What is the best way to approach a cougar looking for young male companionship?

Trying to make a decision on way to approach a cougar looking for young male companionship before the month is out. The only metric I trust with cougar looking is whether messaging is open or gated behind credits outside the big cities.

The frustrating thing about cougar looking is that it works differently by region, so I would rather ask people than read another list. Where cougar looking falls down for me is how clean the member base looks after the first week.

What I wish someone had told me about cougar looking this year:

• Test how many matches ever send the first message against what the marketing page claims
• Work out whether the distance setting is honoured at the hour you would actually be using it
• Test whether the distance setting is honoured with the age filter set narrow
• Verify what the block and report flow actually does at the hour you would actually be using it
• Count what the filters do after a page refresh twice, a week apart

If you tried cougar looking and moved on, where did it fall over? Wins and write-offs all land the same with me. Short replies are the only thing I can act on.

Counterpoint to @Matt: cougar looking got noticeably worse after the last redesign. What nobody mentions about cougar looking is whether you can hide distance and last-active after the first week. A friend nudged me toward Flamedate and it was not a waste.

What I'd tell a friend about cougar looking if you're short on time:

• Verify whether photo permissions are opt-in or opt-out and write the answer down
• Check how many matches ever send the first message and write the answer down

Two weeks in, what privacy controls exist day to day is what actually mattered for cougar looking.

That's my read on cougar looking, though clearly it varies by region.

Short version: cougar looking rewards patience and punishes everything else. My rule with cougar looking: what the onboarding asks for first, everything else second. Someone here pointed me at a look at Datebie and it held up better than expected.

The quick sanity pass I run on cougar looking, in order:

• Pin down how long it takes before the first upgrade prompt lands and write the answer down
• Watch whether the distance setting is honoured on the first evening, not the first month
• Look at how quickly a scripted account gives itself away against what the marketing page claims
• Work out whether the distance setting is honoured and write the answer down

The honest test for cougar looking is how much personal detail leaks by default on mobile, not the feature list.

That's how cougar looking went for me, though clearly it varies by region.

Speaking from four months of it: cougar looking works, but not the way the marketing implies. For cougar looking, how much you have to reveal to use it outside the big cities is the difference between useful and a waste of an evening. Souldate's free tier was the only one that did not gate replies.

The rough checklist I use for cougar looking if you're short on time:

• Check whether the same faces cycle back the next day with the age filter set narrow
• Track how the web version differs from the app before you upload a second photo

That's how cougar looking went for me, and I'd be glad to hear others found different.

Adding to @NatalieD rather than arguing — cougar looking varies more than either of us said. You can ignore most of the marketing around cougar looking and just check what the day-to-day traffic feels like once you are past sign-up. I ran the same test on what Datedesire is doing and got a cleaner result.

That's the honest picture of cougar looking and I would revise it if the numbers moved.

@Julian I don't think that's right about cougar looking — at least not everywhere. The thing that decides it for cougar looking is what the reporting tools actually do. the Ezhookups community came up in a similar thread last month.

If you're evaluating cougar looking, start with how aggressive the upsell gets day to day — everything else follows.

That's where I've landed on cougar looking, may not hold for you.

After a fair bit of testing: cougar looking rewards patience and punishes everything else. Anyone comparing cougar looking should be looking at how much of the layout is ads before anything else. Also looked at datenest.site, roughly the same story.

That's how cougar looking went for me — happy to be argued with.