings us to the write up! It was the best part of creating my profile (imo) because it allowed me to show my personality and I think it gave me an edge above the other girls. As mentioned above, I don’t know what other girls really write on their profiles, but a quick read on r/singapore’s thread that had a “starter pack” to girls’ bios gave me quite a good idea. I think you may want to check out the thread to think about what you don’t want in your bio?

It’s great to share your hobbies, likes and dislikes, but a better way would be to share it with your personality! Maybe guys don’t really care (don’t quote me on this), but I am very very particular when it comes to bios because I would love to meet someone witty, rather than someone who simply rattles off a list of hobbies that they have. But again, to each their own.

For myself, I wrote my bio in a story-kind of way (almost akin to what I am doing now; my profile on my tumblr is not representative because I did not put in as much effort, lol) where I described myself in third-person. Many of the dates that I had said that they especially liked my bio! There. Stand out from the clutter. Please refrain from writing things like “eat, sleep, repeat” or “hobbies: drama, eating, drinking bbt”.

Although you want your bio to show the “true you” (per se), you still have to have something to make your bio interesting. Be it your photos (because you’re stunning!) or your write up, it has to show the best side of you.