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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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The apps served a purpose. They raised the available pool of possible dates from “who’s in this bar with me right now” to “everyone in a 10 mile radius” or whatever, and everyone is there for the same reason, mostly.
But it also doesn’t have to be all or nothing. It shouldn’t be. Use an app you like and also go to in-person dating events. Just use apps if that’s your speed. Fuck the apps and go out there and meet people at the local cafe, or board game night, or beer league softball, or whatever. It can augment the old ways. It doesn’t have to replace the old ways.
From “who’s in this bar with me right now” to “everyone in the entire world” but mostly Russian spam bots, Only Fans, and ‘Influencers’ 🤮
FYFY
You forgot ‘South East Asian and African women GPS spoofing their way to matching with Western men with the aim of getting a spousal visa in mind.’
That’s what 65% of my matches on dating apps are. The other 35% are fake accounts using photos stolen from a model’s Instagram or Weibo. Unfortunately the mobile nature of modern dating apps makes it far more difficult to run a reverse image search and weed out those fakes. But generally if I match with someone hot enough to look like a model, I’m automatically suspicious.
This isn’t me having a preference. I just don’t want a long distance relationship with somebody who lives 5000+ miles away. Been there, done that.
I used to date a Japanese lady who came to the UK on a student visa to do a foreign exchange year. Our relationship fell apart the moment we finally closed the gap.
Also, I’ve known ladies who have married foreign spouses and the ordeal they’ve been put through by the Home Office to bring their husbands to the UK. I don’t want to have to surrender years of private chat logs to the government and be interrogated for hours because of their crackdown upon mail order brides.
He got the 110% match rizz
They’re saying he can’t count on anyone any more.
I just realized that I fail at basic maths and counted to 110, not 100.
It’s more of a problem with Okcupid than anything else. Match drove that website to the ground once they acquired it.
Customer Support gifted me a month of Premium half a year ago after a really bad experience I had with another user harassing me. I found out that nearly all of the 100+ likes I had on my Okcupid profile were from ladies who didn’t even live on the same continent as me. They’d just switch cities and countries all the time, then disclose where they actually lived in their profile description.
GPS spoofing is incredibly easy to pull off, and despite it literally being a violation of the site’s Community Guidelines, their customer service team really don’t give a shit. Quote:
Also, your profile details such as age, height, location, etc. must be accurate. We restrict searching and showing profiles based on mutual fit for details like age, location, gender, and orientation for a reason: so that you can find a person who is looking for someone just like you. Changing these details to appear in searches that you would not otherwise is not allowed and will result in your profile being banned.
I logged into my account for the first time in about two months. I still see matches I reported that remain unbanned to this day.
THEY HAVE THE CHEEK TO CHARGE £20 - £40 A MONTH FOR PREMIUM.
Pim Tool likes to rant about online dating, but the reality is that there are dudes that can only date this way.
The thing that concerns me though is that eventually more people are going to identify as “awkward” and will refuse to go on dates with anyone they meed IRL and feel like everyone should only contact them online. We already see this with irrational fears of talking on the phone where millennials and zoomers insist on communicating exclusively through texts.
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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.
And having a practical monopoly by Match doesn’t help either.
Kinda like Luxottica being the reason why most sunglasses cost $175 for $0.10 worth of plastic.
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.
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.
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.
Their business model doesn’t really require that, as relationships have a natural attrition rate, and new people are constantly entering the market.
Dativerse when? Seems like this is ripe for disruption by a free solution
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
Easy solution: date the bots and scammers!
And wait til you see the pool of actual candidates.
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.
Yes, why can’t Lemmy just work for that?
Just create a “City Nama, M4W/M4M/W4W/W4M.MM4W…etc”
That would work no?
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
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
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.
There’s this pleroma instance and this github project.
Most dating apps are looking to make a profit first and provide a good service second. This is terrible, but we live in a capitalist hellscape so it’s not surprising.
HOWEVER. A lot of people are really bad at using dating apps. This is kind of a peeve of mine and I’ve been thinking of writing a book (or at least a blog post) about how to do better.
The premise is “throw the ball back”. So many people match and then just drop the ball. Their profile says they love NK jemisen so you write “she’s great! Did you read her new book 'the city we became '? It’s a total love letter to New York”. A fine message. And they write back “No”. End of message.
My dude that’s not how this game works. They’ve thrown you the ball with their message. You’ve caught it. Now throw it back by asking a question of your own.
If you’re not interested or don’t have the energy to be present, don’t say anything. If you’re not interested, just unmatch. If you don’t have the energy, come back when you do. If you never have the energy, delete the app you’re not ready.
And to all the people who just message with “hey”: please do better. You look incompetent when you do that.
That’s true of like all text messages, come to think of it. Some of you assholes probably message me at work on slack with “hey” instead of starting with the important part.
Also don’t be a fucking pen pal. If they matched and responded to your initial topic well, just ask them out. That’s what you’re both here for.
I’m an extremely average guy who doesn’t date men. If I can do this so can all of you.
Meme representation of what happened:
When people find a partner, the dating service stops making money from them.
I agree. My sister and I both found our partners through online dating. I never found a decent partner until I completely changed by strategy, so yes, a lot of people are bad at it. Conversely to don’t say “hey,” don’t send massive walls of text with your entire biography either.
There are some people that online dating works better for. My sister is a trans lesbian in a conservative state and is only attracted to cis women. It’s not going to be easy for her to just go out and date.
If you’re a lesbian, stay away from any services that allow searching for “friends.” My sister was very upfront about being a lesbian with a penis and she still got tons of messages from creepy dudes
When people find a partner, the dating service stops making money from them.
Weirdly, most of the dating apps don’t really support ethical-non-monogamy. You’d think that’d be an easy source of repeat money. But ENM is a whole other tangent. People get mad about it.
Conversely to don’t say “hey,” don’t send massive walls of text with your entire biography either.
This is good advice, too! I’ve encountered too-much text far less often than not-enough, so I didn’t think to include it. Typically if I find myself wanting to write more than a couple sentences at once, I turn that into “I’d love to talk more about this on a date”.
The last woman who sent me far-too-much text also sent me a completely generic opener. I think it was “What’s the last piece of art that moved you?” This probably seemed smart and deep to her, but in my opinion it’s not a good opener. It’s generic. She could have sent that to anyone. Nothing on my profile indicates I have a particular relationship with art. Do not send a first message that could have gone to anyone. What you send should be particular to them.
Regarding your last two sentences: it’s a chore to do so for 30+ women a day per appwhen it’s mostly a negative feedback loop, the more you do it the more you hate that you’re doing it because you’re trying to be sincere and unique and you’re not getting responses, you try to be generic and you get no responses.
If she has a very basic profile with just the basic info, the only thing you can comment on are the pictures (her) and her info.
It can definitely be a chore. And extremely disheartening. But that’s the world we live in. And hopefully love in, as my phone autocorrect wanted to say. For you this might be the 20th original message you’ve written today, but for them this is their first impression of you. Make it count, or you’re just self sabotaging.
Also, if you’re getting 30+ matches a day, that’s a good problem to have. I get like a couple a week, and about half turn into dates. Some I reject, sometimes they reject me. I’m a guy who doesn’t date men.
But anyway, I don’t really disagree but I always recommend when it starts to feel like a chore that you hate: take a break. The apps will probably always be here. Go outside. See your friends.
I also just don’t bother messaging people who don’t have anything in their bio/blurb to talk about. The rare times they message me first, it’s almost always “hey” tier bad.
I’m not saying I get 30+ matches a day, I’m saying “I send 30+ messages a day on various apps, not just Bumble and get nothing in return”. It’s like applying for a job. It’s spending $35/month in hopes that you get a response.
Yeah. You need to give the message that you actually read their information and you’re not just trying randomly to score.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Of course not, most of the dates are still found by going outside
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’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.
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.
“Fell out of love”
Quite a shame how the partner who had a spouse that beat the shit out of them and stole their wallet every day FELL OUT OF LOVE with that spouse…
Okay but they’re talking about dating apps here.
Woosh
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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.
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!!
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.
I did online dating for many years. I used match, eharmony, tinder, pof, okcupid.
I fully understand the ‘soul destroying’ comment. For me it was a lot of work for little return. I started off being selective. Messaging one person at a time so I didn’t end up getting two responses and having to put someone off or turn one of them down. That was naive it turned out as I got very few replies. So I started messaging multiple people at once. I always tried to personalise things but my effort varied with how optimistic I was feeling about online dating.
Ultimately I think I got responses about 10% of the time. From them, 10% turned into a date, from those maybe 50% would get to a second date.
So overall it every hundred messages I’d write , 1 would end up in a date. I went on quite a lot of dates over the years, but I had to devote so much time to getting them it was, soul destroying.
I never thought i was unattractive, but online dating made me question if I really was. I never thought I was an ass, but online dating made me question if I really was. I would sometimes have very long conversations before meeting to find there was no chemistry in person. Sometimes I would like them when we meet and they would ghost me. Sometimes they liked me and I didn’t like them, but I always tried to be honourable and tell them, not ghost them since I didn’t like it happening to me.
I am male in case my experience doesn’t make it obvious. I often spoke to some of the women I got on better with about how online dating was for them and their experience was pretty awful for different reasons. Generally they were bombarded by messages and a good number of them were obscene. Guys trying to hook up rather than date. To manage their inbox was a real challenge and they probably missed out on good matches because of the noise.
My overall impression of the whole thing is that it generally sucks regardless of whether you are the one doing most of the messaging or whether you are receiving messages. I also think it makes it more like shopping than dating, dehumanising people. Do I want the 8K 42 inch TV or the 4K inch TV? Actually, can I even afford it?
All that said in the end it worked for me. Over 6 years since I last logged in and I think it was a bit of an addiction, or perhaps desperation born of loneliness.i also have a daughter now and there were times I thought that was never going to happen.
So for me online dating was years of frustration, difficulty and upset, but in the end I’m glad I did it but it took a long time.
It’s very superficial and any of the girls who are remotely attractive get tons of messages, plus they have to be on edge for anything out of the ordinary.
The one thing I’ll conceed to Pim Tool about online dating is that it can easily funnel all women to the top value men. That said, the most desirable men are going to exclude the unattractive women. Based on observing other people dating online, it seems like younger girls who are unattractive are aware that they can get older dudes who are probably desperate.
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.
No it isn’t. Those things are nothing but trouble
