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'It's quite soul-destroying': how we fell out of love with dating apps
- Thrir94994i 3y ago> The 55-year-old social worker now spends her weekends on the dancefloors of illegal.... “Recently, I met a younger man with an amazing body. It was probably the best sex of my life.” In dating app you can filter out old people. So this old person would not have a chance there! Her only chance is in night club, where she can rape drunken guys! People who drink alcohol can not give a consent! And that guy wery likely regrets it, when he wakes up in the morning!
- tsimionescu 3y agoThis is an absurd overextension of the word rape. Even if you were completely right that the young guy wouldn't have taken that decision sober and that he regretted it the next day (which you are just assuming based on 0 knowledge), as long as she didn't coerce him into getting drunk, he was of legal age, and he wasn't blackout-levels of drunk, it's absurd to call this rape. Drunk but conscious people are very much able to consent. One of the main reasons people engoy being drunk in night clubs is the kind of reduced inhibitions that lead to talking to and having sex with people outside your regular dating choices.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- prartichoke 3y agoNow try reading the post you replied to but with swapped genders. Would your reply be the same?
- gambiting 3y agoObviously yes? How can it not be the same?
- tsimionescu 3y agoYes, absolutely. If a woman is getting drunk in a club and she goes home with some older dude that looks hot in the alcohol fumes and has sex that later she regrets, she did not get raped. Is that controversial in any way?
- Thrir94994i 3y agoYou were right maybe 20 years ago. But now many judicial precedents t say otherwise! > Drunk but conscious people are very much able to consent "Conscious" is highly individual state. I would strongly recommend you to look up current situation, it may prevent a very nasty situation, where judge has a different opinion! Most guys I know take god knows what drugs, mixed with vodka and Redbull... Far from shining beacon of "consciousness". But they are still able to walk and talk, and somehow get home...
- CogitoCogito 3y ago> But now many judicial precedents t say otherwise! Please provide links to precedents supporting this claim of yours: > People who drink alcohol can not give a consent!
- Thrir94994i 3y agoCalifornia Penal Code section 261 (a)(3) > If a person is prevented from resisting by an intoxicating or anesthetic substance, or a controlled substance, and this condition was known, or reasonably should have been known by the accused. Look up statutory rape, duress... If you want some actual cases, search at relevant forums. I am really not going to give legal advice here.
- CogitoCogito 3y agoYou said this: > People who drink alcohol can not give a consent! Your quote quote clearly does not say people who drink alcohol cannot give consent. In fact, it says: > If a person is prevented from resisting by an intoxicating… Do you not understand that that is not the same thing? You made the claim that someone drinking one beer cannot give consent. Nowhere does your quote support that claim.
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- cersei 3y agoWow, how dehumanizing for older people. You seem to take offense only to the fact that this person is 55 years old? I don't see anyone calling it "rape" when the rest of the population is engaging in drunken sex at nightclubs.
- liquidise 3y ago> "people are more magic in real life" I CTO'd a fairly successful dating site for 4 years. I think a lot of the critiques of dating sites/apps miss the mark. The "they only stay in business by keep you single" sort of comments. Instead, i think dating sites' issues are more fundamental. Thought experiment: write a dating profile for yourself in the 3rd person. Then have you 5 closest friends and family members each write one on your behalf. Now have everyone vote on which of the 11 profiles is the most "you". Do you believe yours comes in first? How about top 5? When we fill out profiles, we naturally try to highlight some parts of ourselves and hide others. Your friends and family see you as you present. Only you see yourself as you intent. The result of this all is that our dating profiles are a limited, and often misleading, approximation of ourselves. Any matchmaking app is thus matching my "Online Dating Approximation" with your "Online Dating Approximation". The hope is that if our approximations match, we can extrapolate us matching? Weak connection in my experience. I think this is why Tinder and Bumble have had so much success with their frankly superficial model. At least the online vs reality is closer than more in-depth matching schemes. But we still hear tales of cat/hat-fishing, so maybe they suffer the same issues. None of the dating apps ive seen have really keyed into the "monkey brain" side of love. The subtle things that make us truly love a person. To be seen if any get there, but there is just no substitute for getting to know someone in person vs flipping through people online.
- chongli 3y agoThe story is about how Tinder and Bumble are in decline. The superficial model isn’t working anymore. I think the issues are much more fundamental than you suggest. They’re societal and they’re subcultural within the apps. For one, people are much pickier now than they’ve ever been. On the other hand, the dating apps have this filtration problem: those who successfully form a relationship quit the app, possibly for life. Unfortunately, it’s not random when people form successful relationships. Some people are just much better at it than others. This is where the filtration problem arises: over time, the concentration of people who aren’t good at forming relationships increases, as these are the folks who stay in the apps the longest. This makes it harder and harder to find a relationship through the apps, and frustration ensues.
- pixelpoet 3y agoOkcupid used to be really good, then they got bought out and turned into Tinder. Now it's just a wasteland out there, especially for guys.
- some_furry 3y agoMy hetero friends tell me a lot of people they meet on apps are more interested in gaining OnlyFans subscribers than meeting people. I don't know how prevalent this phenomenon is, but that's at least 0.9 on the Mad Max scale. (As a demi/gay man, online dating is incredibly alien to me.)
- snickerbockers 3y agoIt's true, at least 1/5 women on these sites is just trying to push a social media profile. Some of them don't even bother with a bio, it's just a few photos and a link.
- groestl 3y agoThey are really easy to spot though. The ones that have no intention to meet and just signed up because of boredom, that's harder and wastes time.
- whstl 3y agoNot only OnlyFans profiles, but also Instagram. Some want to get to a few thousand followers and use it, I know even some people in relationships that did it. And then there's the bots which just start a generic conversation and recommend some Clash of Clans clone or something. But as mentioned, you realize that in the first 5 mins of interaction.
- Mountain_Skies 3y agoOkCupid was really well thought out for making matches for relationships. The double connection nature of the questions that allowed not just answering questions but also what answers you'd accept and how strongly you felt about those answers was great. It also did a nice job of sussing out people's true personalities. The more questions they answered the more difficult it was to hide their true selves. One of my favorite examples of this was a question about why birds don't get harmed when they land on power lines. The question could be used to gauge a person's technical knowledge but the answer "They do but they express it poorly" was a signal of a sense of humor. Lots of questions were variations on each other but written differently which is another way of getting to a person's true core.
- thatguy0900 3y agoIt doesn't help that all the dating apps get bought up by the same company. Almost feels like a space that needs a non profit to run it, so it can be focused on making good relationships rather than hawking subscriptions to desperate people.
- renewiltord 3y agoI think the reason is more prosaic: The Dead Sea Effect. People do meet partners on dating apps https://old.reddit.com/r/bayarea/comments/17fr0hy/anyone_who_successfully_met_someone_in_bay_area/ https://old.reddit.com/r/bayarea/comments/17fr0hy/anyone_who... The majority of well-matched people rapidly exit. The population begins to trend to weaker participants. And the longer the duration the more unhappy and therefore weaker the participants become. New dating apps capture representative populations and rapidly all the good participants exit. Ultimately some of us suck at dating apps. The apps would be legitimately better without serial failures on them. I would have been better off in the real world, where I met my wife at work.
- suzzer99 3y agoI think another big problem is that women will try out a new site until they have one stalkerish experience, and then they're gone forever. So each new site has a shelf life.
- greatpostman 3y ago[flagged]
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- nicbou 3y agoI got really curious about those because Blade Runner 2049 made me think of them. I tried them and they're so... crude! It felt like talking to someone who's engineered to like you. I could be curt or speak my heart out and it would speak to me the same way. To replace humanity with this... It's just not right.
- prartichoke 3y agoIt's literally the same as that one Futurama episode where they clone celebrities on the internet
- hereforcomments 3y agoI'm so happy that I dated pre-dating app era, between 2005-2010. There were dating apps but not that mainstream. I walked up to my wife and her friend with some BS reason at a club, kept on the conversation and boom 10+ years together. I'm average looking, she has a beautiful face and has been dancing since the age of 4. I'd have 0 chance with these kind of girls on dating apps. Absolutely 0. Another good thing, that time social media have not yet screwed up people's self esteem and that helped a lot -> she has not overrated herself, I have not underrated myself. We've been dating in person for a couple of billion years, we are hard-wired for that as body language tells a lot more in a fraction of a second than any made up profile text and over edited photos.
- lnsru 3y agoCongrats! 10+ years is nice. At the same time I was using online dating site. It helped to accelerate the search and filter candidates. I could save time rejecting illiterate and/or less clever girls. Think about Google maps and real estate search - you don’t want a house on the highway. I wouldn’t use that today. Full of fake profiles to lure paying customers and to keep them as long as they can. Free subscription is not existing anymore.
- bertylicious 3y agoYou don't even realize how objectifying your wording is, do you?
- lnsru 3y agoPicking a partner is not pink fall in love story. It’s a hard work for many years. To have later much more happy years together.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- mrshadowgoose 3y agoWhether you like it or not, the dating game is fundamentally built on the objectification of others. It sucks, but pretending that's not the case doesn't change the reality of it. We're animals. We're programmed to want to bang attractive people.
- freddealmeida 3y agoDarren Brown once had an interesting experiment, where he created a psychological profile and shared it with a broad room of people. Everyone agreed that it was a perfect approximation of their personality. ie. People don't really have a sense of who they are. (The few that do, are exceptional and don't need dating sites). Profiles are probably not the right artifact to use to determine a match. Social cues will always be more valuable than personality, or kindness. For men, that is status and wealth and physical attractiveness. For women, it is beauty and age. Regardless if you like that or not, it may be what is missing in these utilities. Further, I like how the Japanese make group dates. 3 boys and 3 girls go out on a date. Gokkon. Maybe this is something the West should consider. Safer, far more interesting, and allows people to broadly consider each other.
- eesmith 3y agoThat is the Barnum effect - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnum_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnum_effect . > In 1948, in what has been described as a "classic experiment",[10] psychologist Forer gave a psychology test – his so-called "Diagnostic Interest Blank" – to 39 of his psychology students, who were told that they would each receive a brief personality vignette based on their test results. One week later Forer gave each student a purportedly individualized vignette and asked each of them to rate it on how well it applied. In reality, each student received the same vignette, ... On average, the students rated its accuracy as 4.30 on a scale of 0 (very poor) to 5 (excellent). Only after the ratings were turned in, it was revealed that all students had received an identical vignette assembled by Forer from a newsstand astrology book.
- nly 3y agoMost people on dating apps have never had a long term relationship (say 5 years or more of cohabitation) and have never got to the stage where they're completely accepting of and comfortable with their partner. Nobody writes on tinder that they're looking for a partner who will laugh every time they toot while watching TV. We're all shopping for beautiful, successful people who don't fart.
- jalapenos 3y agoGroup dates are comically awkward. Basically anything except your date being on the date is awkward. They've nothing of an improvement there.
- retube 3y agoThe site seems to be down now but mysinglefriend.com had a nice angle, you had to be recommended by other users. Or what about the old fashioned match maker that knows all their clients personally?
- poisonborz 3y agoFound my partner via dating apps. So did most of my friends. I don't think "hey I just met you" dating will ever be trending after COVID, #metoo and how everything is eaten up by digitalisation. Articles like these are just pissing against the wind.
- unsupp0rted 3y agoWhen was that? I found my previous partners on dating apps but today (in the last couple years) I can't.
- CogitoCogito 3y agoI don’t think dating people met offline will ever _not_ be common. Basically all social groups I’ve ever been in have resulted in relationships between people who met offline. Of course your social circles and experience may my differ from mine.
- michaelteter 3y agoMost dating apps are owned by Match Group. Aside from being ridiculously expensive to get full functionality out of, their full functionality has misfeatures, bugs, and huge gaps of missing features. Also, the premise of finding love online has been flawed from the start, so that doesn’t help. Lastly, particularly in the US, body size and fitness/health have become so bad that the visual-first approach that online dating is necessarily built upon has even less potential.
- justinclift 3y ago> At least the online vs reality is closer ... "Filters". Also known as "electronic makeup" or "automatic photoshop" makes a severe mockery of that though.
- tomhoward 3y agoI have a theory that contemporary life causes many people great despair, relating both to dating/relationships and career, because our culture is not very supportive or accepting of personal growth. So, if you get off to a good start in your dating life and career from your late teens and early 20s, you get plenty of approval and validation and compounding success as you progress through life, and acceptance that you deserve the success you're having ("they were always a high achiever, ever since school days"). Whereas if you're not in the top tier of "chosen" people and experience a few painful rejections and setbacks, you're made to feel that's just what you deserve and what you're stuck with, and there's not much you can do to improve your lot. I suspect this has become more of an entrenched belief since the discovery of evolution/DNA, and the generally accepted belief that most of our life outcomes are predetermined by our inheritance. I think the dating apps (and employment recruitment platforms/techniques) intensify this further, by filtering based on a few simple characteristics, some of which really are genetically predetermined (height) and others that are downstream consequences of having had a blessed start in life (income/education level/job seniority/state of health). Society generally, including/especially the dating/employment spheres, don't seem to offer much support for people who really sincerely trying to undertake a journey of personal improvement (outside of mainstream accepted practices like conventional fitness training and education). You're just expected to be "good to go". Someone who may have been dealt a rough hand in life but is trying very hard to improve themselves, including their social skills, their emotions, their health/fitness, their career prospects - all of which will lead them to becoming better romantic partners over time - can find themselves getting little support and encouragement along the way, and indeed can get a lot of discouragement from some quarters (including friends and family members). I think a lot about how the world would be better if more people were encouraged and empowered to go on long-term journeys of deep personal growth, and what kinds of social platforms, including dating and employment platforms, could emerge out of that and bring much more opportunity and satisfaction to people who currently feel the despair of being left behind.
- atleastoptimal 3y agoI think you hit the nail on the head in a lot of aspects but I don't fully agree. Our society does endorse and actively support the virtues of personal growth. The issue is, as you pointed out, it only values the growth of those "chosen" to reach a high-percentile level at the end of their journey. There's nothing more abhorrent to our societal myths of a just road for everyone to take than someone who worked years to reach some level of success in a field they want to excel in but only hit a point barely above mediocrity.
- crooked-v 3y agoI'm surprised I haven't seen any push by a dating app to do the modern version of an old-fashioned matchmaker. Heck, it'd be a great space for AI buzzword stuff and not even all that unethical if LLMs can do a better-than-random success rate at matching up profiles.
- guerrilla 3y agoI would sign up for this right now, even paying. I think that'd be fun and refreshing even if it didn't work. Do matchmakers still exist?
- Mountain_Skies 3y agoYes, and they're expensive. Often they don't have access to a secret repository of top quality clients but they still work for filtering out people who are investing minimal effort into finding someone. If you spend $500 to get three matches, you're going to put in a lot more effort into setting up a date, showing up for it, and following up (provided they weren't tossing red flags everywhere) than you would if you got the same three matches on a free dating site. The same goes for the matches. If they also put down $500, they're much more invested in trying to make something of value come out of it because they've already sunk in money. And it filters out the bots, the attention seekers, the social media clout manipulators, porn site promoters, etc. that thrive on the low cost of connection. From what I've seen, it works well for people who just needed something to get both parties to take finding a relationship seriously while it ends up being a bitterly disappointing waste of money for those who think because it costs 100x as much as an online dating site, they're going to get matches that are 100x further up the dating hierarchy.
- bradlys 3y agoYes, they exist but often for men they are a complete waste of time. Unless you’re an exec, wealthy, and generally handsome - most matchmakers will not take you up. It is simply because they know you will not be able to match with any women they provide or find in the wild. They don’t want to get bad reviews and so they only take clients that they are confident they could match. It is somewhat ironic since people they are confident they could match are the people who need a matchmaker least of all.
- alexitorg 3y agoI found this modelling really good. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3lypVnJ0HM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3lypVnJ0HM TLDR: Once you have a two to one ratio of straight men to straight women. Men get matched 1/2 as much, respond by lowering there standards and spamming women. Women start off with twice as many matches, but get choosier and match even less. Women feel overwhelmed and get chased off the apps. Men quit from not getting any interest.
- probably_wrong 3y agoA similar dynamic was first suggested by the OkCupid blog in their famous article "Why you should never pay for online dating". Link: https://gwern.net/doc/psychology/okcupid/whyyoushouldneverpayforonlinedating.html https://gwern.net/doc/psychology/okcupid/whyyoushouldneverpa...
- lapcat 3y agoTo me this is an argument that everyone should pay for online dating. In other words, eliminate the freemium model. This would remove most of the dead profiles, and the paid users would have incentive to meet people ASAP instead of quietly lurk forever.
- nologic01 3y agoEverything we do online is soul-altering. The online world is a different place. Vastly bigger in some ways and ridiculously narrower in others. We are the guinea-pig generations. We rushed into it without much preparation and simply figure out what works and what not by trial-and-error, paying with our life coins. What complicates things enormously is that these altered realities reallocate wealth and power. The mental and emotional health of users was not the first priority. But we are now past the first phase. From social media and search to dating apps and everything else online, now people asking probing questions about how the new tech has been put to use and for whose benefit. Will there ever be better "dating apps". Its a good question. The answer will depend on if we ever harness the economics behind technology to server people rather than the other way around
- atleastoptimal 3y agoAs much as articles lament the alienating despair of algorithmically processed dating-app and social media culture, the popularity of these apps never declines. In fact, year after year they become more popular, even among those who claim to hate the apps, hate social media, and hate the way they've become a slave to a machine that commodifies their personhood. Humans crave hierarchical signaling. Instagram, TikTok, Match group, the entire industry have invested millions of dollars into implementing every cutting edge brain-hack they can think of. They've nurtured in us a dependence on their contorted, amplified presentation of society and our sociosexual value. Year in, year out, just as the house always wins, the dopamine sink always leans in their favor. It's primally addicting to seek concrete quantifiers of status or worth: how many DM's you get, how many likes, how many matches. As complex as the human social brain is, its measures of meaning can often collapse on single numbers because they signal something irreducible: just exactly how cool, hot, likable, valuable or important you really are. The end game of all gossip is to glean something close to these numbers, in one way or another. In real life there's always layers of illusion and nuance, but online we are presented the truth, unflinchingly. I think people really have to grapple with something often hard to accept: there's no reason why the human social consciousness has to be good, ultimately kind, or benign. There's a possibility that the essential elements of our psyches that apps and social media have exploited aren't really all that pleasant when laid out in the open. Maybe all our whims and lusts can end up being very bad to many people through no fault of their own. Maybe there is an essential, evolutionary ugliness to human nature behind the façade of cordial, inoffensive pleasantries. In the end, we become miserable, because our mental heuristics have been granted power they never should have. Algorithmic bliss has allowed us to be far too human.
- jurynulifcation 3y agoI live in a rural, remote area without any clue how to break into a social scene. I think you're extrapolating and generalizing way too hard. It's not hierarchical for me, I just want to meet someone local to hang out with and date. Dating apps are, unfortunately, pretty much my only local connection.
- cpursley 3y ago
- benj111 3y agoI found my current partner of 2 years on bumble. I was on the site for a month. I sometimes wonder if people just have too higher expectations, waiting for 'the one'. Relationships are hard. You have to work through differences, you can't expect to find someone where differences are absent. I'm not pro marriage per se, but I think we need more, work on the relationship you have, rather than ending it and looking for something better.
- wnolens 3y agoMany people I know who have converted a match to a stable relationship (at least one side) were completely green to the apps when it happened. For many it was one and done. And my best experiences were with completely green folks. I think the rest of us are cynical and that is a bad quality while dating.
- benj111 3y agoWould you say that the cynicism or just you, or a general thing? I stated my hypothesis as 'expecting too much' but I'm not particularly wedded to that specific hypothesis. It's just my observations suggest it isn't just the apps per se. I'm not blaming you btw. It's just you aren't going to find a solution if you're looking at the wrong thing.
- gadders 3y agoI think they buried the lede a bit there: "The new rules of dating mean approaching strangers in public is more frowned upon than it was previously" I wonder if dating apps have helped promote this viewpoint to boost business?
- mvncleaninst 3y agoHow do people here even make time for dating in the first place? At least for me atm, doing part time graduate school, job, and interview prep, I feel so burned out after it that I don't want to do anything And I'm probably not even in as deep as some people here, some of this computer stuff is so ridiculously time consuming. I'm not even working on anything remotely hard, but still: how the hell do you make time? Without sacrificing your own projects? It's something I've been thinking about for a while now. How do all of the people maintaining all of this hard, important shit get to where they are and still manage to have some semblance of a life? Not only just maintaining the stuff, but learning all of the background necessary to get there
- rohith2506 3y agoIt all boils down to priorities in life at that moment
- baz00 3y agoIt's fairly easy to make time for dating I find. I mean it requires the odd evening out and the odd day sacrificed which is manageable. The problem is that when you are successful you have no free time for your projects and stuff suddenly at all and that goes on forever. Source: was married for a couple of decades and have had a couple of 6-12 months long relationships since. I have kids already, a full time job and am doing a second degree part time so I'm sure if I can manage it anyone can ;)
- jalapenos 3y agoYour battle is with yourself. You chose to impose grad school on yourself.
- mvncleaninst 3y agoYeah and I don't regret it either
- jalapenos 3y agoThat PhD won't keep you warm at night, or meaningfully get you a better job, but at least it'll let you pretend intellectual superiority over others. That's the important thing.
- truculent 3y agoIvan Illich seems relevant, here: > As Illich saw it, the rise of universalizing social technologies — that is, institutions managed by strangers — transgressed the traditional bounds of diverse vernacular communities and harnessed human endeavor to a trajectory of limitless growth, creating a “radical monopoly” over the ways and means of living that blunted any alternative to industrializing the desires of consumer society. In the process, persons and communities alike were deprived of the practical knowledge to shape tools according to their own defined needs and choices. Robbed of such competence, they became servants to the logic of those institutions instead of the other way around. > His greatest insight was that when conviviality is swapped for productivity, monopolizing institutions that chart a singular path at mass scale become counterproductive to their original intent beyond a certain threshold. > In his book “Energy and Equity” Illich illustrated this point in terms all could easily understand. As anyone who has driven on a freeway would agree, individual mobility turns into collective congestion when everyone has a car. From https://www.noemamag.com/a-forgotten-prophet-whose-time-has-come/ https://www.noemamag.com/a-forgotten-prophet-whose-time-has-...
- 65 3y ago[flagged]
- Narciss 3y ago“People are so much more magic in real life.” - I agree with that wholeheartedly. It’s wonderful to meet new people, whether you’re looking to find a partner or not. But some life situations make it easier to do that than others. I met the love of my life at Uni - she wouldn’t have given me a second glance on a dating app, but the environment of University allowed us to be friends, and then evolve into more. How do you emulate the Uni vibe in “adult life” though, with thousands of people having lots of things in common that they can start chatting on,with activities involving people they know and don’t know that they can dip in and out of, and with parties where they can let go of inhibitions? Yes, people are much more magic in real life, and oftentimes the magic happens from being in different situations with them.
- lapcat 3y agoOne major problem with the dating apps is that their search is terrible. Searching just doesn't work how you want it to work. It gives way too many results that don't fit your criteria. I think this is deliberate? They don't want you to search, they want you to use their "algorithmic" matching. (This seems reminiscent of how social networks want you to use an "algorithmic" timeline rather than your own self-curated reverse chronological list.) For example, I live in a medium sized city, and I only want matches within the metro area, but the apps will give matches throughout the state and in a neighboring state, with no way to filter them out, as if I'm going to spend hours driving just for a date, and then start a difficult long-distance relationship. And I also got "likes" from way outside my geographical range. I got likes from other states and even other countries, WTF? The irrelevance is frustrating. It's like trying to find a needle in a haystack. And of course the ghosting is frustrating too. You manage to wade though the terrible search results to find someone who seems compatible, make the effort to write an intelligent, personalized message to them based on reading their profile, and then... nothing. It appears that a lot of people sit on the dating apps indefinitely for whatever reason, and they become "black holes" where no light ever comes out, while still clogging up the search results. If you have no feeling of urgency to meet people, then why bother being on the dating apps? The "freemium" model may be partly to be blame here, because it's free to have an account forever, as long as you don't use the "advanced" features. I've seen it claimed that eHarmony is better about this, but I tried eHarmony, and it was absolutely not any better than the other dating apps. They all seem to be basically the same now, and are equally terrible.
- FireBeyond 3y ago> make the effort to write an intelligent, personalized message to them based on reading their profile, and then... nothing Way back in the day I tried this, and got both ends of the spectrum. Still lots of ghosts, but then also curiously, multiple girls who said that my message was "unfair" or "selfish". When I enquired why, it was because it "created an obligation - you wrote this more detailed message and now I can't just reply with 'no thanks' or 'cool, tell me more', I have to sit down and think and write a reply". Great as a filter maybe, less great for the ego. So then I wrote a template message. A couple of common paragraphs, and then a couple of inserts where I could put "choose 1 of 3 options to put in here". More soul depressing, but ended up more successful (relatively speaking).
- jalapenos 3y agoThe dating app model has rarely worked, but it's a fascinating thing that happened, and there should be more research into why these companies were so successful in peddling it. Simply, it's not workable if it has contributed to real success (happy ever after) occasionally, while simultaneously causing greater damage in other areas, like making cheating on existing relationships easier or discouraging meeting people in the old ways. For instance, last I heard is that there's a ratio of 10 to 1, men to women, on them. Necessarily, this isn't published (to sell "superlikes" etc). Completely absurd setup. But it speaks volumes about modern culture. That there's been no education on the best ways to successfully meet a good life partner, honestly factoring in things like your rank, regarding attractiveness and socioeconomic status and so on. The best model is most likely: maximising your meeting of friends of friends. But who's out there touting that? Parents are asleep at the wheel.
- sureglymop 3y agoSomething to take into consideration with the 10 to 1 ratio (in heterosexual dating) is that if true it results in a "not great" experience for men but probably in an even worse experience for women. While men may barely get any attention, women get too much and have to bomb through a lot to basically find the needle in the haystack. Another thing I find interesting about dating apps is that almost all dating apps are owned and operated by Match Group Inc. (even on an international level). I have long had a running joke with my friends that if we ever want to get semi-rich we just have to create a mediocre dating app and have it bought up by Match Group. Dating apps themselves have a weird premise because if they work for people, they leave the app so a working app results in a loss of customers. They just overall seem like a very weird phenomenon and I also wonder why people sign up there considering all of this.
- jalapenos 3y agoBecause desperation. After all, did you get "how to get a good husband/wife" subject in high school? They teach only that which is useless.
- thfuran 3y ago>Dating apps themselves have a weird premise because if they work for people, they leave the app so a working app results in a loss of customers. That's not nearly so weird as you make it out to be. Plenty of businesses that sell durable goods could be described much the same way.
- sambeau 3y agoSwiping killed dating apps for me. It feels too final, too brutal, too spur-of-the-moment. Maybe these people are lovely, maybe they will change their profile and I will change my mind. What if they swipe yes for me and I miss out on meeting a wonderful person. I've tried, but I just can't do it. By forcing me into making a quick choice you have forced me into choosing not to choose.
- urlwolf 3y agoOKCupid was the one non-swiping app left, and after being bought by the match.com group it became pretty much the same. There's at least something to read for those who care (and the questions system).
- globular-toast 3y agoIn my experience, I know within a fraction of a second whether I'm actually attracted to someone. I have never become attracted to someone later if I wasn't attracted in the first place. But there's no way I could tell you what the criteria are for being attracted to someone. There are beautiful women I'm not attracted to and there are less photogenic women I'm very attracted to. There are so many factors at play: the way they carry themselves, their voice, their smell, that je ne sais quoi... Swiping makes you think you are doing efficient filtration except it's showing you only an approximation of someone through a keyhole. I've met up with matches and found they don't look the same in 3D, we don't vibe and sometimes they just don't smell right (smell is an extremely important sense for attraction). After wasting time with definite negatives that you thought were positives you wonder how many positives you rejected just because they didn't meet some criterion that barely matters. All the real negatives swiping works for (like obesity, tattoos, peircings etc for me) would be easily filtered out in real life without even thinking about it.
- unsupp0rted 3y agoI agree dating apps are soul-destroying, especially for those of us who want a serious relationship but don't want children. Here's an alternative I saw today: Manifold markets launched a dating app, so markets crowdsource on which couple would last 6 months. http://manifold.love http://manifold.love
- klyrs 3y agoIf that's grindr for finbros, perhaps it could work. If you think straight women are going to join, read up on demographics in the financial sector. Doomed. Perhaps the stupidest thing I've seen in a long life of dating and matchmaking. Also, what? You think people making bets on your love life is less soul crushing than an app without that?
- xchip 3y ago[flagged]
- flenserboy 3y agoPerverse incentives may be at work as well — if these sites are successful in a traditional sense, the numbers of repeat customers will shrink. Growth in sales & services are what investors want, & the current model of shopping-for-a-date brings with it the dissatisfaction needed to keep people trying again & again along with the temporary hope & dopamine hits needed to keep them from giving up (though that will always diminish over time). The current model is conducive neither to happiness nor long-term relationship success.
- user_named 3y agoThe people are a way worse problem than the apps. I've gotten hundreds of dates and three sort of relationships. And they all fucked me over.
- BiteCode_dev 3y agoIt's not just the dating apps. Things that require low effort are usually low quality. There is nothing wrong with deciding some part of your life will be filled with low quality things. We can't make efforts on every single parts of our life. But if you do this for entertainment, and dating, and food, and the rest, your life is filled with bland yogurt. Netflix is no substitution for a hobby. Ready-made meals are no substitution from cooking vegetables. Chats are no substitution for IRL human interactions. It's crazy we even have to say it, it should be obvious. I guess it shows how much humans are biased toward quick rewards. It's very hard to say no in a world of abundance of those.
- OfSanguineFire 3y agoGrindr requires extremely little effort to use, but so many gay men report great satisfaction from it. If the dating apps used by the heterosexual masses spark a significantly higher level of disappointment and frustration, then there must be some explanation for that other than “low effort”.
- Gigachad 3y agoIt’s a low effort app for low effort sex. Expecting to build a long term relationship on an app is not typically going to work out.
- progne 3y agoIf you're expecting computer assistance at building a long term relationship, rather than just an assist in meeting people, it's probably not going to work out.
- BiteCode_dev 3y agoMeeting with very specific expectations, I might add. My gay friends using grinder don't expect it to be full-filling, they expect it to be pleasurable. Pleasure is nice, but it doesn't sustain happiness. And intense pleasures that are easy to have regularly mess up with your dopamine system. It's fine if you only have one part of your life like this. The rest balance it out. And we all need fun. E.G: one of my friends is deeply involved in teaching kids, another one is a very dedicated doctor, and so forth. In that case it's healthy.
- rvba 3y agoI wonder why there isnt space in the market for a more text based service similar to the old OKcupid: a website that asks multiple mandatory questions and takes effort to build your profile (eg. list your favorite films, or books). Men are unhappy with photo-based websites, because if they are not the top 20% looks they will receive very few likes. So for men the strategy is to like nearly every woman. At the same time women are flooded by likes from men - and all they see are pictures and low quality chatter. With a text based website that also gives recommendations: men would have a chance that someone even reads their profile, while women would only read profiles that interest them. There is really no money in that since nobody wants to spend 30 minutes to setup a profile?
- kikokikokiko 3y agoIt would never work. For men, the pictures of the women are essential. You either would get no men at all on this site, or the women would get a ton of insults or either would be ghosted once the men saw what they looked liked. In the end, you get a bad dynamic for both sexes.
- rvba 3y agoI didnt say that you wouldnt get pictures. I say that initial matching would be done based on descriptions - and you would say get 10 profiles per day - with pictures.
- mike_hearn 3y agoThere are a lot of apps with different spins on dating like this. For example I think one (Bumble?) only lets women send messages, to try and combat the problem of men just spamming every single woman on the site. The article treats apps as all basically the same though. The core problem you're going to have with bringing back text is that a lot of people no longer have / use regular desktop computers at home, they only use smartphones and have no interest in changing that. But phones are terrible at text input. Talking to your phone keyboard never took off for some reason, and entering lots of text on a glass screen is still hard despite lots of investment in making it better. If you look at the trend of the internet over time, it has been consistently towards less text: - Mid 1990s, text heavy websites with a carefully defined organization. Dating sites expect you to fill out complex text based profiles. - End of 90s/early 2000s, blogs (text minus the organization). Profiles get less text heavy. - Mid 2000s, social networks appear. Text+image posts, where text is only a few paragraphs at most. Character limits mean you are forbidden from making high effort posts. Text is still the primary element in a timeline object though, and images (if any) appear underneath it. OKCupid appears and the text profile here is largely an afterthought, it gets popular due to the quizzes and match percentages that are computed from them. - 2010: Instagram. Achieves huge success by de-emphasizing text even more. Now the image is the primary thing and the text is either missing entirely, or a sentence/few words at most. - 2012: Tinder does the same move for dating and also enjoys huge success. - 2016: TikTok. Words are finally banished for good. Fundamentally most people are not writers and don't want to write. When the internet required you to be a writer to take part it was restricted to small numbers of articulate people with good typing skills, and the silent majority that just consumed content. Dating sites were practically synonymous with long distance relationships because so few people used them. With the rise of smartphone cameras content creation became available to everyone and now it's taken for granted that a good dating service should have so many people you can't even reach the end, and that they will come from a wide cross-section of society. The cost of that ubiquity is getting rid of the words. So yes, you could make such a site. It would have very few users and would need to be marketed as primarily a way to make long distance relationships. To fix that you'd have to change the game in some way, for example, convincing people to talk to their phones out loud, at least during the setup phase. Modern speech recognition and TTS is so good that combined with LLMs maybe you can actually pull that off, but that's where the focus would have to be.
- iambateman 3y agoJust to say the obvious…dating apps have a massive incentive problem. If two people get matched on the app and get married, they “churn” out of the dating app. Dating apps are structurally incentivized to help people go on lots of dates (MAU++!) but NOT to help them get married. We shouldn’t be surprised when people on apps find themselves in a seemingly endless cycle of dates which go nowhere.
- posix86 3y agoRelated: The Tyranny of the Marginal User [1] A possible explanation on why dating apps suck. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37509507 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37509507
- majikaja 3y agoMaybe it's not the apps, maybe it's just the users? Let me know when tech turns everyone into models
- swagempire 3y agoWhat I find weird is how the Guardian always likes to blame / crusade against (target, basically) anything in society except it's readers. "Dating Apps" are just another way to find and meet people. If you have to continue to use the app you are either very bad at this -- or actually like something about the app, such as swiping profiles on a Tuesday after work to relax. A third option is that people just don't want to choose -- the perfect profile might be around the next swipe. The dating apps THEMSELVES are not responsible for anyone's lack of success in dating, though. That is up to each and everyone of us.
- BiteCode_dev 3y agoI think the better take is not to focus on the apps, but on the phenomenon of using apps for that. You don't get out. You don't socialize. You don't take risks. You don't exchange much. But it's easy, and it provides an alternative paths for timid people, and increase your range and reach.
- swagempire 3y agoRight, I see your point. But the idea is to go and take it offline at some point no? Meet IRL so to speak?
- BiteCode_dev 3y agoIt's certainly more efficient for the end goal of getting to a date, in a the way food delivery is an efficient way of addressing your hunger. I approve both. But I would not recommend eating food delivery every day.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- underseacables 3y agoMy single friends tell me the dating apps are way too expensive. I think if these apps were only five dollars a month or less, they would get much more traction.
- FireBeyond 3y agoYes and no. While being understanding of differing financial brackets, if your approach to finding a long term intimate partner is "it needs to cost less than a Starbucks coffee a month", you can't sincerely have high expectations.
- Sytten 3y agoI have always said that commercial dating apps have the wrong incentives. We need a non-profit to create a dating app. I see this as a similar problem to signal or wikipedia, people don't want to pay for those services. I also think the app should severely limit the number of people you are exposed to and reduce the waste of time. I tried the friend section of those apps and that's the only time I felt the sense of overwhelming with having too many likes. Both those goals are contrary to profit via ads. IMO those apps are very similar to social media apps. We have studies that show they are not good for us the way they are currently structured as they just want to grab our attention for as much time as possible.
- hluska 3y agoA not for profit dating app is a genuinely good idea. If you decide you’d like to pursue this and would like some help, I’ve got experience starting/funding a not for profit and I build software for a living. I’d be a heck of a good slave to a project like this. Dating is a hard market because if you solve the problem, your users churn. Consequently, for profit dating apps operate in this weird space were they need a certain amount of successful users to help with acquisition, but if the success rate gets too high it’s a bug. I can’t think of many problems where solving the problem can be a product feature but a business bug. A not for profit might be able to flip that.
- kredd 3y agoThis is a wild read cause I was discussing this just last night with some people at a bar! We had a never-ending conversation of "if we have kinda non-profit Wikipedia for information democratization, we should have non-profit for dating". Then more into "who would be determining the rules, how we can make it less skewed for one sex or the other, how would we deal with liability, what do we do with spam, how to ID verify to minimize catfishing" and etc. One thing that's a bit hard though, how would we minimize the whole "numbers game" that's basically the main part of the apps. Guys try to get as many matches possible, girls try to find the "best match" out of "matches", so you still have the whole problem of unmatched men and women. But I guess, that comes after figuring out how the non-profit would work.
- drzaiusx11 3y agoThe fact that apps are "algorithmic doom barrels" comes from unaligned incentives in many of them. "The Apps" reward continued engagement, not finding the best partner. That subscription money disappears if a longer term partner is found, so that's obviously not the goal; regardless of what their marketing/ad department says. "Hook up" Apps, somewhat align but are being be pushed on individuals looking for something else, leading to frustration, dissatisfaction and disillusionment.
- _yb2s 3y agoAs a counterpoint to the other comments on here… I had a great experience with Tinder as a late 30s divorced single dad. I was able to date a different attractive women every night if I wanted to, and found someone I’ve really liked, and we have been together happily for 2.5 years now. It works so well because you get to see so many possible people, and can find a better match than any matchmaking algorithm or real life chance. My take is that 99% of the men on there are immature man children whose life is a mess. I have many women friends and the guys they end up dating on Tinder, etc are a low bar- dress sloppy, no purpose in life, etc. If you want a good partner you have to be one. An app can’t do it for you. Learn to be vulnerable and emotionally supportive, build a career that is interesting and has meaning to you, dress well with a unique sense of fashion, learn to cook well and eat healthy food, get fit, make friends and have fun hobbies. With all of that you will be happy even if single, but you will also be unusually attractive.
- subjectsigma 3y agoYou do realize how you sound saying “Everyone is the problem except me,” right? And then comparing your experience dating in your late 30s to people dating in their early 20s?
- groestl 3y agoWhere do you get the "early 20s" from? The people in the article are 55, 33, 37, 29, ... years old, many people here in the comments don't mention their age etc...
- _yb2s 3y agoMy point is the opposite of that- the quality of my dating experience depends entirely on me. Instead of blaming women, apps, etc. The guys that are having a terrible time are claiming everyone is the problem but them… and not wanting to confront the painful truth that dating them isn’t going to be a good experience for the other person, because of their choices. Women actually have a worse time on these apps then men, because despite lots of matches the guys all have serious issues they aren’t willing to admit or work on. If you work on yourself, it is really easy for men to stand out in a way that is much harder for women. This attitude difference is actually the very crux of the issue. An attractive, mature adult is someone that takes responsibility when things aren’t going well, and does something about it instead of blaming and complaining. The guys complaining about how apps and dating are terrible and nobody recognizes how great they are, are not realizing that this complaining and entitled attitude itself is their entire problem.
- Aerbil313 3y agoI cannot begin to express how dumb most comments are in this thread. It's simply dumb to believe that you can change the way of living which was going on for all of human history and still have people undisturbed, without friction with their very biology, and in peace. Humans don't evolve in a century or two. This doesn't only apply to relationships either. Cities, technology, everything.
- thfuran 3y ago>It's simply dumb to believe that you can change the way of living which was going on for all of human history Which way is that?
- nicgrev103 3y agoI met my wife on eHarmony after a few unsuccessful years on the apps. We have been happily married for 3 years. eHarmony was far better than any app but I can only attribute that to the fact that it is a paid for service with no free option, everyone there has to pay and that means people are more engaged and serious about a relationship. It occours to me that the incentives are skewed. If the dating apps do a great job they lose users. This means the apps will (conciously or not) be designed to keep users using and that means, not finding a suitable partner. Even worse they actually put features that will help you find a match behind a pay wall, even more incentive to tantilise you but not deliver. It'd be interesting to see a service that you only pay once you're in a relationship with someone from the service. So the company only gets paid when they find good matches. It'd become really good at finding matches or die.
- btbuildem 3y agoI've always wondered about this "losing users" argument. My counter to that is that there are always new people coming onto the dating scene. If an org curbs their growth expectations and aims for a sustainable service, the reliability and quality of results may just outweigh everything else and leave them as the only viable alternative on the playing field.
- thfuran 3y agoYeah, there's over 100 million people born a year, and most relationships don't last till death anyways.
- bigstrat2003 3y ago> If an org curbs their growth expectations and aims for a sustainable service... True! But it seems like only a ridiculous minority of businesses are willing to pursue "sustainable but not flashy" as a business goal, especially in tech. So unfortunately, you might as well be saying "if the sun were to rise in the west...". It's just not going to happen.
- standardUser 3y ago"after a few unsuccessful years on the apps" What does success mean to you exactly? If success is only finding the love of your life and getting married than everything else in your life will be a failure which sounds profoundly depressing. In those "unsuccessful" years, did you have any fun dates? Interesting sex? Exciting flings? Because connecting with another person in those ways should be considered amazing successes!
- prepend 3y agoI feel like these apps are fundamentally opposed to having users form healthy relationships. The apps make money from searching, not finding. I’m not very familiar with “the apps” but it seems like unless you are using grinder or tinder, someone trying to find a meaningful relationship and companionship would be a bad customer for dating apps, so they would want to both avoid those customers and even damage relationships in order to make more money. Like how facebook and twitter make more money from angry, non-friends than from good friends connecting. It does seem like a good problem for the “original internet” as there’s a lot of matching and filtering needed to present opportunities. But it’s hard to find communities based around a temporary status. If I wanted to find a meaningful relationship, I’d probably want to be part of some large organization that has a section of the org for single people. So maybe a church or social club or something like that. But the organization would need to be huge to have a meaningful amount of people to make matches.
- INTPenis 3y agoI don't think it's the fault of the apps. I think it's US culture being very money focused because there is no safety net for people. You're always 2 weeks from being homeless. So women naturally adapt to the situation. I'm using Bumble and Tinder in Croatia and in just 2 months I've met two amazing down to earth women. The apps reflect the culture of where they're being used.
- eru 3y agoYou know that people are allowed to save money and take out insurance? Even in the US.
- kukkeliskuu 3y agoIn dating apps, the first approximation is that women rate men based on attributes that follow the power law (such as social status), whereas men rate women based on attributes that follow the normal distribution (such as looks, age etc.). The same dynamics applies to many animals when they choose their mates. It directly follows that on these platforms, the attractiveness of men is much less evenly distributed than the attractiveness of women, but there is "rich get richer" or Matthew effect which skews the popularity of most men. This point is almost never mentioned in such analysis. But that is the basis of the different experience average men and average women have on current dating market.
- enraged_camel 3y ago>> In dating apps, the first approximation is that women rate men based on attributes that follow the power law (such as social status) Based on my observations and conversations with girlfriends who use dating apps, women rate men based on height first, and everything else (including social status) second.
- xkekjrktllss 3y agoYes, this is unquestionably a fact. I am 6'1" so not exactly complaining but it's definitely the reality we live in.
- scarface_74 3y agoI am five foot four and my former dating life from the time I was 22-36 wasn’t anything to write home about (with one failed marriage in between). I got friend zoned more than I wish to admit. I started dating my now wife at 36 and I’m now 49. I wasn’t unattractive - I was in peak physical shape by any metric as a part time fitness instructor, runner, muscular, 10% body fat. I was outgoing, decently successful financially etc. But I am short. It got better after my divorce At 32. Maturity - maybe? The nature of competition changed - probably? I was single, no kids, intelligent, still in above average shape. But I would have still failed miserably on dating apps I think. I met my now wife at work and the women I dated before then were mostly through teaching classes at gyms. They were more willing to let their guard down with me as an instructor than just some random dude trying to hit on them at the gym
- ChicagoDave 3y agoOne of the biggest problems is fake profiles. You can go through a batch, especially on Bumble or Tinder, and just swipe left and mutter “fake” non-stop. This makes me believe the membership numbers are inflated with fake or marketing profiles to entice you to spend money. OKCupid was one of the better ideas because if someone didn’t answer at least 100 questions, you could just skip them as probably fake. I think meetups are the answer. Join activity groups that you’re interested in and just be yourself. Love will find you.
- FireBeyond 3y ago> This makes me believe the membership numbers are inflated with fake or marketing profiles to entice you to spend money. About twenty years ago a friend of mine had a part time job that she was paid to respond to DMs on fake profiles on a dating site, basically "string them along and then slow ghost". They even had a specific interface for her and other girls (hell, doesn't even need to be) to do this fake DM farming.
- wutwutwat 3y agoIf this were the case, I feel such practices and admin interfaces would have leaked by now.
- FireBeyond 3y agoFor what it's worth, this was sugardaddy4me.com, nearly 20 years ago. Facebook was embryonic. Twitter? What's a twitter? Who wants to go around accusing websites like that of "Hey, I signed up, but all the girls seemed fake"? Some, maybe, but very much the minority.
- wutwutwat 3y agoI'm not talking about users accusing the company of faking them from the outside. I'm saying if that string them along system was real at these modern companies someone inside would have exposed one by now. It would be more than just a leak, it would be illegal, deceptive business practices, false advertising, bait and switch. That's probably why they don't exist. No way all these apps with all these employees over all these years managed to keep everyone who worked on the shady illegal systems from spilling the beans. Uber god view was a huge deal. Tinder having systems and paying people to deceive people so they spend money would land C level execs on the bread line. Maybe it does exist, wouldn't surprise me, but I have doubts since we've never seen any evidence
- simonebrunozzi 3y agoI would rather have an app that would help me deal with the lows of a marriage - trust me, EVERY married couple has those.
- justinator 3y agoWho was ever in love with dating apps? They were used because it was becoming impossible to meet people outside of them. People used them and loathed using them from the start. You would come up with stories together on how you "actually" met as it was embarrassing to say, "a dating app". The only people who enjoy using them in the slightest are people who see relationships as transactions and are looking for something specific: sex for the night - or a kid, but certainly not love. If no other avenues are available, dating apps seem like a useful tool.
- standardUser 3y agoI love dating apps. I've met tons of people, including multiple relationships and long-term friendships. They've helped me meet people when moving to new places. They've helped me get laid. They are also tedious and emotionally draining and full of increasingly-expensive upsells for basic functionality. But they're still an incredibly useful tool for meeting people.
- captainmuon 3y agoI don't like dating apps (and I'm happy that I'm in a relationship and don't need to use them). I think it's because I can't flirt on cue. A dating app is a very clear social situation (like a singles night, or speed dating, ...) where both sides know what they are looking for (be it a relationship, sex, romance...). But you can't "fall with the door into the house" as they say here. You have to navigate certain rituals of dating, you have to impress but but be natural, show interest but not too much, etc.. Contrast with how it worked before dating apps, you met people from your extended social circle. You had some non-romantic interaction first. There is a certain amount of ambiguity in the beginning. You can flirt and express interest without being on a formal date, and then ask them out. It can also be stressful and anxiety-inducing of course, but IMO much less than on the bazaar that is a dating app. I think dating would work much better as a side-function of a regular social network app, than as a dedicated app (and I know quite some friends who met over the internet but not via dating apps). But alas, there is no business model there...
- closeparen 3y agoI dunno, I credit the explicit “this is a dating relationship” context setting with making things possible for me that would not be otherwise.
- captainmuon 3y agoI don't mean the "dating relationship" stage, but much earlier, the first impression. It's quite intimidating if one of the few things somebody knows about you is that you are looking for a relationship/romance with them.
- THENATHE 3y agoI think Facebook dating does this, but frankly I don't really like the idea of letting my whole family know I'm looking to date by throwing myself on Facebook
- bartwr 3y agoI have not used dating apps myself (have a single partner for 15y+ and generally was always meeting romantic interests through friends), but ~half of my friends got their partners through Tinder 5-10y ago. They were very happy with it - though this was in Europe, not in a tech hub. Two of my close friends who don't have partners and still use Tinder said that in the last few years, they became useless unless you are a spending whale (enshittification). Full of bots, full of people keeping to make new accounts to take advantage of boosts at the beginning of the profile, needing to spend money to get any matches after this start period. Basically bait-and-switch model and pay-to-win, but with romantic life and self esteem - sounds absolutely cruel.
- bradlys 3y agoOne of the things not touched here is “what’s the alternative?” Yeah, we talk about touching grass and meeting people in real life. Have you noticed how hard it is to meet people in real life and form any kind of connection? Men are lonelier than ever because they have nowhere to go to meet people just for friendship - let alone romance. There are a severe lack of third spaces for all of us to congregate at. People start suggesting “hobbymaxx, bro! Rock climb, raves, CrossFit!” But completely ignore that some people don’t have existing hobbies or interests that align with these suggestions. I love motorcycles and sports cars. I’ve done group rides and whatnot. It’s all dudes. There has never been even one woman who has shown up even with groups of 50. A lot of these other hobbies are completely swarmed with men as well and then you have the status element of it - which takes years of grinding to achieve. You’re not likely to meet someone and go on a date in your first month of CrossFit or rock climbing. Maybe after 5 years of going 3-5x/week, establishing a name, and really getting involved in organizing and whatnot. Even then, might still just be too many dudes or it doesn’t attract the type of women you’re into! Hobbymaxxing advice is worthless for people who aren’t inherently interested in the activity and would do it anyway. It’s mostly people with survivorship bias that are advertising hobbies. Our society is so atomized and individual. You can blame cars or whatever but even here in nyc, it’s hard to chat women up because they’re all getting increasing amounts of stranger danger. Creepy dude just hit on her last week in an impolite and aggressive manner making her feel really unsafe. Homeless dude just chased after her on the street a couple days ago. The guy manning the bathrooms at the club catcalled her while she’s going to the bathroom just now. This is a real example of a woman I know - not made up shit. If you had to deal with the level of harassment that attractive women get in places like NYC - you’d probably have your guard really high too. And only the most amazing of circumstances might ever lower their guard - which means your odds are real bad. Point is: our culture sucks and the way we’re allowing a lot of men in real life to treat women is not helping women get out there more. We need to get rid of this violent homeless epidemic, get rid of these creepy aggressive dudes hitting on everyone and not taking no for an answer, and get rid of shitty people who just want to say stupid shit to any woman at all. I thought with me too at least two of these would be gone but not at all - especially in nyc. It doesn’t take much for most women to be traumatized and have severe dislike for going out btw. The woman I described is incredibly uncommon in her resilience.
- euroderf 3y agoYa gotta put yourself out there. Get some evening hobbies that get you out of the house.
- pierat 3y agoTurns out, that capitalist enterprises that rely on connecting people sexually over subscriptions over mate match have a ficudiary reason to keep from long relationships from forming. A long relationship is a cancelled subscription. So they would inevitably search to find hot flings that do not work out in the medium or long term. To do otherwise would be to limit the pool of people who pay. Yet another strike against capitalism - it's not about solutions, but rent seeking behaviors.
- danhodgins 3y agoThe reductionist argument is that everyone wants to feel 'good', and that life is solely is about chasing a chemical high from natural dopamines, endorphins, oxy, etc that are produced by the body. Both males and females want the hottest, wealthiest and most interesting person they can pair up with, regardless of their own attributes. To state the obvious - people who are ugly, fat, poor and boring (as in way below average) have it rough, as they may not be chosen as a long term partner by someone they consider ideal or even acceptable. For those people, single is better than settling.
- xedrac 3y agoOr you can be real with yourself and find someone in the same ballpark as yourself. Being single may work long term for some people, but I suspect that hollow loneliness will catch up to most eventually.
- fredthedeadhead 3y agoI'm pretty interested in Breeze as an alternative https://breeze.social/ https://breeze.social/ * There's no endless swiping. Users can only see a handleful of matches, each profile stays visible until users say yes/no on each profile, and the profiles are only topped up twice a day. * All chatting is in-person, which is much more human than trying to text online. If users match, they can't chat. They both put down a deposit (about double the cost of a drink in a bar), pick a day & time they're avaliable, and Breeze automatically makes a reservation at a local bar (the first drink is free), or a park for a walk. * Since dates require a deposit, and there's only so many days in the week(!), and users can't make new matches without first planning current matches, users don't get overwhelmed with connections - the existing contacts are prioritised. * They're not owned by Match.com - which for me is a big plus! More disruption of their monopoly is a good thing.
- capableweb 3y agoLooks interesting indeed. Seems to only be available in NL though, as the company seems to be Dutch and they don't say anything about where they are available. Make sense if they do the whole "make a reservation for me" thing. > They're not owned by Match.com Let me know in 5-10 years. I'd bet a substantial amount of money that eventually match.com will acquire them as well. Seems to be what ends up with all these dating services.
- bradlys 3y ago> In which cities is Breeze available? > Breeze is active in 15 cities: Alkmaar, Amsterdam, Breda, Delft, The Hague, Eindhoven, Groningen, Leiden, Maastricht, Nijmegen, Rotterdam, Tilburg, Utrecht, Wageningen, Zwolle. Beforehand you can choose where you want to date by going to the ‘Date preferences’ menu.
- thomastjeffery 3y agoSeems helpful if you are looking for a committed relationship. Many of us are not. Where can we go? This is the question that really needs answering; else we will have no option but to continue to flood the same spaces that commitment-seekers use. The relative signal to noise ratio is hurting all of us.
- cjbgkagh 3y agoA theoretical optimal dating app would make less money as engagement would drop off and the acquisition cost of customers would exceed the value that could be extracted from them. The dating market is not efficient, it is a bit like a lemon market, and switching costs are vastly underestimated for a variety of reasons. It doesn't help that people are readily encouraged to leave their partners by third parties with no skin in the game. I see it as a general multi-armed bandit problem with a exploration–exploitation tradeoff dilemma with pretty noisy rewards. If the switching cost was more accurately measured then people would naturally do less exploration and more 'exploitation'. I think tradition helped find this balance with an emphasis of overestimating switching cost versus a natural tendency to underestimate switching cost (hope springs eternal) - tradition is a way of handing down the results of previous 'exploration' done by others to a new generation so they don't have to learn the population statistics independently from scratch and at great cost.
- bick_nyers 3y agoIf it was known to be optimal I think people would pay a lot of money for that. If you were given access to a matchmaking oracle who could tell you who the absolute perfect love of your life is in exchange for $10,000 (they offer financing), would you do it?
- josefrichter 3y agoOne element of dating apps that breaks it: it requires no bravery and no effort to approach a girl. So the dynamic is broken from the very first second and it's fairly difficult to fix.
- almatabata 3y agoIt seems like both genders in aggregate report dissatisfaction with the current state of dating apps. It reminds me of this survey(https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/08/20/public-attitudes-about-todays-dating-landscape/ https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2020/08/20/public-...). In the survey both genders reported that they felt it harder to date in todays landscape (2020) than in the past. And women reported it more often than did men. Even if individual men and women enjoy having a lot of partners and a lot of attention. It does not seem that the majority of the population shares this opinion. I wonder if this problem is intrinsic to dating app or to the breed of dating app that the match Group manages. Maybe finally applying anti-trust laws to them could improve it.
- dieselgate 3y agoIt's funny to think of the Stranger Things guy (David Harbour, had to look it up to place a name to face) on a dating app but good for them. In my opinion people put too much pressure on dating apps, I've thought them of a way to just meet people you may not come across in day-to-day and who knows what will happen. Have a pretty long-term close friend I met on a dating app, we were never romantically involved but am happy we met.
- s-mon 3y agoI’ve met amazing people through these apps but that was when I was younger and earlier in career. Nowadays, I hardly find time to respond to important texts let alone respond to some person 5km away about how my day went.
- andirk 3y agoThe majority of my friends met their better/other halves at the office. But now the in-person office culture is far less. From a pandemic keeping us physically distant to this current stay-at-home office worker, seems like some sort of phone-based option is where we're at now.
- mr_tristan 3y agoThis seems like the fear/problems of dating apps are just another aspect of how modern communication systems are alienating us. Social circles are indeed shrinking: https://www.americansurveycenter.org/why-mens-social-circles-are-shrinking/ https://www.americansurveycenter.org/why-mens-social-circles... I've read in multiple places about the tendency to seek out instant gratification on the phone instead of just allowing yourself to get bored, and seek out doing something with other people. Relying on apps for finding a love connection seems like a facet of this somehow. Instead of spending the time around other people, building up a social circle, most just try to "see what the app brings" because they've just lost the ability to find connections other ways.
- Inward 3y agoThe writing style, especially the introduction anecdote is so off putting I could barely stomach the article. However , I agree with the sentiment of most readers that the problem with dating apps seems to be the quantity / quality problem——without being able to accurately portray quality on most of these platforms.
- Slava_Propanei 3y ago[dead]
- mihaic 3y agoAt this point dating apps have such a broad influence over society that I'm surprised that there's not even a mention of gov regulation. I don't want the fine technocrats that brought us cookie banners to exert their control, but some more transparency for the public should be mandatory.
- StillBored 3y agoTwo things, first, while I think monogamy is probably good for society in that it gives average men/women a chance to meet each other when all the most desirable mates are taken off the market, in actual fact I think it also causes a bunch of these problems. People in their 20's are told "find someone to spend the rest of your life with" so its this super risky high stress situation rather than being a "lets hang out until we are tired of each other". Partially forced by western civilization largely trying to make little atomic families rather than making child rearing a community/extended family effort where a parent can continue to fully participate even if they don't happen to be sleeping with the child's other parent. So, IMHO marriage as this big social function is really dumb, and unneeded for two people to shack up. These days its largely a "we are going to make a family party", except when it isn't. And given humans seem to be a serially monogamous species, it probably should take that into account. Anyway, part two of this is sorta related, but the attitude of the lady in the wheelchair I find stunningly toxic and lacking any kind of self awareness. I have a feature that everyone always notes and asks about too, but long ago I realized that people rarely if ever were looking to be rude or prying or anything like that. Its largely a conversation point, but particularly around dating, it might seem a bit forward to ask if she is sexually functional, but no more so than questions like "do you want kids". Sure it might be better saved for some future date, but I'm guessing two things. First very very few people are going to be looking to date/etc someone who isn't sexually functional, and its probably a good idea to clear the air on something like that early, but also I suspect few people ask it in such a crass way. Which is suggested by the wording where the woman infers that is what they are asking and blocks them. So, i'm guessing few people are trying to denigrate her, they just are touching on a subject without their brains fully engaged to the idea she might be sensitive to that topic. Or maybe some of them are just trying to get to know her and understand her situation in life from an empathetic stance. Which means the problem is really her sensitives. People are expressing interest in her despite her problems, and to block them because they dared ask a question is what is toxic. Unless your goal is to be single until you find someone who isn't a bit clumsy everyone needs to give potential partners a bit of slack. Even without the wheelchair its impossible to find that perfect person, people screw up, etc. Excluding people with negative traits they are unwilling/incapable of fixing is one thing, but that isn't displayed by a question that many people would consider one of the more important parts of dating.
- nicman23 3y ago"enshitification"
- TheCleric 3y agoReading this and the comments here make me so glad I got married before online dating became (mostly) the defacto standard. I have a lot of sympathy for folks who have to deal with it because it sounds extra hard to date nowadays (not that it was ever truly easy).
- ternaus 3y agoI love the idea of dating apps. You are exposed to such a great and infinite pool of potential partners that you would not be able to get in real life, especially in SF Bay Area. Which changes the problem from - how to meet someone, to a better problem - how to filter out those that you definitely do not want to meet. Even more, it is not replacing your real life meetups but compliments them. My issue with dating apps is that the number of matches is large and all of them are very similar, hence the challenge is how to filter properly. As many people here, I love 10 year old version of OKCupid where you needed to fill a lot of information, answer questions and invest in the profile in general. Even if we forget about this extra information, fact that person invested in filling the profile told me that she was serious about meeting someone which is a strong signal in itself. I believe that online dating industry is a great achievement of the humanity as it drastically expanded our choice of partners, but existing implementation is waiting for the disruption. Personally, I would love if dating apps added: 1. Tags for conversations, similar to labels in gmail. 2. Ability to search - when you have hundreds of conversations, it is hard to find one that you are interested in. 3. Option to add more information to profile, say I loved questions at OKCupid. 4. Id and age verification. Feels like every second lady lies about her age. (One my female friend who is 49, uses 36 in online dating. I do not think that such a difference is that common, but still) 5. Somehow force people to use photos that are less than a year old. Very unpleasant come to a date and meet a girl that is not even close to be as fit as she is in her pictures. They are also very surprised when you do not go on a second date and, I suspect, complain to their girlfriends that "online dating is not working for them". I do not blame them - misleading with photos is so common -> she needs to mislead to be in that competitive market (I was told that men lie about their height as well). I believe this could be addressed or at least mitigated on the platform level. (Being fair - having video chat before the date helps to address this issue to some extent) 6. Showing stats. Communication, flirting, building comfort in online dating is a special skill, quite different from doing the same in real life: [6a] It is happening in asynchronous way [6b] Information channels are limited - you do not have voice, intonations, appearance, body language, face expressions, in the beginning it is just text [6c] As conversation may be stalled or end at any moment both sides increase odds by having many conversations happening at the same time. these limitations change everything and force to learn new communication skills from scratch. If we were shown metrics like: yours and average in your geography and age range stats for open rate, reply rate, length of the conversation, number of matches, number and percent of conversations that lead to a meeting (Hinge these days asks if you met in person.), etc it would help people see what their limitations are and focus on addressing them - same as in sales as sales and online dating are similar in many ways.
- thesaintlives 3y agoDating apps are great if you like finding serious partners or hookups that way. Find the one that suits you. Yes they all have different flavours and yes it does take work to make them work for you. Go for it!
- helpfulmandrill 3y agoOn the "misaligned incentives" thing, I wonder if you could have a dating site that works as follows: - The user chooses a charity of their choice. - All subscription charges are kept in "escrow". - If after two years the user has spent at least one year in a long-term relationship as a result of the app, the app gets the money. - If after two years there's no success, the money goes to the charity. That way, the app has an incentive to get users into relationships that can at least last a year. But the user has no incentive to lie (they can never get the money back, for example). Details might need tweaking, but you get the idea.
- mikestaub 3y agoAI can solve this problem very well I predict. It asks you a series of deep questions about your personality and values and then goes searching for matches for you. No swiping.
- vGPU 3y agoThe problem being that what people say they want and what people actually want are often two entirely different things.
- BogdanPetre 3y agoYou can't get good stuff without putting in the effort. Period. If you want a successful dating life, you need to put in the effort to get to know people and build relationships. If you want to eat healthy, you need to put in the effort to cook and meal prep. If you want to have a fulfilling life, you need to put in the effort to pursue your hobbies and interests. It's easy to get sucked into the world of instant gratification, but it's not worth it in the long run. The things that require the most effort are usually the most rewarding.