I am a male, mid twenties 30-40lbs overweight. I used tinder OKC POF to incredible personal gain. It started out when I was 19, I had tons of failures but right before going back to college met a girl, met up for coffee and hated her. I made up some excuse about needing to pick up my sister after 15min into the date. Offered to walk her to her car and she said "it's a shame you have to leave so early, I have a bunch of clothes in my car" being 19 and naive I didn't realize what she meant was outfits such as slutty police woman, slutty nurse Etc. had sex in the back of my car, did it again the next day and went back to college. I was hooked.
For the next 6 years I did online dating off and on, I learned a lot, mostly failures but then something clicked, found out how to be different and started going on 3-4 dates a week with quite beautiful women. I had hoped for things to be serious and most of the time I'd go on a date or two and decide whether I wanted to continue things. It was shocking. Truly shocking to be in control of my dating life. This gave me tons of confidence in natural settings such as lunch/bars/coffee shops etc. ended up having a few serious relationships but mainly just a lot of fun dates.
Then another big revelation, I learned that being direct was the most powerful thing you could do. Not direct such as messaging "hey Bb wan 2 fuck?" Rather a strong entrance, be funny, charming and non threatening, then a few messages Into the exchange being outright and telling women I'm looking for something casual, along the lines of a fwb. 95% of the time I would get a very positive response, that does not mean 95% of women were looking to hook up rather they would be impressed with the honesty and the responses would be either "thank you for being direct, it's not what I'm looking for at this time however good luck!" Or "I'm glad you were upfront about this because most people don't know what they want or they say one thing and want another" etc. on occasion a few weeks later or months I'd get a message from women who were not previously interested asking if I was still looking for FWB/hook ups etc.
All in all met up with 300-400 women for dates, slept with many of them, had a few relationships. At the end I didn't meet up unless I knew they were willing to have sex on the first date and or come over for sex without meeting first. I learned that women are just as horny as men and probably just as willing to have casual sex however it must be approached with tact. Of course that's a generalization but you know what I mean. The process became boring as it would be the same thing over and over again, rinse and repeat but the outcome was the reward. I don't feel dirty or empty inside, I'm pleased, gave me a whole new outlook on dating, self confidence and now I've had my experience so I don't feel compelled to venture to greener pastures when in a relationship.
Fun times, very gratifying, 10/10 would do again.
TL;DR: great experience, met tons of women, a few relationships, lots of boom boom, no ragrets.