17 ms·

‘Why am I talking to 10 guys?’ The rise and fall of dating apps

128 points by rzk 4y ago

yieldcrv 4y ago
Nice to see that people are moving beyond “it must be your pictures and bio” when talking about a poor experience on dating apps Time to delete and move on
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
rightbyte 4y ago
Well of you are dating multiple people those people are also dating multiple people on average. It is like employers interviewing way too many people for a position. Those people are also talking with multiple employees to have a chance to get a job. So a reach out in the end have a high probability of a no. Especially if you are slow.
- slaw 4y ago
  Not when ratio men/woman is 10. Same when there are 10 times many applicants than positions.
  - rightbyte 4y ago
    Sure. But when Tinder was the hot new thing I don't think the ratio was that bad. Surely it degenerated quickly as the fame faded. Also the 3 employers who interview the same 10 people will probably want the same one employee anyway, simplified. So two employees will get a cold hand and feel they "can't find good candidates". Same with dating. Many are overreaching.
    - Tozen 4y ago
      If wasn't just a matter of ratio, but the culture surrounding the app. When Tinder was new, women could hide their identity or have multiple identities. That's a key element that many overlook or don't realize. Women who are really about the action, can want to keep a low profile, and hide what they do. They can meet guys from out of town, be married, try different ethnic groups, engage in wild fantasies, etc... All without it being so easily traced backed to them and hopefully hidden. This is very different (if not the opposite) from what the average person often knows or thinks, where many think sexually adventurous women like to or want to openly advertise. That's usually incorrect. Those women being so flamboyant, openly advertising, or even being aggressive are often trying to sell something or make sales quotas. Unfortunately, many guys get pulled into the trick. Additionally, when Tinder was new, it arguably positioned itself as the heterosexual version of Grindr. The culture was different. Thus lots of encounters would happen. Then came the complaints, whining, moral grandstanding, etc... Tinder succumbed to the pressure and pulled a kind of bait and switch. They started to confirm profiles, track, and make profiles publicly accessible to be linked to. The combination scared a lot of "out for fun" women off, because clearly they don't want people sending their profile everywhere or being so easily identifiable on the internet. Tinder tried to be more Facebook-like than Grindr-like, and way more about pulling as much money from male customers than being concerned about people actually meeting up. When Tinder changed and the culture attached to it, then came even more scammers, pranksters, catfish, and attention-seekers. The ratio of who is really with it and who is not changed. With the changes, also comes more of the usual dating site games and "cover stories" (to protect their reputation and profile), like having to pretend to be "good" and looking for "true love only" or the mindset of only doing it for the business (like OnlyFans or almost/actual prostitution). This all usually comes at the expense or the abuse of male users.
oDot 4y ago
I have been trying to solve this for a while, and been working on a dating app in which you can not meet any people. It all started with the sudden (obvious, I may be slow) realization that dating apps only have "dating app people" (DAP) on them. This leads to an inherent flaw in dating apps. If all or most of the ideal matches of a person that's on an app are _not_ DAP, well, apps will always be detrimental to that person. Not only will it be impossible to find true matches there, the matches that are found are just a waste of time. This main problem is accompanied by many other problems -- lack of chemistry judgement, profiles doctored to change the person (naturally), and more. The solution? A magic wand that when you wave it you start randomly bumping into your ideal matches wherever you go. Barring that solution, we must rely on "selective friends transitivity". Friends transitivity means that if A and B are friends, and B and C are friends, A and C are also friends. This is surely false. However, I bet it is selectively true. If A and B are friends, both A and B know which of their other friends will be liked by the other. Which brings us to Eventful. Eventful is an app that allows people to create and be invited to real life events. It then facilitates sharing invites to that events in a way that promotes selective transitivity, and not only in dating. This is true to any kind of gathering where meeting new people is desirable, say weekly basketball neighborhood games. Those people you meet will surely connect you will more people outside of Eventful. A host can decide "how deep" of an invitee can still invite, all while Eventful makes sure not to overflow the venue, and to let an automatic waitlist know when a place had opened up. This kind of event accounting is impossible to do by hand with something like Instagram or WhatsApp. I wrote more than I planned, hopefully it was interesting to read. https://Eventful.is https://Eventful.is * Released just a couple days ago, very usable but a little buggy. Update comes up these next couple of days that solves most of them!
- comprev 4y ago
  This follows the logic that people are an average of all their friends. Person A and Person C have the mutual interest of Person B, so there's a good chance there would be overlap in a Venn diagram.
- throwaway290 4y ago
  > dating apps only have "dating app people" (DAP) on them. This leads to an inherent flaw in dating apps. If all or most of the ideal matches of a person that's on an app are _not_ DAP, well, apps will always be detrimental to that person Spot on. This self-selection puts me off those.
Pepe1vo 4y ago
When I was single I absolutely hated the mandatory 1-3 days chatting that was necessary until it became acceptable to ask someone on a date. One day I encountered the dating app Breeze (only in Dutch) which works with the same swiping gimmick, but the the twist is that once you have a match you HAVE to go on a date. You have to enter your availability, pay 5 euro and if you don't show up on your date you get perma-banned for life. This works so much better than swipe-and-chat, because you become much more selective in who you like (keeping you from swiping endlessly) and because it's so focused on getting people to meet IRL I imagine it has a much better higher success rate than Tinder et al. Needless to say, I met my SO through the app after using it for a couple of months. :)
- sk0g 4y ago
  From the company's POV, aren't they likely to benefit from setting you up on dates that either go mildly unfortunately, or leading to a short-term relationship at best? The customers are paying for dates after all, not long term relationships. Certainly one way to deal with ghosting though - I can understand the reason behind it, but it's incredibly inconsiderate and harmful behaviour. On the other hand I've taken to double checking plans with people 24 and ~2 hours before they were scheduled, which sometimes helps people not forget about plans they agreed to a while back.
  - emptyparadise 4y ago
    There is something funny about the financial incentives of a dating app pushing the app to make sure its users don't date.
    - sk0g 4y ago
      I mean they're dating apps, not relationship apps! Tinder was built to facilitate quick hookups, not being selective about your next long-term relationship. Of course, Tinder is synonymous to dating for some, which is the weird part.
      - 4y ago
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psychphysic 4y ago
There's not surprise here. Anyone who saw the beginning of Tinder realised it wasn't efficient. There's many reasons for this, probably the most simple is that I'd it were efficient it wouldn't be popular. Knowing that you know it won't work, but not really why... Perhaps the articles right and the way is the lack of committment/loyalty? I think a big aspect of it was that before tinder finding people who were in a eating mindset was bloody rare. I dated people purely because I didn't know anyone else single. You dated all your friends in the end because it was so hard to find others. Not necessarily shagged them. That did two things, firstly it made people pragmatic and consider dating more types of people. And it got people used to compromise and sticking it out that's vital for a relationship to work.
- scotty79 4y ago
  > Anyone who saw the beginning of Tinder realised it wasn't efficient. Tinderisation of okcupid was such a shame.
piskerpan 4y ago
Fall where? There’s always new faces on Tinder, even if the platform itself became hostile and essentially barely-freemium. Every single issue described in the article has to do with how you use the app. Talking to 10 guys? Don’t. Focus on one and unmatch if there’s no feeling. Waiting 1-3 days before meeting? Why. I (male) was recently asked to meet at a nearby mall within 30 minutes of matching. Dating for many people is more complicated than it needs to me, too many requirements and made-up rules. The only rules are: be decent and say bye when it doesn’t work.
- ianai 4y ago
  So this might be your/the male experience. (And I am a guy. Just trying to give visibility into what I’ve been told here.) but multiple women have expressed the “frustration” of trying to date men as a woman to me. They know they’re much smaller or just vulnerable comparatively [edit] this is not to say women actually are weaker or vulnerable but that some proportion of predatory people out there perceive them as such and that’s enough. And they fear the many forms of retribution a man can express - every level of violence, toxicity, you name it. Then there’s the risk of workplace or even career effects if they work in a particularly small industry where everyone knows everyone and one person can unilaterally push someone out through a toxic whisper campaign. As a guy, I’ve had my share of bad dates, but nothing quite so bad as expressed to me above. And even I have effectively stopped looking years ago. So I would say I want it to be as simple as just see where it goes and say no quickly if it’s apparent. But that’s maybe not realistic. Edit-I would delete that sentence but that seems like something HN frowns on so I’ll leave it as context. It really doesn’t matter much whether someone actually is strong/vulnerable if a predator is going to sneak attack them through any of a means of ways which may even be invisible to them ala toxic whispering. The problem is in people thinking it’s ok to predate on other people and doing so.
  - piskerpan 4y ago
    > The problem is in people thinking it’s ok to predate on other people and doing so. I'm sympathetic to the risks women run, but this isn't necessarily an issue with online dating, but just dating. "Online people" are just people. The only real difference is that online dating allows you to have as many dates as you can handle, so if you do go on 7 days a week, you could very well have "a bunch of bad dates on Tinder" in just a month. I think it's the approach people take that is problematic: meeting at a restaurant on a Friday evening and expecting everything (sex on one side and "payment" on the other). I have dates for lunch, coffee and for walks; zero expectations from either party, it works wonderfully and when it doesn't we just go our own merry ways.
MrDresden 4y ago
I definitely experienced Tinder fatigue some years ago. Thankfully I stuck with it for a bit, since me and my partner for some years now got randomly matched by the system (neither one of us remembered having seen or swiped yes on the other). She was using a Windows phone and the 3rd party Timber app, so not sure if that had anything to do with it. At one point, 4 years later we played around with polyamory and used Tinder for it, and quickly both of us became fatigued with the amount of conversations and attention needed to use it. I can only imagine it has become worse since.
say_it_as_it_is 4y ago
"We’re now so used to conducting our dating life via our phones, when we’re out we never think of meeting anyone." We, the writers for The Guardian, never think of meeting anyone when we're out.
- coffeeblack 4y ago
  Exactly. Sounds more like the problems of a certain bubble.
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jokoon 4y ago
I don't know why but the online dating experience has gotten worse this year. A lot more ghosting. I don't know if that's just me. I recently removed 3/4 of my matches because they were not answering after 2 weeks. OLD works this way: * There are very few women going on those apps (ratio is about 1 woman for 3 or 5 men). It's by design. OLD apps don't care about the bad reputation of OLD. They could introduce a reputation system to force men to behave, but it's not profitable. * A woman picks one guy among her matches. She finds one and it works. She doesn't bother answering other guys for obvious reasons (she could be polite but she doesn't want to deal with the reactions of those men) * The other guys get frustrated, which is good because it incites them to pay for more matches and to land on top of the pile. Dating apps are a well-oiled scam. It's the worst social media because it preys on users by deceiving and misleading them, by using love as a medium. I have suggested to automatically remove matches if one user doesn't answer after 10 days. 90% of my matches would go away. It would change everything. Another suggestion would be to introduce a calendar feature where the dating app can automatically pick a time and safe place for a meet (a public place, usually) depending on your availability. That way, everybody feels safe, it improves the selection process, and you don't circle around in chat conversations, and you only match with people who wants to see you. It's a bit easy to accuse men of being responsible for the bad reputation of dating apps, but it degrades the women/men ratio, which is obviously the root of the problem. Women cannot properly deal with that ratio (and the whole "biology teaches that uterii are scarce" which is a nature fallacy). Dating apps solve that problem by making men pay, or by arguing that men are not attractive enough. This also puts oil on the fire of the incel narrative, but it doesn't excuse it.
- carabiner 4y ago
  > ratio is about 1 woman for 3 or 5 men Source? Also, even if there were 100 men and 100 women, you'd have 80 women interested in 20 most attractive men. A gender imbalance is not the issue. It's not like all men and women are equally attractive to each other.
  - AmericanChopper 4y ago
    Dating sucks for unappealing men, and dating apps have made it suck for them more efficiently. That’s the primary male grievance against them, and it’s everything to do with the aggrieved, and nothing to do with the apps.
oxfordmale 4y ago
From a pure scientific point of view, there are a number of challenges when matching people. The first challenge is that people don't always have a good insight in themselves, and fill in the matching questions wrongly (this ignores people lying on purpose). Secondly matching algorithms aren't always very good. Most match on similarity of interests and this isn't as important as people think. Good relationships are based on similarity of values, however that is harder to quantify. As matching algorithms aren't very good, this leaves rapid scanning of profile pictures. This is known to result in a high signal to noise ratio.
- pmoriarty 4y ago
  "Good relationships are based on similarity of values, however that is harder to quantify." At least on OkCupid there are lots of value questions. Still, one of the problems that I've run in to is that while I've answered thousands of questions, I'll get matched with someone who's only answered (say) 100 questions, and we're supposedly a 96% match. Most people just don't answer very many questions, so it's hard to gauge compatibility from such a poor sample.
  - noisy_boy 4y ago
    Maybe they need to add a "minimum questions answered" threshold/filter.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
    As I recall OKC's own data suggested that as few as three questions were sufficient for finding a compatible partner.
    - pmoriarty 4y ago
      That's completely false, in my experience. Maybe if they're the right questions.. but when there are thousands or millions of questions to choose from, which three are the right ones? I'd rather err on the side of having more data to judge compatibility from than less. Anyway, in my experience the people who answer relatively few questions tend to be the less serious and more flaky types. I'm more interested in serious relationships, so only answering a few questions would be a red flag right there.
unsupp0rted 4y ago
> Maybe you’ll dare to approach the new girl at the office with the suede jacket and the messy fringe and ask if you can take her for dinner sometime. Only if you don’t value your career. Or if you’re very attractive and therefore approaching office mates is low risk.
- pmoriarty 4y ago
  I've always avoided getting involved with anyone at work, because if the relationship goes sour then working at the same company may become very difficult.
- DeWilde 4y ago
  Why so? Even companies that have dating rules codified, like Google, have no issue with you asking out someone, at least once. Being rejected and accepting it shouldn't lead to the end of your career. Or am I missing something?
  - ezequiel-garzon 4y ago
    Being an SNL bit, this clearly is an exaggeration… but I feel it’s referring to the same principle: https://youtu.be/PxuUkYiaUc8 https://youtu.be/PxuUkYiaUc8
  - unsupp0rted 4y ago
    Codified dating rules at companies are for people attractive enough that being asked out by them is flattering. Being asked out by unattractive people is creepy harassment in what is supposed to be a safe space, even if they only ask once and politely accept rejection. An unattractive man asking out a woman from work is taking a 10x or 100x career risk compared to a very attractive man asking out a woman from work.
    - Joeri 4y ago
      Do you know someone unattractive who had this happen to them? I’m wondering how prevalent the situation you’re describing is.
alfonsodev 4y ago
I think the article raises a point but it lost me with “it’s not my fault” “It’s dating as a whole. It’s in crisis.” ultimately it is our fault, it’s a crisis of attention, values, creating space in our life’s for letting others in, of course if we create an unbalanced life, with no space, there is only space for novelty, which take less effort.
poisonborz 4y ago
Here we go with the monthly "btw dating apps suck" thread. I think modern dating apps are a bliss, a complete game-changer in dating for a wide range of people. It takes out a lot of the fear and unsecurity from meeting with strangers in an urban environment where a community isn't there to help and guide like before. I was somewhat clumsy in date talks earlier in life, but still, besides my future wife I got to know a whole lot of interesting and fun people, some of whom became best friends.
- curiousgal 4y ago
  Exactly! Also, men have it beat in them by now that approaching women in public is seen as creepy and now all of a sudden we want them to start doing it? There is no magical answer, everyone should try different things and see what works for them.
- siva7 4y ago
  True. The article could have been published 10 years ago without a change. Same complaints since online dating emerged.
throwaway_01234 4y ago
Another thing that really pisses me off are follow diggers. People that are just looking for more followers in Instagram, they usually contain some magic phrasing like: "I don't see Tinder likes, please let's chat in Instagram". But their profile is private and the only way to message them is by following them.... and that's it, no answers. I don't consider myself too similar to Leonardo DiCaprio, so whenever I see a match there's a small, tiny excitement because maybe that could be the right person for me or at the least there could be some mutual interest. And then, when this Instagram like -> ghosting cycle keeps happening everyday I really feel like shit. And all that depression and low self-esteem are driving me to renew the Tinder premium subscription. Wow, another business that exploits your deepest insecurities to profit.
0dayz 4y ago
This might just be me, but the biggest frustration with dating apps is how sterile the environment is for meeting people (at least with tinder it makes sense since it was designed with ONS in mind). Essentially instead of having a dating environment centered around activities, we're all forced to just chat and hope for the best.
DrNosferatu 4y ago
It’s toxic incentives! Standard online dating sometimes works, but in general, it is a meh experience and a waste of time. This because it exploits two mainstream bad incentives: men’s toxic desperateness and women’s narcissistic attention-feeding. A possible solution would be an app with no chat component whatsoever, strictly just matching for dates in real life - you have to take seriously. Can we compile a list of such apps? 1. Breeze (2022: NL only) 2. ..?
- luuuzeta 4y ago
  >A possible solution would be an app with no chat component whatsoever, strictly just matching for dates in real life - you have to take seriously. How do you exchange info though? What about an app where people match and they're only alloted a single message (e.g., to exchange contact info, meetup place, etc), after which they cannot chat with the other person anymore?
  - DrNosferatu 4y ago
    The app Breeze [breeze.social] seems to have done it already - hence the top of the compilation list. It's currently only available in the Netherlands, though.
RamblingCTO 4y ago
I also stopped using dating apps. The statistics are just sh*t. I don't want to chat to so many people I have nothing in common with and I hate the interchangeability. I want connection, not bad feelings. I'll just force myself to go out more, to events and places where people like me hang out at. And voila, I just met a girl at a climbing gym 2 weeks ago.
- the_only_law 4y ago
  Yeah even the people I do have stuff in common with just fizzles out. I’m convinced many interactions would have ended differently if we had met in an irl environment, it’s much easier to get a feel for someone and to feel connected to them irl vs in a pure text style chat. I’m a bad tenet anyway and will ignore messages if I don’t have an immediate response at the moment. Only problem with irl is that the demographics are weird.
  - RamblingCTO 4y ago
    Yeah true, and what is the hard part is waiting for maybe years until you meet the next person. That bug me quite a lot. But it is what it is and forces me to go out of my comfort zone. > Only problem with irl is that the demographics are weird. How so?
    - the_only_law 4y ago
      For some reason, could be local demographics, could be the places I go, but I weirdly rarely see people around my age when I go out. I’ve spoken to plenty of people men and women 5-50+ years older than me, but rarely anyone around my age. I’ve met a few people a little younger, but very rarely. For reference I’m in my mid 20s. Most people I talk to are their late 20s to early 30s or middle aged. However, if I were to download a dating app, I’d see plenty of people in my area around my age.
      - RamblingCTO 4y ago
        I actually have the same problem. I live in one of the biggest cities in Germany but never seem to hang around spots where any interesting potential dates are. I see them on the streets though. But I'm just treating this as a game. I'll try to widen my social circle with activities I like. Because it's a very bank-heavy city and I'm an outdoor guy it's difficult. I did a climbing course a few weeks ago and actually met a girl. Mismatch of goals but still. Maybe change the activities you do? (Needs to be authentic though)
Rok77 4y ago
363849473754 4y ago
Has anyone ever had success on an app like Hinge, then deleted it only to see a large drop in your success rate when nothing else changed about your profile? If so, it could be due to things like this: https://tech.okcupid.com/evaluating-perceptual-image-hashes-at-okcupid-e98a3e74aa3a https://tech.okcupid.com/evaluating-perceptual-image-hashes-... Match Group owns OkCupid, Hinge, Tinder and so on.. so wouldn’t be surprising if they all used the same or similar algorithms for spam prevention and noob boost abuse. They probably also collect other data like your phone number, deviceID, etc. This is bad because if you ever delete your profile and remake it then your internal ranking could plummet due to these aggressive spam filters.
- bigbaguette 4y ago
  In defense of the people trying to abuse the noob boost on Hinge, gotta say that Hinge themselves make the contrast extremely stark once it expires. Upon signing up, it was showing me mostly profiles I might be interested in opening conversations with. After a week or so, it started presenting exclusively profiles with the lowest "attractiveness" score you can imagine, or whatever they're calling it on their back end. A collection or morbidly obese people with absolutely no thought given on how they present themselves to the world. I then deleted my account and went back out of curiosity a few months later, only to see exactly the same scenario. Same phone, same number, same pictures on my profile: I probably evaded the perceptual hashes thanks to the fact I came back long enough after the first deletion and was granted a new week of normalcy. Bumble specifies when you delete your account that it "might" affect your experience if you do this and sign up again. At least they're a bit honest about it. No matter what, there's a lot going on behind the curtain. People are grouped into cohorts. I've experimented with friends of the opposite gender and we were wondering why we'd never bumped into each other. No matter how narrowed down our filtering was, our profiles would never be shown to each other. And a funny anecdote: a few months ago, Instagram started pitching ads about very high end, luxury items, probably thinking I had hit a jackpot or something. Simultaneously, I was thrown into a new cohort on dating apps. As if I was now eligible to a whole new level on the social ladder.
  - velox_neb 4y ago
thrownawaysz 4y ago
Well just lower your standards! That's the usual reply that men gets. But really, she looks above average, white, successful writer, what's the problem really?
- pmoriarty 4y ago
  "she looks above average, white, successful writer, what's the problem really?" The problem is finding people you're compatible with.. which is a problem for anyone, no matter how white or "successful" they are.
  - someguy212 4y ago
    Sometimes we see compatibility through a narrow lens (e.g. refusing to date someone who makes less or is less educated). Sometimes there is no 'problem', per se.
unpopularopp 4y ago
Are the any good articles written about this topic by straight men? I'm just curious because most of these articles shared here usually written by (white) women who definitely have a different experience. But maybe it's a too incel-y subject to touch.
- pmoriarty 4y ago
  "Are the any good articles written about this topic by straight men?" I don't know about good, but men whine about this subject non-stop all over social media.
- luuuzeta 4y ago
  The YouTube channel "Think Before You Sleep" has some videos related to this topic.
- bradlys 4y ago
  There aren’t. You know why.
- MrMember 4y ago
  It would be a pretty boring article. Who wants to read about someone getting 0-1 matches per week and getting ghosted by 95% of them?
jheriko 4y ago
i can't even read this. what trash.
- jheriko 4y ago
  well its true. this is just an article about what a terrible and over privileged person the author is.
MikePlacid 4y ago
May be I am just too old, but something there smells completely backwards to me. > When you meet someone through an app you have no loyalty to that person, they don’t know your friends, they don’t work with you, so it’s all too easy for them to not follow up on promises.” What promises? What promise can make me call a girl if I don’t like her? And what promise can stop me from calling a girl if I’m attracted to her. >Amy’s right, apps have moved dating from the public into the private sphere and in doing so they have removed any accountability. Isn’t it backwards? Public scrutiny reduces dates. “She’s older than you! But she’s only 17… She’s too tall. She’s too short. You took them both on the same date?? how was it?”. My dates are my private business. Friends and family have no say in that. If they try to say something- I’ll leave the room. And so nobody prevents me from dating whom I’m attracted to. Accountability? it reduces dates, no? >Now we connect with people when we’re shut away at home, under duvets, behind closed doors, which makes it so much easier to behave badly. One behaves badly when no one sees him?? Well, tbh I sometimes do. But you can’t behave badly towards an attractive girl. It’s both impossible and counterproductive.
- sneed-oil 4y ago
  https://twitter.com/KhalkeionGenos/status/1593457143625109504 https://twitter.com/KhalkeionGenos/status/159345714362510950...
  - MikePlacid 4y ago
    > So happy that guys don't have the gender solidarity to create a 60k size group for what is essentially yelp for tinder dates! Guys in Russia have created a yelp for sex workers.
- oneoff786 4y ago
  I would hope self driven private scrutiny would stop you from dating a 17 year old.
  - MikePlacid 4y ago
    My point exactly! (My first wife. At the moment the age of consent in Russia was 14).
giantg2 4y ago
Most of the stuff in this article seems like a problem with society, not the apps. Flakey? Yeah, I see a lot of that in real life too. Many times this has to do with how busy everyone seems these days. Talking to 10 different potential dates? That's on you. Figure out what you want and prioritize. Have some patience. Upset when people when people turn you down or ghost? Guess what, that happens in real life too. You're going to see a lot more rejection up close and personal if you're asking in real life too. It sucks, but maybe grow some thicker skin.
xianshou 4y ago
Is there a name for venture-driven ecosystem replacement? That is, the Uber-like building of a new equilibrium that replaces the previous one but ends up as flawed as or worse than the original. Here is how the process works: 1. Introduce a new system (Uber) whose premium form is better but more expensive than the old (taxis) 2. Subsidize its operation with unlimited funding 3. People become behaviorally locked into the new system and the old one dies 4. Remove the subsidy 5. The new system degrades into an unhappy medium of mediocre performance at high cost, but the old system no longer exists as an alternative Dating apps are not "subsidized" in the same sense, but exhibit a similar trajectory. They work well when small and badly when dominant, but by the time we realize the problems at scale, the previous behavioral models (friend-of-friend introductions, work relationships, in-person approaches) are no longer viable and may not even be considered acceptable. What do we call this pattern?
- bruce343434 4y ago
  Huh? Where do you live that those methods are no longer viable? And unacceptable?
jl2718 4y ago
Sorry; it was me. I ruined dating apps. In all the years I had a profile, I never actually intended to meet anybody. It was a great profile. I told jokes, I admitted things I’d never tell anybody in person. I was simultaneously boastful and shameful. I laid bare my greatest desires and insecurities. It was everything interesting about the person that exists beneath the factual history of my life. I almost never wrote first, and most of the messages, I ignored. Sometimes I had great conversations: funny, shocking, sometimes charming, never with any semblance of topic or direction. The people had fascinating and explorative internal lives. I thought they must be rock stars and startup gods, but they weren’t. They were the same decaying cerebral material as everybody else, living lives of quiet desperation behind the sanitized facade of career and relationship in serial attempts. Kind of like me. No; I’d never match up to that in real life. I can’t imagine the person with that sort of introduction to me, being then forced to watch me sit with my face slung down into my hands listening to somebody tell me what to do, some senseless thing in inane corporate babble through my laptop speakers, and then to hear my plead for rationality, ignored. That’s my real life, and it’s embarrassing. I could never keep somebody’s interest for more than a few weeks. They’ll just end up dissatisfied, longing for more, and feeling guilty about the whole thing. No thanks; I’ve already played this game, many times before with the same outcome. Someday I’ll be ready: rich, dynamic, in charge of my life, leader of men and captain of industry, admired by all. Then it will all work out, right? Staring down into those happy beaming eyes, sparkles on her 20th anniversary dress, children, friends and family cheering for everything we’ve accomplished together. Not right now though, because, you know, things are a little busy, and I should really just focus on the project at work to get it done with, and bonus season is coming up, and theres a lot of things I need to fix about myself. Yeah, definitely not ready.
markosDL 4y ago
When I went for my students exchange program last year I clearly remember having that urge for meeting new people and potential dates. Things went on amazing but no dates took place and I believe I didn't realize the opportunities that were coming my way. That's what dating apps solve and yes they need some fine tuning as well!
bradlys 4y ago
Can we at least stop posting these dating articles written almost exclusively by straight women? There’s literally nothing new here from these gals - they whine about their own lack of initiation and fear of rejection rather than overcoming it like the overwhelming majority of men have to. These articles offer no nuance or substance compared to the last. The woman here has many options (literally talking to ten different men at once!) but refuses to go forward with any. This is the crux of many of the articles. The girl and all her friends are hoping for the white 6’3” huge cock multi-millionaire intellectual adonis to fall into their lap and beg her to date him. I know a lot of these women IRL and they become spinsters because they keep holding out while they go past 30, 35, and then past 40. Some eventually fall prey to their baby panic and actually just marry the nearest guy to them and pop out a baby within 2 years of meeting the guy. Unfortunately, divorce follows a bit too often after. The funny thing though is that it’s still worse for men. The number of single and never married men compared to then number of single and never married women only gets worse as you age - even though men kill themselves >4x the ratio of women and are born 5-7% more often. No, women are still the victims… always.
- dTal 4y ago
  >The number of single and never married men compared to then number of single and never married women only gets worse as you age This is an interesting and possibly misleading statistic. Do you know where you heard it?
  - bradlys 4y ago
    Census data. Table B12002.
- Tozen 4y ago
  Good post, and others should not be afraid to be truthful about what is going on. Part of the problem is that when people acknowledge the too obvious reality (particularly or perceived as male) then they get condemned, censored, silenced, shadow banned, banned, doxed, etc... These apps are bringing in tons of money, at the expense of mostly men, to the advantage of mostly women. This is as clear as day. Its only a "problem", in the statistically fewer situations where those with the advantage (primarily women) are inconvenienced by flakes, pranksters, con artists, catfishing, etc... Who of course would be attracted to these types of apps. To include if the person they hook up with from such apps, decides they can do better (for whatever reason), and goes ghost or back to the same app to fish for more. Situations that happen to the average male users (who get massively less matches) of such apps continually and constantly. It has gotten to the point where those already at a huge advantage and taking advantage, feel or believe they are owed a "win". If "he" doesn't meet dream requirements, because somehow they are near perfection (or the delusion of it), then something is finally wrong with the app. Those making money from such apps, will be more than happy to respond with more gimmicks and pretend solutions. But a true issue like "their own lack of initiation and fear of rejection", is a truth that dare not be acknowledged or will be ignored.
isitmadeofglass 4y ago
These types of articles are always biased due to being written by people who are generally not seen as relationship material by the other gender. That’s why they are still on apps and why everyone eventually ghosts them. It’s not because of Tinder or other apps. The woman who go in tinder, go on 20-30 dates and end up in a relationship you never hear from because they are done with it and on with their lives.
Ancalagon 4y ago
Dating apps are such a sad development. Really everyone should just drop them.

128 points by rzk 4y ago

Nice to see that people are moving beyond “it must be your pictures and bio” when talking about a poor experience on dating apps Time to delete and move on

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

rightbyte 4y ago

Well of you are dating multiple people those people are also dating multiple people on average. It is like employers interviewing way too many people for a position. Those people are also talking with multiple employees to have a chance to get a job. So a reach out in the end have a high probability of a no. Especially if you are slow.

slaw 4y ago
Not when ratio men/woman is 10. Same when there are 10 times many applicants than positions.
- rightbyte 4y ago
  Sure. But when Tinder was the hot new thing I don't think the ratio was that bad. Surely it degenerated quickly as the fame faded. Also the 3 employers who interview the same 10 people will probably want the same one employee anyway, simplified. So two employees will get a cold hand and feel they "can't find good candidates". Same with dating. Many are overreaching.
  - Tozen 4y ago
    If wasn't just a matter of ratio, but the culture surrounding the app. When Tinder was new, women could hide their identity or have multiple identities. That's a key element that many overlook or don't realize. Women who are really about the action, can want to keep a low profile, and hide what they do. They can meet guys from out of town, be married, try different ethnic groups, engage in wild fantasies, etc... All without it being so easily traced backed to them and hopefully hidden. This is very different (if not the opposite) from what the average person often knows or thinks, where many think sexually adventurous women like to or want to openly advertise. That's usually incorrect. Those women being so flamboyant, openly advertising, or even being aggressive are often trying to sell something or make sales quotas. Unfortunately, many guys get pulled into the trick. Additionally, when Tinder was new, it arguably positioned itself as the heterosexual version of Grindr. The culture was different. Thus lots of encounters would happen. Then came the complaints, whining, moral grandstanding, etc... Tinder succumbed to the pressure and pulled a kind of bait and switch. They started to confirm profiles, track, and make profiles publicly accessible to be linked to. The combination scared a lot of "out for fun" women off, because clearly they don't want people sending their profile everywhere or being so easily identifiable on the internet. Tinder tried to be more Facebook-like than Grindr-like, and way more about pulling as much money from male customers than being concerned about people actually meeting up. When Tinder changed and the culture attached to it, then came even more scammers, pranksters, catfish, and attention-seekers. The ratio of who is really with it and who is not changed. With the changes, also comes more of the usual dating site games and "cover stories" (to protect their reputation and profile), like having to pretend to be "good" and looking for "true love only" or the mindset of only doing it for the business (like OnlyFans or almost/actual prostitution). This all usually comes at the expense or the abuse of male users.

oDot 4y ago

I have been trying to solve this for a while, and been working on a dating app in which you can not meet any people. It all started with the sudden (obvious, I may be slow) realization that dating apps only have "dating app people" (DAP) on them. This leads to an inherent flaw in dating apps. If all or most of the ideal matches of a person that's on an app are _not_ DAP, well, apps will always be detrimental to that person. Not only will it be impossible to find true matches there, the matches that are found are just a waste of time. This main problem is accompanied by many other problems -- lack of chemistry judgement, profiles doctored to change the person (naturally), and more. The solution? A magic wand that when you wave it you start randomly bumping into your ideal matches wherever you go. Barring that solution, we must rely on "selective friends transitivity". Friends transitivity means that if A and B are friends, and B and C are friends, A and C are also friends. This is surely false. However, I bet it is selectively true. If A and B are friends, both A and B know which of their other friends will be liked by the other. Which brings us to Eventful. Eventful is an app that allows people to create and be invited to real life events. It then facilitates sharing invites to that events in a way that promotes selective transitivity, and not only in dating. This is true to any kind of gathering where meeting new people is desirable, say weekly basketball neighborhood games. Those people you meet will surely connect you will more people outside of Eventful. A host can decide "how deep" of an invitee can still invite, all while Eventful makes sure not to overflow the venue, and to let an automatic waitlist know when a place had opened up. This kind of event accounting is impossible to do by hand with something like Instagram or WhatsApp. I wrote more than I planned, hopefully it was interesting to read. https://Eventful.is https://Eventful.is * Released just a couple days ago, very usable but a little buggy. Update comes up these next couple of days that solves most of them!

comprev 4y ago
This follows the logic that people are an average of all their friends. Person A and Person C have the mutual interest of Person B, so there's a good chance there would be overlap in a Venn diagram.
throwaway290 4y ago
> dating apps only have "dating app people" (DAP) on them. This leads to an inherent flaw in dating apps. If all or most of the ideal matches of a person that's on an app are _not_ DAP, well, apps will always be detrimental to that person Spot on. This self-selection puts me off those.

Pepe1vo 4y ago

When I was single I absolutely hated the mandatory 1-3 days chatting that was necessary until it became acceptable to ask someone on a date. One day I encountered the dating app Breeze (only in Dutch) which works with the same swiping gimmick, but the the twist is that once you have a match you HAVE to go on a date. You have to enter your availability, pay 5 euro and if you don't show up on your date you get perma-banned for life. This works so much better than swipe-and-chat, because you become much more selective in who you like (keeping you from swiping endlessly) and because it's so focused on getting people to meet IRL I imagine it has a much better higher success rate than Tinder et al. Needless to say, I met my SO through the app after using it for a couple of months. :)

sk0g 4y ago
From the company's POV, aren't they likely to benefit from setting you up on dates that either go mildly unfortunately, or leading to a short-term relationship at best? The customers are paying for dates after all, not long term relationships. Certainly one way to deal with ghosting though - I can understand the reason behind it, but it's incredibly inconsiderate and harmful behaviour. On the other hand I've taken to double checking plans with people 24 and ~2 hours before they were scheduled, which sometimes helps people not forget about plans they agreed to a while back.
- emptyparadise 4y ago
  There is something funny about the financial incentives of a dating app pushing the app to make sure its users don't date.
  - sk0g 4y ago
    I mean they're dating apps, not relationship apps! Tinder was built to facilitate quick hookups, not being selective about your next long-term relationship. Of course, Tinder is synonymous to dating for some, which is the weird part.
    - 4y ago

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psychphysic 4y ago

There's not surprise here. Anyone who saw the beginning of Tinder realised it wasn't efficient. There's many reasons for this, probably the most simple is that I'd it were efficient it wouldn't be popular. Knowing that you know it won't work, but not really why... Perhaps the articles right and the way is the lack of committment/loyalty? I think a big aspect of it was that before tinder finding people who were in a eating mindset was bloody rare. I dated people purely because I didn't know anyone else single. You dated all your friends in the end because it was so hard to find others. Not necessarily shagged them. That did two things, firstly it made people pragmatic and consider dating more types of people. And it got people used to compromise and sticking it out that's vital for a relationship to work.

scotty79 4y ago
> Anyone who saw the beginning of Tinder realised it wasn't efficient. Tinderisation of okcupid was such a shame.

piskerpan 4y ago

Fall where? There’s always new faces on Tinder, even if the platform itself became hostile and essentially barely-freemium. Every single issue described in the article has to do with how you use the app. Talking to 10 guys? Don’t. Focus on one and unmatch if there’s no feeling. Waiting 1-3 days before meeting? Why. I (male) was recently asked to meet at a nearby mall within 30 minutes of matching. Dating for many people is more complicated than it needs to me, too many requirements and made-up rules. The only rules are: be decent and say bye when it doesn’t work.

ianai 4y ago
So this might be your/the male experience. (And I am a guy. Just trying to give visibility into what I’ve been told here.) but multiple women have expressed the “frustration” of trying to date men as a woman to me. They know they’re much smaller or just vulnerable comparatively [edit] this is not to say women actually are weaker or vulnerable but that some proportion of predatory people out there perceive them as such and that’s enough. And they fear the many forms of retribution a man can express - every level of violence, toxicity, you name it. Then there’s the risk of workplace or even career effects if they work in a particularly small industry where everyone knows everyone and one person can unilaterally push someone out through a toxic whisper campaign. As a guy, I’ve had my share of bad dates, but nothing quite so bad as expressed to me above. And even I have effectively stopped looking years ago. So I would say I want it to be as simple as just see where it goes and say no quickly if it’s apparent. But that’s maybe not realistic. Edit-I would delete that sentence but that seems like something HN frowns on so I’ll leave it as context. It really doesn’t matter much whether someone actually is strong/vulnerable if a predator is going to sneak attack them through any of a means of ways which may even be invisible to them ala toxic whispering. The problem is in people thinking it’s ok to predate on other people and doing so.
- piskerpan 4y ago
  > The problem is in people thinking it’s ok to predate on other people and doing so. I'm sympathetic to the risks women run, but this isn't necessarily an issue with online dating, but just dating. "Online people" are just people. The only real difference is that online dating allows you to have as many dates as you can handle, so if you do go on 7 days a week, you could very well have "a bunch of bad dates on Tinder" in just a month. I think it's the approach people take that is problematic: meeting at a restaurant on a Friday evening and expecting everything (sex on one side and "payment" on the other). I have dates for lunch, coffee and for walks; zero expectations from either party, it works wonderfully and when it doesn't we just go our own merry ways.

MrDresden 4y ago

I definitely experienced Tinder fatigue some years ago. Thankfully I stuck with it for a bit, since me and my partner for some years now got randomly matched by the system (neither one of us remembered having seen or swiped yes on the other). She was using a Windows phone and the 3rd party Timber app, so not sure if that had anything to do with it. At one point, 4 years later we played around with polyamory and used Tinder for it, and quickly both of us became fatigued with the amount of conversations and attention needed to use it. I can only imagine it has become worse since.

say_it_as_it_is 4y ago

"We’re now so used to conducting our dating life via our phones, when we’re out we never think of meeting anyone." We, the writers for The Guardian, never think of meeting anyone when we're out.

coffeeblack 4y ago
Exactly. Sounds more like the problems of a certain bubble.

deleted 4y ago

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jokoon 4y ago

I don't know why but the online dating experience has gotten worse this year. A lot more ghosting. I don't know if that's just me. I recently removed 3/4 of my matches because they were not answering after 2 weeks. OLD works this way: * There are very few women going on those apps (ratio is about 1 woman for 3 or 5 men). It's by design. OLD apps don't care about the bad reputation of OLD. They could introduce a reputation system to force men to behave, but it's not profitable. * A woman picks one guy among her matches. She finds one and it works. She doesn't bother answering other guys for obvious reasons (she could be polite but she doesn't want to deal with the reactions of those men) * The other guys get frustrated, which is good because it incites them to pay for more matches and to land on top of the pile. Dating apps are a well-oiled scam. It's the worst social media because it preys on users by deceiving and misleading them, by using love as a medium. I have suggested to automatically remove matches if one user doesn't answer after 10 days. 90% of my matches would go away. It would change everything. Another suggestion would be to introduce a calendar feature where the dating app can automatically pick a time and safe place for a meet (a public place, usually) depending on your availability. That way, everybody feels safe, it improves the selection process, and you don't circle around in chat conversations, and you only match with people who wants to see you. It's a bit easy to accuse men of being responsible for the bad reputation of dating apps, but it degrades the women/men ratio, which is obviously the root of the problem. Women cannot properly deal with that ratio (and the whole "biology teaches that uterii are scarce" which is a nature fallacy). Dating apps solve that problem by making men pay, or by arguing that men are not attractive enough. This also puts oil on the fire of the incel narrative, but it doesn't excuse it.

carabiner 4y ago
> ratio is about 1 woman for 3 or 5 men Source? Also, even if there were 100 men and 100 women, you'd have 80 women interested in 20 most attractive men. A gender imbalance is not the issue. It's not like all men and women are equally attractive to each other.
- AmericanChopper 4y ago
  Dating sucks for unappealing men, and dating apps have made it suck for them more efficiently. That’s the primary male grievance against them, and it’s everything to do with the aggrieved, and nothing to do with the apps.

oxfordmale 4y ago

From a pure scientific point of view, there are a number of challenges when matching people. The first challenge is that people don't always have a good insight in themselves, and fill in the matching questions wrongly (this ignores people lying on purpose). Secondly matching algorithms aren't always very good. Most match on similarity of interests and this isn't as important as people think. Good relationships are based on similarity of values, however that is harder to quantify. As matching algorithms aren't very good, this leaves rapid scanning of profile pictures. This is known to result in a high signal to noise ratio.

pmoriarty 4y ago
"Good relationships are based on similarity of values, however that is harder to quantify." At least on OkCupid there are lots of value questions. Still, one of the problems that I've run in to is that while I've answered thousands of questions, I'll get matched with someone who's only answered (say) 100 questions, and we're supposedly a 96% match. Most people just don't answer very many questions, so it's hard to gauge compatibility from such a poor sample.
- noisy_boy 4y ago
  Maybe they need to add a "minimum questions answered" threshold/filter.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
  As I recall OKC's own data suggested that as few as three questions were sufficient for finding a compatible partner.
  - pmoriarty 4y ago
    That's completely false, in my experience. Maybe if they're the right questions.. but when there are thousands or millions of questions to choose from, which three are the right ones? I'd rather err on the side of having more data to judge compatibility from than less. Anyway, in my experience the people who answer relatively few questions tend to be the less serious and more flaky types. I'm more interested in serious relationships, so only answering a few questions would be a red flag right there.

unsupp0rted 4y ago

> Maybe you’ll dare to approach the new girl at the office with the suede jacket and the messy fringe and ask if you can take her for dinner sometime. Only if you don’t value your career. Or if you’re very attractive and therefore approaching office mates is low risk.

pmoriarty 4y ago
I've always avoided getting involved with anyone at work, because if the relationship goes sour then working at the same company may become very difficult.
DeWilde 4y ago
Why so? Even companies that have dating rules codified, like Google, have no issue with you asking out someone, at least once. Being rejected and accepting it shouldn't lead to the end of your career. Or am I missing something?
- ezequiel-garzon 4y ago
  Being an SNL bit, this clearly is an exaggeration… but I feel it’s referring to the same principle: https://youtu.be/PxuUkYiaUc8 https://youtu.be/PxuUkYiaUc8
- unsupp0rted 4y ago
  Codified dating rules at companies are for people attractive enough that being asked out by them is flattering. Being asked out by unattractive people is creepy harassment in what is supposed to be a safe space, even if they only ask once and politely accept rejection. An unattractive man asking out a woman from work is taking a 10x or 100x career risk compared to a very attractive man asking out a woman from work.
  - Joeri 4y ago
    Do you know someone unattractive who had this happen to them? I’m wondering how prevalent the situation you’re describing is.

alfonsodev 4y ago

I think the article raises a point but it lost me with “it’s not my fault” “It’s dating as a whole. It’s in crisis.” ultimately it is our fault, it’s a crisis of attention, values, creating space in our life’s for letting others in, of course if we create an unbalanced life, with no space, there is only space for novelty, which take less effort.

poisonborz 4y ago

Here we go with the monthly "btw dating apps suck" thread. I think modern dating apps are a bliss, a complete game-changer in dating for a wide range of people. It takes out a lot of the fear and unsecurity from meeting with strangers in an urban environment where a community isn't there to help and guide like before. I was somewhat clumsy in date talks earlier in life, but still, besides my future wife I got to know a whole lot of interesting and fun people, some of whom became best friends.

curiousgal 4y ago
Exactly! Also, men have it beat in them by now that approaching women in public is seen as creepy and now all of a sudden we want them to start doing it? There is no magical answer, everyone should try different things and see what works for them.
siva7 4y ago
True. The article could have been published 10 years ago without a change. Same complaints since online dating emerged.

throwaway_01234 4y ago

Another thing that really pisses me off are follow diggers. People that are just looking for more followers in Instagram, they usually contain some magic phrasing like: "I don't see Tinder likes, please let's chat in Instagram". But their profile is private and the only way to message them is by following them.... and that's it, no answers. I don't consider myself too similar to Leonardo DiCaprio, so whenever I see a match there's a small, tiny excitement because maybe that could be the right person for me or at the least there could be some mutual interest. And then, when this Instagram like -> ghosting cycle keeps happening everyday I really feel like shit. And all that depression and low self-esteem are driving me to renew the Tinder premium subscription. Wow, another business that exploits your deepest insecurities to profit.

0dayz 4y ago

This might just be me, but the biggest frustration with dating apps is how sterile the environment is for meeting people (at least with tinder it makes sense since it was designed with ONS in mind). Essentially instead of having a dating environment centered around activities, we're all forced to just chat and hope for the best.

DrNosferatu 4y ago

It’s toxic incentives! Standard online dating sometimes works, but in general, it is a meh experience and a waste of time. This because it exploits two mainstream bad incentives: men’s toxic desperateness and women’s narcissistic attention-feeding. A possible solution would be an app with no chat component whatsoever, strictly just matching for dates in real life - you have to take seriously. Can we compile a list of such apps? 1. Breeze (2022: NL only) 2. ..?

luuuzeta 4y ago
>A possible solution would be an app with no chat component whatsoever, strictly just matching for dates in real life - you have to take seriously. How do you exchange info though? What about an app where people match and they're only alloted a single message (e.g., to exchange contact info, meetup place, etc), after which they cannot chat with the other person anymore?
- DrNosferatu 4y ago
  The app Breeze [breeze.social] seems to have done it already - hence the top of the compilation list. It's currently only available in the Netherlands, though.

RamblingCTO 4y ago

I also stopped using dating apps. The statistics are just sh*t. I don't want to chat to so many people I have nothing in common with and I hate the interchangeability. I want connection, not bad feelings. I'll just force myself to go out more, to events and places where people like me hang out at. And voila, I just met a girl at a climbing gym 2 weeks ago.

the_only_law 4y ago
Yeah even the people I do have stuff in common with just fizzles out. I’m convinced many interactions would have ended differently if we had met in an irl environment, it’s much easier to get a feel for someone and to feel connected to them irl vs in a pure text style chat. I’m a bad tenet anyway and will ignore messages if I don’t have an immediate response at the moment. Only problem with irl is that the demographics are weird.
- RamblingCTO 4y ago
  Yeah true, and what is the hard part is waiting for maybe years until you meet the next person. That bug me quite a lot. But it is what it is and forces me to go out of my comfort zone. > Only problem with irl is that the demographics are weird. How so?
  - the_only_law 4y ago
    For some reason, could be local demographics, could be the places I go, but I weirdly rarely see people around my age when I go out. I’ve spoken to plenty of people men and women 5-50+ years older than me, but rarely anyone around my age. I’ve met a few people a little younger, but very rarely. For reference I’m in my mid 20s. Most people I talk to are their late 20s to early 30s or middle aged. However, if I were to download a dating app, I’d see plenty of people in my area around my age.
    - RamblingCTO 4y ago
      I actually have the same problem. I live in one of the biggest cities in Germany but never seem to hang around spots where any interesting potential dates are. I see them on the streets though. But I'm just treating this as a game. I'll try to widen my social circle with activities I like. Because it's a very bank-heavy city and I'm an outdoor guy it's difficult. I did a climbing course a few weeks ago and actually met a girl. Mismatch of goals but still. Maybe change the activities you do? (Needs to be authentic though)

Rok77 4y ago

363849473754 4y ago

Has anyone ever had success on an app like Hinge, then deleted it only to see a large drop in your success rate when nothing else changed about your profile? If so, it could be due to things like this: https://tech.okcupid.com/evaluating-perceptual-image-hashes-at-okcupid-e98a3e74aa3a https://tech.okcupid.com/evaluating-perceptual-image-hashes-... Match Group owns OkCupid, Hinge, Tinder and so on.. so wouldn’t be surprising if they all used the same or similar algorithms for spam prevention and noob boost abuse. They probably also collect other data like your phone number, deviceID, etc. This is bad because if you ever delete your profile and remake it then your internal ranking could plummet due to these aggressive spam filters.

bigbaguette 4y ago
In defense of the people trying to abuse the noob boost on Hinge, gotta say that Hinge themselves make the contrast extremely stark once it expires. Upon signing up, it was showing me mostly profiles I might be interested in opening conversations with. After a week or so, it started presenting exclusively profiles with the lowest "attractiveness" score you can imagine, or whatever they're calling it on their back end. A collection or morbidly obese people with absolutely no thought given on how they present themselves to the world. I then deleted my account and went back out of curiosity a few months later, only to see exactly the same scenario. Same phone, same number, same pictures on my profile: I probably evaded the perceptual hashes thanks to the fact I came back long enough after the first deletion and was granted a new week of normalcy. Bumble specifies when you delete your account that it "might" affect your experience if you do this and sign up again. At least they're a bit honest about it. No matter what, there's a lot going on behind the curtain. People are grouped into cohorts. I've experimented with friends of the opposite gender and we were wondering why we'd never bumped into each other. No matter how narrowed down our filtering was, our profiles would never be shown to each other. And a funny anecdote: a few months ago, Instagram started pitching ads about very high end, luxury items, probably thinking I had hit a jackpot or something. Simultaneously, I was thrown into a new cohort on dating apps. As if I was now eligible to a whole new level on the social ladder.
- velox_neb 4y ago

thrownawaysz 4y ago

Well just lower your standards! That's the usual reply that men gets. But really, she looks above average, white, successful writer, what's the problem really?

pmoriarty 4y ago
"she looks above average, white, successful writer, what's the problem really?" The problem is finding people you're compatible with.. which is a problem for anyone, no matter how white or "successful" they are.
- someguy212 4y ago
  Sometimes we see compatibility through a narrow lens (e.g. refusing to date someone who makes less or is less educated). Sometimes there is no 'problem', per se.

unpopularopp 4y ago

Are the any good articles written about this topic by straight men? I'm just curious because most of these articles shared here usually written by (white) women who definitely have a different experience. But maybe it's a too incel-y subject to touch.

pmoriarty 4y ago
"Are the any good articles written about this topic by straight men?" I don't know about good, but men whine about this subject non-stop all over social media.
luuuzeta 4y ago
The YouTube channel "Think Before You Sleep" has some videos related to this topic.
bradlys 4y ago
There aren’t. You know why.
MrMember 4y ago
It would be a pretty boring article. Who wants to read about someone getting 0-1 matches per week and getting ghosted by 95% of them?

jheriko 4y ago

i can't even read this. what trash.

jheriko 4y ago
well its true. this is just an article about what a terrible and over privileged person the author is.

MikePlacid 4y ago

May be I am just too old, but something there smells completely backwards to me. > When you meet someone through an app you have no loyalty to that person, they don’t know your friends, they don’t work with you, so it’s all too easy for them to not follow up on promises.” What promises? What promise can make me call a girl if I don’t like her? And what promise can stop me from calling a girl if I’m attracted to her. >Amy’s right, apps have moved dating from the public into the private sphere and in doing so they have removed any accountability. Isn’t it backwards? Public scrutiny reduces dates. “She’s older than you! But she’s only 17… She’s too tall. She’s too short. You took them both on the same date?? how was it?”. My dates are my private business. Friends and family have no say in that. If they try to say something- I’ll leave the room. And so nobody prevents me from dating whom I’m attracted to. Accountability? it reduces dates, no? >Now we connect with people when we’re shut away at home, under duvets, behind closed doors, which makes it so much easier to behave badly. One behaves badly when no one sees him?? Well, tbh I sometimes do. But you can’t behave badly towards an attractive girl. It’s both impossible and counterproductive.

sneed-oil 4y ago
https://twitter.com/KhalkeionGenos/status/1593457143625109504 https://twitter.com/KhalkeionGenos/status/159345714362510950...
- MikePlacid 4y ago
  > So happy that guys don't have the gender solidarity to create a 60k size group for what is essentially yelp for tinder dates! Guys in Russia have created a yelp for sex workers.
oneoff786 4y ago
I would hope self driven private scrutiny would stop you from dating a 17 year old.
- MikePlacid 4y ago
  My point exactly! (My first wife. At the moment the age of consent in Russia was 14).

giantg2 4y ago

Most of the stuff in this article seems like a problem with society, not the apps. Flakey? Yeah, I see a lot of that in real life too. Many times this has to do with how busy everyone seems these days. Talking to 10 different potential dates? That's on you. Figure out what you want and prioritize. Have some patience. Upset when people when people turn you down or ghost? Guess what, that happens in real life too. You're going to see a lot more rejection up close and personal if you're asking in real life too. It sucks, but maybe grow some thicker skin.

xianshou 4y ago

Is there a name for venture-driven ecosystem replacement? That is, the Uber-like building of a new equilibrium that replaces the previous one but ends up as flawed as or worse than the original. Here is how the process works: 1. Introduce a new system (Uber) whose premium form is better but more expensive than the old (taxis) 2. Subsidize its operation with unlimited funding 3. People become behaviorally locked into the new system and the old one dies 4. Remove the subsidy 5. The new system degrades into an unhappy medium of mediocre performance at high cost, but the old system no longer exists as an alternative Dating apps are not "subsidized" in the same sense, but exhibit a similar trajectory. They work well when small and badly when dominant, but by the time we realize the problems at scale, the previous behavioral models (friend-of-friend introductions, work relationships, in-person approaches) are no longer viable and may not even be considered acceptable. What do we call this pattern?

bruce343434 4y ago
Huh? Where do you live that those methods are no longer viable? And unacceptable?

jl2718 4y ago

Sorry; it was me. I ruined dating apps. In all the years I had a profile, I never actually intended to meet anybody. It was a great profile. I told jokes, I admitted things I’d never tell anybody in person. I was simultaneously boastful and shameful. I laid bare my greatest desires and insecurities. It was everything interesting about the person that exists beneath the factual history of my life. I almost never wrote first, and most of the messages, I ignored. Sometimes I had great conversations: funny, shocking, sometimes charming, never with any semblance of topic or direction. The people had fascinating and explorative internal lives. I thought they must be rock stars and startup gods, but they weren’t. They were the same decaying cerebral material as everybody else, living lives of quiet desperation behind the sanitized facade of career and relationship in serial attempts. Kind of like me. No; I’d never match up to that in real life. I can’t imagine the person with that sort of introduction to me, being then forced to watch me sit with my face slung down into my hands listening to somebody tell me what to do, some senseless thing in inane corporate babble through my laptop speakers, and then to hear my plead for rationality, ignored. That’s my real life, and it’s embarrassing. I could never keep somebody’s interest for more than a few weeks. They’ll just end up dissatisfied, longing for more, and feeling guilty about the whole thing. No thanks; I’ve already played this game, many times before with the same outcome. Someday I’ll be ready: rich, dynamic, in charge of my life, leader of men and captain of industry, admired by all. Then it will all work out, right? Staring down into those happy beaming eyes, sparkles on her 20th anniversary dress, children, friends and family cheering for everything we’ve accomplished together. Not right now though, because, you know, things are a little busy, and I should really just focus on the project at work to get it done with, and bonus season is coming up, and theres a lot of things I need to fix about myself. Yeah, definitely not ready.

markosDL 4y ago

When I went for my students exchange program last year I clearly remember having that urge for meeting new people and potential dates. Things went on amazing but no dates took place and I believe I didn't realize the opportunities that were coming my way. That's what dating apps solve and yes they need some fine tuning as well!

bradlys 4y ago

Can we at least stop posting these dating articles written almost exclusively by straight women? There’s literally nothing new here from these gals - they whine about their own lack of initiation and fear of rejection rather than overcoming it like the overwhelming majority of men have to. These articles offer no nuance or substance compared to the last. The woman here has many options (literally talking to ten different men at once!) but refuses to go forward with any. This is the crux of many of the articles. The girl and all her friends are hoping for the white 6’3” huge cock multi-millionaire intellectual adonis to fall into their lap and beg her to date him. I know a lot of these women IRL and they become spinsters because they keep holding out while they go past 30, 35, and then past 40. Some eventually fall prey to their baby panic and actually just marry the nearest guy to them and pop out a baby within 2 years of meeting the guy. Unfortunately, divorce follows a bit too often after. The funny thing though is that it’s still worse for men. The number of single and never married men compared to then number of single and never married women only gets worse as you age - even though men kill themselves >4x the ratio of women and are born 5-7% more often. No, women are still the victims… always.

dTal 4y ago
>The number of single and never married men compared to then number of single and never married women only gets worse as you age This is an interesting and possibly misleading statistic. Do you know where you heard it?
- bradlys 4y ago
  Census data. Table B12002.
Tozen 4y ago
Good post, and others should not be afraid to be truthful about what is going on. Part of the problem is that when people acknowledge the too obvious reality (particularly or perceived as male) then they get condemned, censored, silenced, shadow banned, banned, doxed, etc... These apps are bringing in tons of money, at the expense of mostly men, to the advantage of mostly women. This is as clear as day. Its only a "problem", in the statistically fewer situations where those with the advantage (primarily women) are inconvenienced by flakes, pranksters, con artists, catfishing, etc... Who of course would be attracted to these types of apps. To include if the person they hook up with from such apps, decides they can do better (for whatever reason), and goes ghost or back to the same app to fish for more. Situations that happen to the average male users (who get massively less matches) of such apps continually and constantly. It has gotten to the point where those already at a huge advantage and taking advantage, feel or believe they are owed a "win". If "he" doesn't meet dream requirements, because somehow they are near perfection (or the delusion of it), then something is finally wrong with the app. Those making money from such apps, will be more than happy to respond with more gimmicks and pretend solutions. But a true issue like "their own lack of initiation and fear of rejection", is a truth that dare not be acknowledged or will be ignored.

isitmadeofglass 4y ago

These types of articles are always biased due to being written by people who are generally not seen as relationship material by the other gender. That’s why they are still on apps and why everyone eventually ghosts them. It’s not because of Tinder or other apps. The woman who go in tinder, go on 20-30 dates and end up in a relationship you never hear from because they are done with it and on with their lives.

Ancalagon 4y ago

Dating apps are such a sad development. Really everyone should just drop them.