I mean if you live somewhere with "local trans spaces" who use discord that's a very different environment from here in London UK.

I know this clique group chat long-ass-mastodon-profile 10-nsfw-accounts-and-counting narcissist bay area referencing circlejerk 6 figure earnin' tech worker subculture exists in San francisco, but it's very odd to make the assumption that anyone not extremely online and living in like, the rest of the world, would be part of one, nevermind aware of such niche things, like assuming a gay feller is into snm leather or something.

I'd say I'm too online, and I don't even get discord fundamentally, just seems like an unholy combo of a WhatsApp group chat and forum.

That said she did used to use discord, but I think they were too online for her and it all imploded in some drama over league of legends or some such. I used to have online friends on Skype from 4chan I met IRL too and it never really ended well either.

The benefit of dating apps is that it avoids any such drama, everyone's intentions are pretty clear, displayed well on their profile.

If you judge people too quickly and find yourself running out of choices that sounds like a you problem to me honestly.

I don't know what a hookup app is, I guess like for gay men that's Grindr? Idk what it would be for others. I just used OkCupid, gotta say I hate this swiping trend, back in the day it was a list, one of the reasons i didnt even bother with tinder this time around.

I ended up with like 10 IRL first dates from the last time I was on there, exclusively t4t at that point for variety's sake and the only problems I had was that they were mostly all too quiet, people who didn't know how to socialise and didn't even seem interested in actually putting in the hard work of getting to know somebody and well just didn't seem to be very interesting people in general or couldn't convey what they were about well.

Ended up with a few new friends though, one of whom I helped start her medical transition (logistically), and of course I met my girlfriend there that time too, almost 2 years in and I love her very much.

That said my experience with dating apps is a queer-centric one, I know cishet dynamics are way different, and when I turn men on in the settings it does feel like I'm opening the floodgates for all sorts of folks so I get that I suppose.