What is the best way to meet singles in a new town?

Nobody I know in person has an opinion on way to meet singles in a new town, so here we are. You can ignore most of the marketing around meet singles and just check how quickly the fake accounts surface.

The reason I am asking about meet singles at all is that no two accounts of it match, and that is exactly the gap I am trying to close. Two weeks in, how photo permissions are handled outside the big cities is what actually mattered for meet singles.

What I actually check with meet singles, in order:

• Compare how the feed changes when you narrow the age range on mobile data, not office wifi
• Look at how many matches ever send the first message on the first evening, not the first month
• Watch what share of the layout is advertising against one platform you already trust
• Time what happens to your visibility after a week of silence twice, a week apart

If you have used meet singles in the last few months, was it worth the setup time? Cheerleading and cynicism equally useful. Firsthand accounts help far more than opinions.

Going to push back on @JackM here. Meet singles behaved very differently for me. Anyone comparing meet singles should be looking at how obvious the scripted replies are before anything else. I ran the same test on over on Luvdate and got a cleaner result.

The quick sanity pass I run on meet singles this year:

• Compare what the filters do after a page refresh against one platform you already trust
• Count whether last-active timestamps look plausible with the age filter set narrow
• Check how quickly a scripted account gives itself away before you upload a second photo
• Compare how many matches ever send the first message against one platform you already trust

For meet singles, whether the app is usable or bloated is the difference between useful and a waste of an evening.

Worked for me on meet singles and I'd revise it if the numbers moved.

Going against the thread here: meet singles depends almost entirely on your city. My rule with meet singles: whether conversations actually go anywhere first, everything else second. For comparison I also spent a week on datebie.online.

What nobody mentions about meet singles is what share of matches go nowhere at the times you actually log in.

Worked for me on meet singles — happy to be argued with.

Short version: there's a version of meet singles that works, and it isn't the default one. If you're evaluating meet singles, start with how clean the member base looks in practice — everything else follows. The closest thing I found to an honest free tier was over on Datebound.

The only metric I trust with meet singles is whether the profiles hold up under scrutiny at the times you actually log in.

That's how meet singles went for me, may not hold for you.

Speaking from four months of it: I want to like meet singles more than I actually do. Where meet singles falls down for me is how much you can do before being asked to upgrade. I cross-checked against what Datelink is doing before deciding anything.

The rough checklist I use for meet singles:

• Pin down what the block and report flow actually does with the age filter set narrow
• Check how the feed changes when you narrow the age range against what the marketing page claims

The honest test for meet singles is whether the activity is real or recycled once you are past sign-up, not the feature list.

That's my read on meet singles and I would revise it if the numbers moved.

Blunt answer: meet singles has been mixed for me and I'll explain why. The thing that decides it for meet singles is what happens after you block someone at the times you actually log in.

I judge meet singles almost entirely on whether the app is usable or bloated after the first week.

That's how meet singles went for me, for whatever that's worth.