Getting to know TrueNudists (the site)

So I've technically been here a long time, but just coming back to it now. I've started to notice a few things since I've been back, so let me share what I've found out! Search This is definitely a way to find people if you're willing to put in the work. What's good about the search is you can specify around the place you're looking for people in, for instance where you live, or where you want to visit. You can also sort it based on how recently folks have logged in, this gives you a decent idea of whether they're active or how likely they are to respond. Once you've opened some profiles, the longer they've been here while still being active is a good sign, also if they either have a lot of pictures (clearly of the same person, themselves), or they have their pictures set to only viewable by friends. Send a friendly message through a friend invite and you might get lucky! Groups At first when I started adding people, I saw they were joining lots of groups, so I hoped there would be some activity there. Unfortunately it's quite hard to see how active a group is without clicking into it (or through the Groups tab) and investigating. It's also almost always older men trying to connect in a very sad way, anyone interesting is scared out of groups quite quickly it seems. Also they generally seem to let in people in very easily (at least they let me in very easily) even when they say they have requirements like certification (which I clearly don't and many other's don't either). If you're unlucky it's also a group full of scammers just trying to get you to add them on another service to probably sell you their pictures. Basically Groups are failing, they aren't creating much community or activity, they're like facebook groups, but without the memes, or the fact that you're connected to your friends... so what are they? Just a failure. Avoid! Chat This seems to be where most of the action is. Because it's live, people are here, chatting. Mostly nonsense, but if you can connect a little, maybe you get into more individual conversations through the private chat. Admittedly I haven't spent much time here, but it gives me old school chatroom vibes, for good and ill. You can also hover over people's names in the chat or in the online user list, and see where they're from before trying to connect more. This seems like the most 'actual' living space on the site, you can find a live person, figure out if they're in your area, your age range (or whatever goal you have) and have a conversation. Maybe. Direct Messages Well it's worse than chat. It has a bit of delay, and they're only good if the other person also treats it more like an exercise in letter writing than as a chat. So far I haven't had much luck with it. Gallery At first I thought "Gallery? What is this doing here?", it had all the red flags I expected immediately, a lot of stolen images of models posted by older men. I tried each of the sorting options, and realised there is 1 that might be helpful: "Most Recent". Using the most recent filter you can find people who are actively updating their profile, and see if they're adding pictures of themself, multiple, if they seem legitimate, or just yoinked from somewhere. Of course it's hard to know, but at least it gives you an indication. Of course the biggest issue here is you can't search by location, ah well, you win some, you lose some. Locations These for me are basically useless in my own country (the Netherlands, which has a very good and well used website for this) but perhaps they could be useful while traveling to discover places. Events Seems absolutely useless. Groups are already failing, and this just seems like another example. Events are either horribly out of date, or wildly far in the future, and either way have almost no one attending. Of course when you have little to no actual community, you aren't going to have successful open events. Forums Ok I feel like a broken record. It's hard to see how old a topic is, and so people are resurrecting old topics that no one is really engaged with, but this happens ad nauseum. Also it's mostly old men trying to connect in a very sad way. It's sad. The Ladies room shouldn't have men looking for women topics, this is just bad moderation. Posting Media Most people will only be able to see 6 photos if they don't have a subscription, if you post many photos there's a weird algorithm that decides which ones someone can see. This is not consistent in your media section vs your activity, sometimes you can scroll down on someone's timeline and see their older photos, sometimes you still can't. My recommendation is post a few photos (up to 6) of yourself in the way you want people to see you. If you're going to post more, make sure every photo could be 1 of the 6 only photos they see. And know that the effort you put in could be a big waste of time for everyone involved, but especially for you. Conclusion My guess is the website in general is just a bit too janky and unmoderated, and if anyone finds interesting friends here, they connect somewhere else, and do their event planning and chatting on that other platform. I think it is still possible to connect with a few actual naturists here, but I wonder when you look at your own age range, your own area, and the ratio of how many dead/fake accounts you have to sort through, to find live bodies and then after determining if they're here for social nudism or some sexual interest (whichever it is you're looking for), I think it may be quite disappointing (except if you're an older person in Australia, a lot of elder Australians in the chat, good on you old ozzies). So my final set of TL;DR tips are: - Go into the chat and have a chat, hover over icons to see age/location - Use the search functionality to find people who are active recently in your area, have been on the platform a while, and whose photos are only for friends OR plentiful and of themselves - Use the gallery to find people who are active - Look through the friends of active people - Use direct messages like letters - Use locations while searching for places while travelling - Post just the photos (up to 6) you want people to see - Don't spend excessive time on posting photos - AVOID Groups, Events & Forums I guess that's all, hope it was informative (if only for me of the future who forgets all this), adios! - John