Is this the most unconventional dating advice ever?

While most experts encourage you to put more effort into your online dating messages, OkCupid co-founder Christian Rudder suggests doing exactly the opposite. And he has the research to back it up.

“OkCupid has records from the pre-smartphone, pre-Twitter, pre-Instagram days — hell, it was online when Myspace was still a file storage service,” he wrote in an article for New York magazine. “Judging by messaging over all those years, the broad writing culture is indeed changing, and the change is driven by phones.”

Alex Williamson knows a thing or two about dating. The 28-year-old joined the Bumble team a few months before launch, and is now the app’s director of creative marketing and brand copywriter. If you’ve seen Bumble’s viral response to a finance bro (also known as "The Connor Letter”), you’ve seen Williamson’s work.

Refinery29 recently sat down with Williamson to get an insider’s perspective on the online dating industry. She shared what she’s learned working behind the scenes at one of the world’s most popular dating apps, offering advice on how to write a bio, how to choose a profile picture, how to identify red flags, and more. Her top tips include:

It’s 2016, and most of us lead pretty busy lives. We are constantly on our phones, making to-do lists, pursuing career ambitions, and taking care of family members to the point where sometimes it feels like there’s no free time, especially for dating. Dating can sometimes feel like a chore, or worse – a waste of time when you aren’t meeting anyone who clicks.

But before you give up on dating and proclaim yourself too busy, try taking a different approach.

Think about the process from your potential date’s perspective. Do you seem hard to pin down to schedule a date? Are you squeezing your dates in to 20-minute coffee shop dates to avoid wasting time? Are you only half-paying attention when you are on a date?

If so, you might be sending out a signal to potential mates that you’re just not that interested, and even more to the point - not that available.

If there’s one thing every online dater can agree on, it’s this: they all want more matches. More matches mean more dates, more dates mean more chances of meeting someone special, and more special someones means eventually finding the someone who takes you off the market for good.

As an online dater, you have an effect on how many matches you get. You boost your odds by choosing the right photos, writing an attractive profile, and crafting intriguing messages. But as carefully as you try to present yourself well, you know it’s not entirely in your hands. Working hard in the background of every dating site or app is an algorithm that also has a say in how many matches you receive.

Online dating can feel overwhelming, especially if you haven’t done it in a while. But do you find yourself a little curious, ready to put yourself out there again? Or does the thought of online dating make you want to hide in your house and binge watch Netflix indefinitely?

I understand the temptation to retreat, but the truth is, we are human beings, and therefore we crave connection. We especially crave intimate relationships, whether we want to admit it or not.

There’s nothing wrong with pursuing your independent lifestyle, but if you think you might be ready to give dating a try again, here are five tips to feel ready to date again:

As online dating continues to spread around the world, scholars and scientists continue to investigate the practice. What makes an online dater successful? What makes the perfect profile? Is the perfect profile even achievable? What traits make singles more likely to find love online?

These are the questions asked by a new study published in the National Communication Association's journal Communication Monographs. The study looked at how specific types of content in online dating profiles affected viewers’ impressions and actions, and found that humility is key to online dating success.

“Online daters construct their profiles to attract potential partners and viewers’ assessments are based on the content of dating profiles,” explains the study. “However, little is known about the mechanisms or nature of the associations that connect variations in profile content to outcomes.”