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‘It’s quite soul-destroying’: how we fell out of love with dating apps::For a decade, apps have dominated dating. But now singles are growing tired of swiping and are looking for new ways to meet people – or reverting to old ones
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I really loved OkCupid back before they sold out. They would share a lot of interesting data on their blog posts, and seemed genuinely interested in making successful matchups based on how your profile was presented to others. It was fun to be on there and didn’t feel like you were just being presented for “dateable” you were if you didn’t want to be.
I also met my wife on OkCupid, but that was just before the site really took a nosedive. Pretty annoyed they deleted my account without warning, so the first message she ever sent me is gone forever.
My wife and I also met on OKCupid, probably around the same time as you – Tinder-like features were starting to appear, but the core of the experience was still about reading other users’ personal essays and comparing compatibility quiz responses. Of all the services I tried, OKCupid (in that particular incarnation, at least) seemed like the only one that was genuinely aimed at fostering deep personal connections. I haven’t been on any of the apps in almost a decade now, but it really seems like the shallow, gamified Tinder model of “swipe right if they look hot” ate up the marketplace, to the detriment of everyone.
Yeah that’s literally all it is now, a few apps are like “there’s no swiping here” but then the mechanic they came up with is worse.
If you want to save stuff like that, it’s good to save it because sites disappear. There are also a lot of weird “privacy” obsessive people who have a bizarre fixation of wanting accounts to be “deleted” if they don’t sign in for a certain amount of time, and some sites are starting to give in to them.
Check for emails in both of your accounts and you might be able to find the text of it there.
I used dating apps for 10 years. Got maybe a dozen replies and 1 date. So I’m looking at like a .00001% success rate. It’s heartbreaking how unattractive that makes me feel.
It’s not you, it’s the apps. They’re set up that way to get you to pay for them.
That’s a big nope from me.
Well, if your goal was to get at least one date, then I’d say the success rate was 100%!
I would not call the date a success lol. I tried to plan to go somewhere but the girl knew a mutual friend so she said she felt more comfortable coming over my apartment. She was adamant about being pizza (which was awful), and when she walked in she cracked a joke about how easily she could get raped. 0/10. Did not see her again.
Oof, quite the story!!
When the apps suffer turbo enshittification, everybody tires of it fast. Tinder is little more than an ad front for Instagram, over half of every profile’s bio (which is hard to see on purpose, because of how Tinder works) is just @whoever . Tinder may also show a profile you already "Nope"d a second time, same with a profile you give a “Yeah”, effectively wasting a like.
Then there’s the heavy push for users, mainly men, to pay for premium. But wait, there’s premium Gold and premium Platinum! And also stuff you have to buy separately!
Tinder was good back in 2015. It became absolute shit with time. That the majority of other dating apps literally abandoned what set them apart (like OkCupid, which had comprehensive profiles to be filled and ditched it all for the same like/dislike schtick) doesn’t make people trust in them either. “Same shit, less people”.
Not to mention fake profiles and bots, because of course the apps will pretend they have more users than they actually have. How else will desperate men pay for platinum premium?
Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but OKC went down the tubes because it was bought by the same company that owns tinder (match I believe?). They actually own many of the dating apps at this point.
Match Group. Pretty much an evil conglomerate of dating apps.
Yep, they own like 25 of the major apps. I even tried match.com around 2016, thinking it would be better than the apps since it was the OG, but nope, same shit just without the swiping, and it costs astronomically more.
I guess we’re ignoring the subscriptions and bot accounts. The primary reason I never paid for any of it nor spent longer than a month on any of them.
I’ve paid for bumble, hinge and tinder multiple times over the past 7 years, all it got me was less money in my bank account.
I found my girlfriend just before COVID popped off, but I would argue that dating apps are insufferable now due to how polarizing the world is.
Just having basic conversations with people online, including Lemmy, is so tiring. Like how I was called names for saying Windows just works, and then as I was being attacked for it, I was literally typing the comment from a Linux distro that currently wont allow Steam to download at higher than ~120Mbps, despite my internet being 1900Mbps. Then the guy continued to go off, calling me names, telling me that I am such a moron, all because I showed a live example of how Linux wasn’t “just working”?
The internet is so exhausting and toxic these days.
The Internet is just trolls (whether paid shills or people doing it for fun). Sometimes you think that some of these people just might be higher up the spectrum. You’d be right for one out of five of them, the other four are also just trolls.
Coming from somebody in their early thirties who has had nothing but atrocious luck with women in general, I’ve mentally checked out of dating.
Every dating app is now a carbon-copy of Tinder where you can’t pull a lady unless you look like a fucking Chippendale, are above 5’11" tall, have your own property and are sufficiently wealthy. It also doesn’t help that Match Group hold a virtual monopoly over the market, with Bumble as their only credible competition. They literally profiteer from making the experience as miserable as possible so they can sucker you into paying a £40/month subscription.
Match also put the bare minimum into moderating and policing their apps. The sheer volume of love scammers, fake users and spammers shilling OnlyFans pages is massive, and it feels like they really couldn’t give a shit about enforcing their own rules.
Online dating really is that soul-destroying, and the longer I spend trying to use any app, the less it surprises me that the incel, MGTOW and red pill communities are growing, and that people like Andrew Tate and Sneako have such a huge following despite being such garbage human beings.
At the same time I wish there was a better alternative.
The problem with dating apps is the commodification of human relationships. The way people use these apps is too superficial. They’re looking for the perfect man or woman, so if there’s something they don’t like or that person has a flaw, they don’t take the time to really get to know them on a deep level. There’s a lot to choose from! FOMO!
Perfection does not exist in this world and we must really try to connect on a deep level. Unfortunately, some people use these apps for window shopping and shallow relationships.
I agree with this but would say it’s just one of the problems.
I always have trouble with the idea that in reality these dating apps can’t want you to be perfectly successful or else you’d never use them again. There’s a real insidiousness there
7 of 9 just lookin for perfection baby
I saw a terrible new dating app that was all about how super incredible you are and how you should only accept true partners who can battle your wits and income level, while it made vague references to coders and crypto.
It’s a website for those antisocial nerds that think themselves superior and anyone that goes on there is always going to be judging every partner as to their closeness to perfect. Anyone on there is a narcissist for sure.
What a terrible reduction of spouse to that. No wonder no one is having kids and people are lonely. That is how the “elite” view themselves and each other. Our society deserves to be burnt to the ground.
On the backend, no company could fulfill their promise if a “special sauce” to successful matching that was especially better than anything anyone else had, so they focused on impulse matching that worked best for short-term satisfaction and hookups. This worked for the dynamic of what people expected, and the reviews and word-of-mouth remained generally high— until we all god burned out of meaningless, futile, superficial relationships.
So, what comes next?
You do understand you’re gonna give this kid a complex based on a single anecdote?
TBH app based dating has entirely ended the possibility of dating for me. It’s just not worth the effort and constant rejection. Add on being lower than normal attractiveness, and 5’5” to boot, it just isn’t something that makes it worthwhile anymore.
I’m no catch myself, and would need to do a lot of working on myself first if I wanted to date, but it’s not something that seems worth the effort now. It’s been so commodified that I just don’t have the will or want to put in the work.
My advice to people here is usually all the same: stop worrying about it. Do stuff that you enjoy. I don’t even want to say work on yourself, because it implies that you are actually doing that in order to find somebody. Don’t even do that. Just do what you want to do.
Find meetup groups you want to do for you, not for the possibility of meeting people. Find ways to have fun. Work out because you want to be stronger and healthier. Sign up for community college classes on topics you find interesting.
If you do meet someone interesting in the process, cool! But don’t let that be your focus.
And yeah dating apps all suck for many, many reasons.
That seems like super generic advice. Why would you give it to anyone? Are you more qualified somehow than the people you give it to?
Lol what do you want from me 😅
I don’t know. Some justification for your advice maybe? I know you intend well, but I am genuinely wondering how you know whether your advice is right and why you feel qualified to give advice.
Just one thing, you can say dating apps all suck, but I found my wife on a dating app, so maybe weave that into your story as well if possible :)
It’s an advice it’s up to you or anyone who recives it if you want to follow it or not
Sure, but even so you’re nudging people in a direction that may or may not be the right direction. Some justification for advice is in order, right? I don’t know, perhaps @[email protected] is a social psychologist who has spent years researching this topic?
This has definitely been my experience. 8 years after my last relationship and I’m still single. I’m an average looking guy, I put up nice pictures, I filled out the profile, I spent time crafting a good opening message, etc… I had maybe 30-50 conversations, most of which quickly died out, some just wanted to keep talking for weeks before we met, at the end I think I ended up with less than ten actual dates, none of them went to a second date.
My first therapist even suggested an experiment (edit: this was actually my idea,but he supported it): replace my profile pictures with those of a male model and see if I get tons of messages or it stays the same. I ended up getting about 3 or 4 more messages total then usual, none of them went anywhere either.
What was your therapist’s theory they were trying to test, that you might be ugly? Seems a very odd thing to ask you to do.
I’m guessing they knew that it likely wasn’t a problem with being ugly, so the therapist did this ‘experiment’ as a way of demonstrating that. Seems pretty solid to me, actually.
Yeah it was my idea but he supported it, and pretty much wanted to help me prove that it wasn’t my appearance, just shitty apps. He said he had a bunch of clients that were in the same boat as me. I work in IT and do programming on the side, so I have an insight into how these things work, and of course if you actually find someone the app loses your business, which is bad for them, so it’s beneficial for them to string you along.
It was my idea but he supported it, pretty much testing to see if my pictures were the issue or not.
Some people say to never use selfie shots, others say it’s fine. Some say to have only pictures of you with no one else, others say it’s fine. It’s difficult to figure out what actually “works”.
You had 30-50 matches over eight years? Where do you live, bumblefuck?
Also the apps aren’t for conversations. They are for meeting people. If you are trying to have a lengthy conversation on Tinder, you’re putting screws in with a hammer.
Nope! Manhattan, the polar opposite of Bumblefuck! The problem there is the sheer amount of people, even average or below average women will get bombarded with 10s or 100s of matches a day and just as many messages, so you just get lost in the crowd if you’re not a perfect 10. Also there’s a lot of dudes in the city that are just creepy as fuck. I’m obviously not good with women, but these guys make me look like Casanova. Women almost always have their guard up because of that. I just moved to Miami 2 weeks ago and it’s a breath of fresh air (both literally and figuratively haha) to have strangers be friendly and want to talk to you.
I was never trying to have in depth conversations with these women, I wanted to jump from the match right to the date. They’re the ones that wanted to wait days or weeks until a date happened.
I mean I live in Brooklyn and I get about one date a month. Probably more if I hit the apps every day instead of just tinder. And I’m a pretty average guy with a big deal breaker.
I’d love to see more of what guys who are failing are doing differently than me.
I lived by Park Slope (Windsor Terrace) for a year (moved out of NYC in June) and yeah I got a fair amount of matches, but half of them never turned into actual dates because people were too busy with their lives. I’ll admit that I did get more matches when living in Brooklyn than when I lived in Manhattan, but as you’re aware, Brooklyn is fucking huge.
This is the interesting thing about looking hot. It brings its own host of problems; serious problems they aren’t really acknowledged by society at large because of apparent privilege.
I couldn’t really find scientific research to back this claim up. Can you elaborate and back your claims up?
People actually want to be with you so it attracts the crazies. Opposed to us uggos that just get ignored.
Dating websites were useless, turning them into phone applications just made them even less engaging then they already were.
An extremely tiny percentage of dating website users get anything positive from it. You might as well play a lottery instead.
I wouldn’t say that. I know several people in long term relationships that met on Tinder.
I just don’t see this. I’ve had lots of success and I’m not a typically attention-grabbing person on a dating app (my first line is about how I’m married).
I have numerous friends who met their long-term partners on dating apps.
I’m married now but was pretty successful in meeting people through dating apps when I was single for a couple of years. Each and every person I met ended up being a complete shit show, by far the worst dates and one worst relationship of my life. The relationship was with someone who turned out to be an abusive narcissist. Fun.
By contrast, the relationships and dates that came from meeting people in person were the best, I think because they originated from spontaneous mutual interest, plus I could much more easily weed out the creeps.
Dativerse when? Seems like this is ripe for disruption by a free solution
There’s this pleroma instance and this github project.
Yes, why can’t Lemmy just work for that?
Just create a “City Nama, M4W/M4M/W4W/W4M.MM4W…etc”
That would work no?
No, because newer or more upvoted is not better. The way Lemmy is set up for news makes it bad for leaving a page up for your profile and getting people to look at it over time
There’s no women on Lemmy tho.
Anyone can be a woman with the right leg and penis tuck strategy LOL.
Not with that attitude
It turns Into hookups and sexually explicit pics if reddit was anything to go by. But if it was for relationships not just hook ups, I’d like it.
I’ve thought about it before. The thing is with all the images getting loaded so much it would get expensive quick.
Yet Lemmy exists right now with videos and everything
I think most major instances only allow linking to videos and won’t allow you to directly upload it.
I think the bots and scammers would pose a much bigger problem
And wait til you see the pool of actual candidates.
Easy solution: date the bots and scammers!
I think those could be dealt with, but just the sheer bandwidth of someone loading 3-10 images per profile and then rapidly flicking through them and onto the next one…
The storage costs would be one thing, but the bandwidth of that would be another entirely.
As much as I’d like to think that people would donate, I’ve found the majority of people to be pretty cheap and unwilling to donate money for something they can get for free.
Dating apps are deeply, deeply enshitified because the economic incentive for them is the exact opposite of what monogamous users want. Specifically, the apps want you to keep subscribing, plus buy the super platinum plus extra added packs, but never really find someone and date them, because then you stop paying. Old school pre-sellout OKCupid had a great analysis of this in their blog, which was taken down the day they sold out.
This is why the few sites/apps that cater to non-monogamous or event based communities are still reasonably decent, e.g FetLife, Bloom and Feeld, though Feeld is partially down the enshitification pathway.
I’d be really interested in seeing what a fediverse dating app would be like, something that didn’t have the financial incentive to enshitify, and maybe had a match/search system like old-school OKC.
EDIT: missing word.
Once you realize their business model incentivizes them to not get you a life partner because then you’d stop using the app, they kinda don’t make sense to use.
I met my partner on Kijiji. Never been happier, so they can work just fine.
I admit I’m as surprised as anyone because it was such a slog before talking to her initially.
I liked what bumble did with the “lifetime premium”. It gives them an incentive to actually get you a match.
Coincidentally… I met my current girlfriend on Bumble after trying a litany of apps over the course of years… Definitely not saying it’s a good or easy option though. Part of it is that I’m picky, but I treated it a lot like a job for years to get this relationship.
I think the lifetime premium is a joke because you’re paying a lot up front instead of monthly or weekly. Yeah, they may get less money, but probably not. As the article says, people tend to stop using them after a month or two regardless of the outcome (that’s definitely my experience), so getting like $150 up front for lifetime access is a lot better than someone paying $35/month for two months.
For me, it was definitely a huge money saver. Working in tech (now a remote job), not drinking, not being religious, and having extremely “meet a girl” friendly hobbies like hiking and gaming … it was extremely limiting.
A 1 time $150 was a steal compared to some of the other apps like the scam that is eharmony.
Wow we’re like the same person… Maybe I should give this lifetime Bumble a try
I mean, if you’re wasting money on other apps… And you just want an app with a pretty good population that you’re not constantly paying money into and also not artificially knee capped on… It’s a pretty good deal assuming they still offer it
I was you for 5 years (12 hour shifts 7-7, 6 months night, 6 months day, worked 3 days a week and every other Saturday) but in Manhattan. I bought 3 and 6 month subscriptions and I think that was the only time I actually got dates on there. I was surprised when I got one a few months back on a free account.
Met my wife on Bumble and we just had a baby in June
Congratulations :)
Wait until you find out that she isn’t real, and you’ve been transferring almost all your savings of semen to one nasty guy in Nigeria…
(lol, this presumes you haven’t even met your “baby” yet, only believed in the cute photos your “wife” sent of them, since she still needs a bit more money (probably crypto or giftcards) to be able to afford the transport to come live with you!)
Hopefully, it’s a very different story. Anyway, congratulations!
Back in the day, plenty of fish did an interesting blog post on that very topic. Unfortunately, it vanished when they were brought up by one of the big dating site groups that now dominate.
They also did some amazing meta data analysis of their users, and discussed it publicly. E.g. including the word “awesome” in your opening message improved multi message response rate by 18% (from memory).
It was actually OkCupid.
They also did one where they looked at how men and women rate each other on looks, and found that women rate a whopping 80% of men as below average attractiveness.
This was made back when you could rate profiles out of 5 stars.
I stand corrected. I used both back in the day. I even met my wife on there! Somehow I got the 2 swapped in my mind.
The way I remember them is that POF had a horrendous turquoise website design and looked like a circa-2003 webpage that hadn’t been updated in years, while Okcupid was a lot more competently designed.
And having a practical monopoly by Match doesn’t help either.
That pisses me off more than anything.
I really wish the FTC would go ham on Match Group and break up that monopoly…
Match group beat Apple. In Europe.
Kinda like Luxottica being the reason why most sunglasses cost $175 for $0.10 worth of plastic.
Their business model doesn’t really require that, as relationships have a natural attrition rate, and new people are constantly entering the market.
