Men Pretending to Be Women on Dating Apps

Master and I are on a few dating and friendship apps — Bumble BFF, Feeld, a couple of others. We're looking for friends, couples with a similar lifestyle. And we keep running into the same thing.

Profiles that look real. Beautiful women, supposedly in relationships, supposedly looking for exactly what we're looking for. And then something is off.

The Red Flags

It started with the selfies. I always send a selfie when I switch from the app to texting — that's just what I do. And this girl sends one back. Except it's the exact same photo from her profile.

"She's a girl, she should have more pictures. I mean, I understand you need to do your hair, blah blah blah. But it's a selfie and we're supposed to be between girls." — Marian

A real woman has a thousand photos on her phone. Even my dead grandma had a lot of pictures on her phone. If you're sending me the same photo you put on your Bumble profile — as a selfie — you think I'm not going to notice?

Then there's the boyfriend talk. Always the boyfriend.

"My boyfriend likes rock and roll. My boyfriend likes this restaurant. My boyfriend likes this." — Marian

This is a man telling you what he likes through a fake profile. Girls don't talk like that. Girls talk girl stuff. Even I'm bad at girl stuff, but I girl talk.

And the biggest tell: they never want to meet. They mirror your life perfectly — similar age gap, similar interests, similar creative lifestyle. But there's always a reason it can't happen.

Who These Men Are

Master made this point on our Patreon exclusive, and I think it's important: these are probably married men. Older. Lonely.

And here's the thing — they can't just go get attention the way a woman can.

"If I go alone tonight at Blue Water Cafe, I'll spend the night alone. But a girl sitting at the Blue Water Cafe, she's going to get other girls talking to her, guys, couples who want to have a threesome tonight." — Marian

So they create a persona. They use stolen photos — or real photos from someone they know — and they mirror whoever they match with. They don't want to meet. They don't want sex. They just want the interaction.

It's like what Master was saying about the early internet. The forums, the BBS boards. Guys would pretend to be women because there weren't that many real ones online. Not for money. For attention. For someone to talk to.

How to Spot Them

If you spend enough time on dating or friendship apps, you will encounter these profiles. Here's what I look for now:

Same photos. If her "selfie" matches her profile pictures, that's not a selfie. That's someone with a limited bank of stolen images.
Boyfriend-centric conversation. A real woman in a couple might mention her partner, but she doesn't constantly redirect the conversation to what he likes.
Signal or Telegram instead of texting. For apps like Feeld — fine, people want privacy. But for Bumble BFF? If you're looking for a best friend and you want to go on Signal, I'm like, what? You're looking for a Russian hacker best friend?
Perfect mirroring. If they have an eerily similar life to yours — same dynamic, same age gap, same creative interests — and they still can't meet this week, something is wrong.
Never available. A real content creator who found someone with a matching lifestyle would be at your door. "Can you come now? Just grab a chair and sit down on my podcast." That's what real content creators do.

It's Part of the Deal

I'm not mad about it. It's just part of the statistics of these apps. If you're a guy and you've done it — honestly, tell us about it. I'd love to understand why. It's not sociology, but we are a podcast where we talk about things that happen in the real world.

Just know that if you spend enough time on these apps, you need to be able to spot them. Because it does take a lot of time. And then you're like, well, that might have been fun for that person, but for me it was just a waste of time.

If you're navigating the weird world of online dating and friendships, you're not alone. Join the Happy Submissive community — real profiles, real people.

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