The thing about claiming to have gotten into online dating “before it was cool” is that there is no such time: Online dating never actually got cool. It just became normal, as more and more people realized that the internet is, indeed, a legitimate communication pathway and that “real life” people use it to connect to each other. But if it had ever gotten cool, I certainly got there before that time—I was online dating in the year of our Lord 2007, before most people currently alive were even born. I jumped on and off the online- and app-based dating wagon for years, putting in my time on OKCupid, Tinder, Hinge, and Bumble. And I would have added eHarmony to that list, too, had eHarmony's dating algorithm not told me that I was incompatible with every possible man in the world.

I’ve always been a firm believer that you get out of these apps what you put into them, so I had a good time on them in my 20s but thought I’d no longer need them by my 30s. When I became unexpectedly single again this fall, I feared that I’d find their endless scrolls a barren wasteland, the bitter harvest of dude-crops picked over with all the eligible bachelors snatched up by effervescent college girls who love to laugh and have serious wanderlust but exclusively for Cabo San Lucas in March and April of any given year. What I found instead was a veritable feast of f*ckable dudes who were not only picking up what I was throwing down, but also apparently had learned that the correct way to react to a text message from a woman you’re seeing is to actually answer it in full sentences within a few hours of receiving it. All that and so much more!

This realization is just one of many genuinely surprising-in-a-good-way discoveries I've made since trying the whole dating thing again, this time as an older and wiser woman in her 30s. In no real order, here are some more:

1. Men still want to meet me even if they haven't seen me half-naked.

Better yet, the pervasive myth that women become shriveled harridans after 30 couldn’t be further from the truth.

I was 21 years old when I started online dating, but I felt more like 20-FUN years old, if you get my meaning. (My meaning is that I was probably drinking too much and I didn’t know that about half the men in New York who claimed to be “fashion photographers” just, like, owned a reasonable camera and once had a tall girlfriend, but I thought I was so lucky to date them.)

My dating profile photo collections back then were all lecherous, suggestive open-mouthed smiles and shrink-wrapped American Apparel ensembles worn to what may have been actual honest-to-God raves. In turn, I was greeted with plenty of lecherous, suggestive messages from the sea of potential dates that made explicit reference to these photos and then proceeded quickly to proposition me for what would be dubbed “Netflix and chill” in later generations.

This time around, as much as I wanted to set thirst traps for all men within a 30-mile radius to prove I’m keeping it tight, I opted for form-fitting but less overtly sexy outfits for my photos. The most interesting and abundant comments I get are about two photos in particular—one where I’m wearing an (admittedly extremely cool) A$AP Rocky sweatshirt, and another in which I'm wholesomely raking my yard in grey leggings, a black coat, and a clearly enthusiastic attitude for fall foliage.

2. No one is pretending to be chill , which is very hot.

On the topic of raking lawns, it reminds me, naturally, that we are all on a slow and unstoppable march toward death, a fact that we think about more often as we get older. So as my age range preference has expanded to accommodate more dudes in their mid-to-late 30s, I find that they realize more keenly that they don’t have all the time to “see what happens” and “play the field," and not just because their vision isn’t what it used to be and sports really agitate their increasingly fragile back muscles!