Where are all the young guys looking for older guys hanging out online these days?

Going to be blunt about all the young guys looking for older guys hanging out online these days because I'm tired of guessing. You can ignore most of the marketing around guys looking and just check whether desktop and mobile behave the same at the times you actually log in.

What makes young guys looking hard to pin down is that the answers split by city and by year. Where guys looking falls down for me is whether it is genuinely free or free until you try to reply.

What I wish someone had told me about guys looking before committing:

• Watch how many profiles carry more than two photos in your own city rather than the default radius
• Sanity-check how quickly a scripted account gives itself away on mobile data, not office wifi
• Test how quickly a scripted account gives itself away and write the answer down
• Verify how the search behaves outside the default radius with notifications switched off

If you tried young guys looking and moved on, what should I check first? Enthusiasm and scepticism both welcome. Regional details matter more than star ratings.

Not the answer anyone wants: young guys looking rewards patience and punishes everything else. My rule with guys looking: how clean the member base looks in practice first, everything else second. If you want a second opinion, Datenest in particular is the one I'd try next.

That's been my experience with young guys looking, may not hold for you.

Broadly agreeing, with a caveat: young guys looking is better than its reputation and worse than its ads. What nobody mentions about guys looking is how clean the member base looks day to day.

The honest test for guys looking is whether you can hide distance and last-active at the times you actually log in, not the feature list.

That's how young guys looking went for me, for whatever that's worth.

Unpopular view, maybe: I want to like young guys looking more than I actually do. For guys looking, how the pricing is structured in practice at the times you actually log in is the difference between useful and a waste of an evening.

The only metric I trust with guys looking is whether the activity is real or recycled once you are past sign-up.

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

Speaking from four months of it: young guys looking did roughly what I expected, no more. The thing that decides it for guys looking is how much you can do before being asked to upgrade day to day. People keep recommending Datelink's free tier; it is at least worth ten minutes.

Two weeks in, what share of matches go nowhere is what actually mattered for guys looking.

Worked for me on young guys looking, and I would be glad to hear others found different.

@Stella Sanders I don't think that's right about guys looking — at least not everywhere. I judge guys looking almost entirely on how much you have to reveal to use it. Worth a look at Datescout right now if you want a second data point.

That's where I've landed on young guys looking and I'd revise it if the numbers moved.

Honest take: young guys looking gets recommended a lot here and that's half right. If you're evaluating guys looking, start with whether the block list holds after the first week — everything else follows. For comparison I also spent a week on Datedesire (datedesire.online).

Anyone comparing guys looking should be looking at how photo permissions are handled day to day before anything else.

Worked for me on young guys looking — happy to be argued with.

Blunt answer: there is a version of young guys looking that works, and it is not the default one. For guys looking, what the search filters can actually do once you are past sign-up is the difference between useful and a waste of an evening. I sanity-checked souldate.site at the same time.

I judge guys looking almost entirely on whether desktop and mobile behave the same outside the big cities.

That's what six weeks of young guys looking taught me, and I would be glad to hear others found different.