11 ms·

Dating: A mysterious constellation of facts

152 points by tobr 1y ago

gassi 1y ago
I think the author missed an important factor: misaligned incentives. Dating apps make money when users spend time (and money) on the platform. Users who find a partner tend to leave the platform, so dating companies are incentivized to prevent that from happening. Those companies then have more opportunities to up-sell those users on premium features, which they're more likely to purchase due to repeated failure and/or feelings of inadequacy.
- cbondurant 1y ago
  This is exactly why I always make it a point to discourage my friends from using dating apps. A dating app that is effective at solving the problem it is ostensibly designed to solve will never make money as people will be matched quickly and will have no need to pay for the service. So clearly no profitable dating app is good at matching people. I'm of the opinion that using a tool that is constantly setting you up for romantic failure and rejection in the name of keeping you on its platform is a really good way to wreck your mental health.
  - zelphirkalt 1y ago
    On the other hand, if it was so easy to find a match, then we wouldn't be trying to use dating apps. I think it is just generally hard to find a good match for many people these days.
    - nradov 1y ago
      The other side of that is that many people are simply terrible and really unsuitable for being in any sort of long term stable relationship. No dating app can solve that problem (unless maybe they incorporate mental health and life coaching services, which seems kind of sketchy as a combination). Whether the situation has gotten generally harder these days is impossible to say but I certainly don't envy those still in the dating pool.
- 10000truths 1y ago
  This is often parroted, but the reasoning is flawed. The vast majority of the platform's growth will come from new users, who are entering the dating scene. If they fail to capture that audience (say, by having a reputation of not performing as advertised), then no amount of upsells or string-alongs of existing users will sustain them, as their user base will only ever decrease, and investors will see that and withdraw accordingly.
  - djoldman 1y ago
    > The vast majority of the platform's growth will come from new users... Userbase expansion is new users less leaving users for a time period. So there are two factors, not just "new users." In any case, Match Group apps are well into the phase of focusing on extracting the most money possible from their paying users as opposed to gaining new users. After all, infinite users are useless to a company, even if it costs nothing to support them, if none of them pay.
  - parpfish 1y ago
    And to add to that- seeing a real world friend go on dates or start a relationship because of an app is better than any marketing you could ever buy. If you want to drive top-of-the-funnel growth, make the product good even it causes some folks to drop out once they’re in a relationship.
    - CuriouslyC 1y ago
      They don't need that. What option do most young people have? Most young men can't approach women, most young women can't handle being approached and we don't have shared spaces where people can get to know each other and pair off anymore. Young people think the apps are dumpster fires, they hate them, but the alternative is sadly worse.
  - Etheryte 1y ago
    I don't think this counterargument holds. It's a hell of a lot easier to get a customer who already paid once to pay a second time than it is to get a customer to pay for the first time. Also, I think most people are well aware that by and large, dating apps have a very low success rate for the majority of their users. People use them anyway.
- brudgers 1y ago
  Users who find a partner Tinder is not Match is not Grind. People partner for various reasons and durations.
- e2e4 1y ago
  Facebook dating has different incentives. https://www.facebook.com/dating https://www.facebook.com/dating
  - jeffbee 1y ago
    The only thing I can dream up less appealing than that would be dating on Nextdoor.
  - phkahler 1y ago
    IMHO they should be the best one and use that to draw people to FB. They don't need to keep people in the dating app since its not the primary business.
- feoren 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - DaSHacka 1y ago
    > This is exactly why a dating app should be developed and provided by the government. Side note: If this gives you the heebie jeebies, you are part of the problem. Bravo, I haven't laughed this much in a while. God-tier satire.
  - linguae 1y ago
    I’m sure there are many people who don’t want their dating lives influenced by whatever rulers are in charge of their governments. Democrats won’t like a MAGA dating service, and vice versa.
    - tbossanova 1y ago
      What about a nonprofit instead?
  - sqrt_1 1y ago
    I think Japan did this last year https://japandaily.jp/japans-government-initiatives-to-boost-marriage-and-birth-rates-through-dating-app/ https://japandaily.jp/japans-government-initiatives-to-boost...
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - tomhow 1y ago
    Please don't use HN for ideological battle like this. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - feoren 1y ago
      Anyone can decide a statement is "ideological" just by disagreeing with it. The statement "the government can and should provide services to its people if those services are important to its future and the free market is incapable of providing them" should not, and did not used to be, ideological. The fact that such a statement is far outside of the current Overton Window is the result of a decades-long propaganda campaign to destroy everyone's faith in government so it can be looted, and everyone who parrots "government bad" is (knowingly or not) playing a part in this propaganda campaign. I assume the issue you have with my comment is that I knew 95% of readers would immediately regurgitate "but government bad!", but of course I was right that that happened. When the Overton Window shifts to the point where saying "people should be decent to one another" becomes a radical ideological statement, make sure you flag every comment that says that too. We can't have radical ideologues on HN, after all.
- TimTheTinker 1y ago
  Bingo. This is the effect that keeps (a) incumbent platforms in place, (b) users on those platforms, (c) and potentially new platforms from coming online and offering a "superior" experience.
- KolibriFly 1y ago
  I'm not sure it's purely malicious. It might just be the result of optimizing for engagement metrics
- NoahZuniga 1y ago
  This is pretty obviously addressed in the article. The premise of the article is why don't users migrate to better platforms when the large ones are extracting as much money as possible (because the incentives are misaligned)
- ta12653421 1y ago
  By far absolutely _not_ true: - i have worked in the space for some years for two of the biggest platforms in my country - dating sites track a lot KPI and discuss them and test them thoroughly - the KPI "do-more-users-leave-our-platform-earlier-if-our-matching-algo-is-just-too-good" - I promise: In alle the years, this question WAS NEVER - NEVER!!!!!!! - raised, regardless wich Manager or which Exec. This metric isnt even debated. And here comes why: the most important thing to form a relationship are "technicals" which can NEVER be introduced into an app. There may be some advances in genomic matching, but no body deployed this so far and it wont happen unless Apple watch as a gene encoding module. There are one night stands, there some marriges (we had a "winners board" in our office), but 99% of all cases when people met, its going to be "failure" (in a sense "no match") Regardless how good your algo is - it doesnt matter when it comes to a reality check. Therefore, Dating apps have absolutely no fear of you signing off because you fond someome - its very likely that you will come back soon, second: From operators perspective it would be a good thing if people would tell "i found my match on XYZ", but sine this does happen only super rarely, there are only few such stories. So - NO: Dating sites do fear someone deleting the account. (except: you are a startup and have to keep every profile to gain some size)
  - thomastjeffery 1y ago
    And yet, the premium features are overtly aligned against user success! I believe you that these app devs think they are optimizing for user success, but that doesn't change the incentives that frame their work. The greatest utility of a dating app should be that it provides a higher number of opportunities. This feature is explicitly broken by the most popular dating apps. Often, it is put behind a paywall, which has the same effect as being broken.
    - kelnos 1y ago
      > The greatest utility of a dating app should be that it provides a higher number of opportunities. I'm not sure I agree with that. Limiting opportunities can actually be a better experience. Too many choices can lead to decision paralysis.
    - 1y ago
ed 1y ago
I don’t think speed dating is as popular as submarine[1] articles suggest. But the constraint of being in-person and with a limited set of options may be helpful for some people. The paradox of choice is a significant issue on apps. I do agree that bandwidth is significantly higher in person, we’ve evolved efficient pattern detection, and wish it were more acceptable to meet up for a quick coffee immediately after matching. But a few bad apples spoil the bunch. There’s an alternate explanation - that the fittest companies prioritize engagement and revenue until reaching some threshold of user dissatisfaction. The healthiest businesses often have customers who wish they could leave, but can’t. 1 - https://paulgraham.com/submarine.html https://paulgraham.com/submarine.html
- johnfn 1y ago
  Tangential from your point, but I don’t think this is a submarine article. This is just a single blogger. “Submarine article” typically refers to articles written by large news corporations (NYTimes eg) and incentivized by PR firms - none of which applies here. The reason I mention this is that “submarine article” is typically used to cast suspicion at the aims of the article. I can’t see any reason to do that to this article.
  - ed 1y ago
    I was suggesting OP may have been influenced by submarine articles since the popularity of speed dating is a potentially unfounded premise of their argument. (Personally, I know very few folks who’ve done speed dating but of course that’s anecdotal.)
Aaargh20318 1y ago
From the article: > (…) pictures also give lots of information about important non-superficial things, like your personality, values, social class, and lifestyle. This is the one thing that puzzles me most about dating apps: where do all these pictures come from? People seem to have pictures of them doing all kinds of activities. When I’m out with friends doing whatever, no one is taking pictures. Even if they did, it’s not like we exchange pictures afterwards. I genuinely don’t have any pictures of myself. Are me and my friends weird for not documenting every second of our lives?
- DaSHacka 1y ago
  I've been around someone trying to get into dating apps, he just started asking us to "take a picture of him real quick" while we're doing outings with the bois "so I can out it on tinder". I assume most people are this way, you just have others start taking pictures of the things you normally do (but didnt normally take pictures of) when you feel the need to make/flesh out a profile.
  - rendaw 1y ago
    I've asked friends before, but the photos they took were uniformly terrible.
    - Der_Einzige 1y ago
      Ask women (ideally an Asian woman) and they will take pictures in the top 10% or better of what an average person can take. The only more reliable group are professional photographers - and consider that zoomers prefer iPhone or even Kodak style of photos vs a Sony or canon ultra realistic style
      - plasticsoprano 1y ago
        I would say, instead of "ideally an Asian woman", a millennial woman. Was recently in a tourist spot for a work outing, we asked a random person to take our photo in front of the big monument and the photos were awful, including a finger of the photographer in each photo. This woman was in easily 50+. Gave the phone to a passing millennial aged woman and got 10 well compositioned photos in both landscape and portrait mode.
zug_zug 1y ago
I think it's actually very simple... the paradox of choice. You introduce somebody to your attractive single friend there's a real chance they hit it off and form a relationship. You introduce them to 100 attractive friends, one makes more money, one has a more stable job, one is flirtier, etc then it's both exhausting and none of them seem like a great opportunity. I think there are certain basic psychological facts that are anti-standard-economics that nerds (and therefore tech companies) almost always tend to be completely blind to. This is one of them.
- nkrisc 1y ago
  Commonly called “analysis paralysis”. For most people, I believe, once you have more than a small number of options it’s basically impossible (or feels so) to analyze and compare all options to make what seems like a rational and logical decision. So some people will just get frustrated and pick one arbitrarily, or give up and pick none. A small number of people will make a spreadsheet and devote way too much time to over-analyzing the situation, and maybe never come to a satisfactory conclusion. This applies to almost anything, even “which restaurant should we go to tonight?”
  - 1659447091 1y ago
    > ...once you have more than a small number of options it’s basically impossible (or feels so) to analyze and compare all options to make what seems like a rational and logical decision.So some people will just get frustrated and pick one arbitrarily, or give up and pick none. In this context (non-work related decisions) I find the “analysis paralysis” stems from a person not knowing themselves well enough or knowing themselves but not sure how to assert it without coming off in an off-putting way. For the latter, “which restaurant should we go to tonight?” I take that as whatever I pick is it so I pick what I want (as long as I know the other people dont have allergies to the place or something) and that's it. When people ask for a place to pick they usually mean it (from my experience), and they are happy to tag along whereever -- otherwise they will suggest something and ask others opinion, I take that to mean they want to go there but don't want to seem bossy or some other weirdness, and so we go there unless I have a problem with it that I'll voice and suggests something similar. For the former, I think people are too worried about coming off as "selfish" (and avoid learning themselves). It makes sense because some people really are, and being around them makes decent people really not want to be that. But knowing what you like and want especially when it's not what you have been told to like and want is the biggest hurdle to getting past the “analysis paralysis” here. If you know you and what you like and want than there is really not much to analysis, the analysis should be happening everyday of your life so when these big things come up you have a solid foundation to go on. Otherwise, a lot of it is trying to figure out what the best option is according to outside guidelines you've been given -- which is great for work, but not so much for oneself. Of course, maybe there are people who can't do the above for whatever, but it's a skill to know what you like and want and a skill to put it into practice without being rude, just like talking to random people or programming. You get better with real world practice/exposure.
deleted 1y ago
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SpicyLemonZest 1y ago
I'm just not sure there's a real phenomenon here. People's complaints about dating apps match up pretty precisely with common complaints about dating more generally. It's an inherently frustrating process! I think it's pretty telling that the alternatives people talk about are always alternative strategies for how to meet lots of people. The most common pre-app experience, where you didn't meet lots of people and married a random person in your social circles rather than a best friend who gets you and shares your key interests, isn't something most people are interested in.
tern 1y ago
A major factor in my world: the coolest people don't use dating apps because they find the experience awful and they have no problem meeting people in real life The spicier version: dating apps select for personality disorders, and as such, being on a dating app in the first place is a negative signal For what it's worth, I think this has always been true of the web in general (forums, chat, social media, comments sections, etc.)
- aleph_minus_one 1y ago
  > A major factor in my world: the coolest people don't use dating apps because [...] they have no problem meeting people in real life > The spicier version: dating apps select for personality disorders, and as such, being on a dating app in the first place is a negative signal I guess a lot of people you would call "cool" I would rather call "annoying self-centered people who are often very concerned about their public image (i.e. narcists)". Yes, this people may have a much easier time finding dates in real life, but if you are rather into different kinds of people for a relationship and are more on the introverted side, I guess dating in real life is not the best idea for success.
  - whynotmakealt 1y ago
    My personal philosphy is that dating is extremely hard in dating apps to the point that its not worth it I personally just try to talk to people (girls) my age who have similar interests and maybe express if I feel any emotions to them and accept or embrace both rejections/acceptations. That being said, there is this idea of desperation of constantly needing someone to love you or is it too much to ask for being loved etc. I had created a place even whose intentions was to help people struggling in finding relationships but that made me realize that people just used it to ship each other or have controversies or use it as a way to meet/date and I was none the wiser/ didn't think much of it as I was decently happy thinking that some people connected because of my efforts yet i personally felt really weird with my niche hobbies and my place felt so mainstream that I couldn't be myself in my own place or didn't feel like it so I quickly abandoned it and now its just abandonware really I personally feel like dating irl is the best thing after all my experiences or talking to people in general online, Even in dating irl, I would consider for many reasons that dating apps are still net negative. As I said, personally the best thing I feel like doing right now is maybe working on myself to be more confident and if i find a girl attractive and want to know more, then to directly approach her. Atleast, that's my goal in dating to be confident enough and to work on. myself on being a better partner.
lordnacho 1y ago
Everyone is playing the secretary problem. If you're popular, you have to turn down a lot of candidates before you try to find one that's in whatever you measure to be in your league (better than all the ones you saw previously, but I wonder how many people are really going with that). If you're on an app, that's a lot of people. At the same time, there's a bunch of people who aren't so popular who are now done checking a short queue of candidates, and willing to go with whoever shows up next above their bar. But those people are still busy rejecting everyone in a seemingly infinite line of suitors. So we have a problem getting people to match. Add to this that the sexes are not distributed the same way. There's a few ultra hot guys who will never not have a date, and there's a more even number of hot women who the less hot guys are waiting on. If you're speed dating or doing any other real-world dating, your queues are a lot shorter. You will feel like your idea of the market is set much sooner, and you can start picking out a candidate.
- krackers 1y ago
  Maybe we need to spread the word about the optimal stopping rule [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem
  - 0x264 1y ago
    The secretary problem is a bad way to formalise the problem of dating and the stopping rule doesn't work in that context, for a very simple reason. The secretary problem is a solution to the problem of having to make repeated choices. In essence it's a solution to the problem of having to choose a secretary every morning for the day. You can even say it's a solution to the problem of a computer process spending a few seconds consuming an infinite stream at the top of every hour for the next hour. It's not a solution to the problem of making a (hopefully) unique choice.
- KolibriFly 1y ago
  There's less "maybe someone better is one swipe away" and more "this is who's here tonight"
nextworddev 1y ago
Nerds will do everything to avoid practicing game, including writing blog posts
- BoingBoomTschak 1y ago
  Not everyone is a disgusting hedonist wanting "game", you know?
  - trallnag 1y ago
    I don't understand how hedonism fits into your argument. I can be a hedonist enjoying myself privately in my own four walls to the fullest without needing any game and pick-up artists.
    - BoingBoomTschak 1y ago
      You're reading B => A where I wrote A => B. If you're searching for "game", I reserve myself the right to use the word hedonist when describing you.
      - trallnag 1y ago
        1) Good point. 2) Fine.
etothepii 1y ago
My guess is that most startup founders are in a relationship. I've been in a monogamous relationship for nearly 16 years I would thus not be in a position to be a first customer.
roenxi 1y ago
The author didn't consider a more basic selection bias that the 3 contradictory facts are driven by different groups of people. That makes it rather easy to reconcile 3 apparently contradictory views. You can't jump-start a new market for a dating app with in-person speed daters because they are the people who refuse to use an app! And it is worth being a little suspicious of the people who 'hate' dating apps. There are valid criticisms, but the people who are just bad partners are going to turn up somewhere and it might be that pool of people - they tend not to be big on reflecting on their own flaws with rigorous intellectual honesty and would blame the apps.
- Der_Einzige 1y ago
  Being bad at apps means you are either ugly, or your pictures are bad. There’s plenty of examples on dating apps of people making fake bios with extremely handsome men described as being evil (I.e child abuseres) and who still had lines of women who wanted to date him. He had excellent photos and an obvious 6 pack. His pictures looked professional and showed his (large) social group where he was obviously the leader. I do not blame anyone for not being successful on dating apps because I believe a persons current physical appearance and attractiveness have little to do with their character or suitability as a partner.
  - throwaway2037 1y ago
    > Being bad at apps means you are either ugly, or your pictures are bad. For the record, I assume you are speaking about men whom are seeking women. The reverse is certainly not true. > He had ... an obvious 6 pack. This is very specific. Did he have shirtless photographs? I assume yes. It fascinates me that if you listen to what women say, 95% will say they dislike dating profiles the most when the man has shirtless photographs. Yet, 95% of women will also say that guys with a six pack are hot. It reminds me of the old adage: "Watch what women do, not what they say."
aleph_minus_one 1y ago
Concerning "dating apps suck": OkCupid was decent in its heyday. But even at that time, there were very few users of it near the city where I lived or even in the country where I lived. Thus, it simply was nevertheless not useful to me. But no other dating site uses a similar algorithm; perhaps most people care about other things in dating than what OkCupid is optimized to give them.
- Bissness 1y ago
  That OkCupid was allowed to be sold to the Match Group was yet another massive antitrust failure Founders selling out should also be viewed more critically than it currently is.
  - relaxing 1y ago
    Truly one of the more despicable examples of enshitification. OkCupid was amazing for those who made full use of its “here’s who I am and here’s who I want” question matching system. Removing those features and turning it into another swiping app was a terrible anticompetitive move.
johnfn 1y ago
Controversial take, but have we considered that possibly dating apps dont suck, and that this perception is driven by a vocal minority of the people who have the worst experience on them? (A sad fact is that dating will just suck for some % of the population. Is it possible that if there were no apps the same % would be saying how IRL dating sucks?) I know many people in stable LTRs or married who met through dating apps. But I don’t think you typically find these people participating in discourse about dating apps. If anything they’ve probably moved on to complaining why wedding planners and baby books or whatever suck.
- Gigachad 1y ago
  The fact is that younger generations are increasingly more single and finding it harder and harder to date. If dating apps are primarily to blame could be up for debate but something about the modern world is clearly not working.
  - vladms 1y ago
    I mean, we’re already six years past COVID—something that placed a heavy mental burden even on older generations. I can only imagine how much worse it was for younger people. I’d argue we’ll need another 20 years before most of the effects fade. Even before then, I don’t think dating apps were the only issue—it was more the general lack of human interaction, with everything shifting online. Being in a relationship is nothing like just "chatting" or being "connected." I’m not complaining, but during my teenage and young adult years, I feel like I had less-than-ideal real-life experiences, which shaped my social skills and expectations. Talking to people in their 30s now, I get the sense they’re only experience this much later in life.
    - aleph_minus_one 1y ago
      > I mean, we’re already six years past COVID—something that placed a heavy mental burden The only new factor that COVID brought in concerning dating is that it separated society into two groups which in German are disrespectfully called "Coronazis" (those who defended the restrictions of civil rights because of COVID-19) and "Covidioten" (those who did not believe in the COVID-19 fearmongering and the government measures). Both of these groups realized that they are not compatible with the other group on a human level and are thus no suitable dating matches. This actually lead to the inception of a new dating site for those who are skeptical of official COVID-19 narrative or feel attracted to people who share personality traits of such people: https://www.conscious-love.com https://www.conscious-love.com
jacob235 1y ago
The problems, in my view, are bandwidth and behavior, but not for the reasons noted. In a dating profile, you can carefully curate every part of your first impression. This means that 1) you need to have basically a perfect profile (doesn't mean you come off as the hottest, just that it's all green flags) because otherwise you are not putting your best foot forward, and 2) the dating profile is not reflective of the reality of the person. This leads into behavior, as you can spend however much time you want vibing and talking through text, but meeting and spending time together in person will invariably be different. This results in two major high-pressure, high-filter events as opposed to the one from initially meeting in person.
- socalgal2 1y ago
  Nice theory but in my experience 98% of profiles are generic and say almost nothing.
- aleph_minus_one 1y ago
  > The problems, in my view, are bandwidth and behavior, but not for the reasons noted. In a dating profile, you can carefully curate every part of your first impression. This means that 1) you need to have basically a perfect profile (doesn't mean you come off as the hottest, just that it's all green flags) because otherwise you are not putting your best foot forward, and 2) the dating profile is not reflective of the reality of the person. I would rather create a very honest profile because if some potential candidate is rather into the "artificial persona" that I project in my profile, when the relationship gets more serious, the match will soon realize that in real life I'm not a particular good fit.
  - cindyllm 1y ago
    [dead]
knotimpressed 1y ago
Not related directly to the article, but I’m so glad there’s a “tell me mistakes I made to fix” box. I wish more sites, hell even news sites had that.
- vintermann 1y ago
  Well, it could be related to the article, but I don't know how successful a "tell me mistakes I made to fix" box would be on dating sites.
noduerme 1y ago
I went to a speed dating thing once that tried to incorporate its own (clearly homemade) tech stack into the experience. Every few minutes you'd get a text telling you who to find next... to look for the person in the red scarf or cowboy boots or something. By the time you found them and found somewhere to sit, you had a few minutes to talk. It felt a bit unnecessary. In any case, maybe it was just how totally random in age and interest the people there were, but the result wasn't like cramming 15 online dates into the span of a single one. It was more like 15 conversations with people I would never have had the slightest impulse to contact via an online dating app. Most of the conversations had what felt like a comfortable mutual vibe of "we both understand we could not plausibly be attracted to each other." Then again, in online dating, I've come to realize that most guys incessantly swipe right, while I almost always swipe left.
rolandog 1y ago
I may be showing my age, but my wife and I both agree that we were very lucky to have met just before the dating apps became a thing.
nunez 1y ago
People always "hated" dating apps, even when I used them back in the early 2010s. However, like the iOS keyboard, people will put up with some annoyances if the overall product is valuable, and swiping for a mate (or, back in simpler times, answering heaps of questions on OkCupid and doing lots of clicking) is easier than doing so through church/school/work/bar/other opportunities through consistent exposure. (To wit: I met many incompatible people through the usual methods and met my wife through OkCupid, so the dating apps aren't useless!) Also, as a former speed-dating host, speed-dating has always been something people mostly did for the entertainment value. I never did the math on it, but if I had to guess, it probably had about the same odds of finding someone than the apps back then.
kesor 1y ago
So ... dating apps just need to remove text messages and replace them with voice messages. Problem solved. Thanks!
- imtringued 1y ago
  Isn't it weird that they are called online dating apps and you can't date people online on them? You know, doing things like video calls. It's like Omegle and Discord are the actual apps where you get to date, whereas the dating apps are where you beg for attention.
  - Der_Einzige 1y ago
    Discord is where you go to be groomed into believing that you want to date anthropomorphic animals or worse.
temptemptemp111 1y ago
[dead]
Seattle3503 1y ago
People come to dating apps for all sorts of reasons, and with different levels of investment. Pretty much every woman I know who has used a dating app has said she has gone on a dating app to alleviate boredom. That's probably not fun for the person on the other end if they are actually trying to find a partner. If someone shows up to a speed dating event, that indicates minimum level of investment in the interaction.
- bjackman 1y ago
  I think this is an inevitable side effect of the business model. I signed up for these apps to find love, that's the "strategic" reason I use them. But 99 of the time, the actual reason in the moment that I opened the app is for a dopamine hit. This is a double-edged sword because if the apps hadn't been addictive I just wouldn't have used them that much and I would have ended up with less dates. On the other hand, it obviously plays a part in the toxic underpinnings that make the whole experience so miserable in the long run Hard to see how you can really address this with design. E.g. OkCupid didn't use to have this dopamine-driven property at least back in the day when I first used it. I found it fucking boring, I didn't invest enough time into it, and ultimately I never met anyone in person (sure, I think part of the reason was also the people I saw there also seemed boring, but that can't be completely orthogonal). Looking for dates on there gave me a similar feeling as looking for a house on property sites. Yes, I really want a house and there are houses here. But I am still hating this experience of looking at houses.
  - throwaway2037 1y ago
    > Looking for dates on there gave me a similar feeling as looking for a house on property sites. Yes, I really want a house and there are houses here. But I am still hating this experience of looking at houses. I like this final paragraph. You touch upon an important emotional issue. Most people want to believe in the fairy tale stuff of chance meetings, true love, etc. The whole idea of a "marketplace" to find a partner is so off-putting. Yes, it is practical, but it is emotionally unsatisfying.
ianpenney 1y ago
Article leans heavily towards American social norms which are so far from global norms because it treats the U.S. model of dating (apps, atomized urban life, and market logic) as universal, ignoring that in much of the world relationships still form through family, community, or social context rather than algorithmic matchmaking. It’s a very “Silicon Valley is the world” kind of framing. For example a lot of communities in Canada just don’t work like this. Highly incompatible with this kind of social network, mostly due to the pre existing real social fabric. And: shout out to Max and Chris because they really got it with OKC in the beginning, which this article doesn’t seem to say anything about other than just to name drop.
- relaxing 1y ago
  You want one guy writing a blog to be an expert on dating worldwide? I don’t like rampant US-centrism either, but at some point just write your own article on dating in Canada eh? I’m guessing the author wasn’t around for the glory days of OKCupid. A distant memory at this point.
locallost 1y ago
I like these types of opinions that challenge entrenched beliefs, i.e. network effects etc. But in the end I don't think there's a contradiction -- if you have 30 people in the room speed dating, you have 30 people in the room. If you have 30 people on your app, you have 0 people on the app because most of them are there at different times and then they give up because nobody's there except them. People gravitate towards where everyone else is, in the case of a dating app it's where thousands of people in your area are, and for speed dating it's where 30 people per event are.
thenthenthen 1y ago
That filter graph: looks attractive and is not insane, i feel the last part could be its own category. I am prolly insane as well, but I would say 90% of my ‘dates’ through apps were, completely and utterly mental. The other 10% were amazing and friends for life!
andy_ppp 1y ago
Alain de Botton claims (probably with only anecdotal evidence) that we tend to find love in people who remind us of the template our parents gave us… so this is an explanation why certain individuals end up attracted to loving terrible people. How would you hope to possibly convey this? Also social proof is such a big deal for women, I think being in public your date can pick up on all sorts of qualities like self worth and confidence that are extremely difficult to convey on dating apps…
- throwaway2037 1y ago
  > I think being in public your date can pick up on all sorts of qualities like self worth and confidence that are extremely difficult to convey on dating apps… In my personal experience, when I meet people from dating apps, there is a huge disconnect between "online charm" and "in-person charm". So much so, that I now try to arrange an in-person meeting ASAP when I connect with someone. You really know very quickly if the other person is showing enthusiasm and effort, and if you have a connection.
  - ta12653421 1y ago
    this: > ASAP when I connect with someone < Just one point to add: Have a 5min call before to hear the voice. Weeks ago I had an "experience" with someone, her texts were absolutely OK but with small typos, some which are typical if you are learning the language but all in all it was possible to have a conversation. Then we met. She could barely form a useful sentence in real life conversation in our langugage, and she didnt speak English :-/
KolibriFly 1y ago
Dating apps feel bad not necessarily because they are less effective, but because they encourage a mindset that's draining: endless swiping, ghosting, the paradox of choice, etc.
Nexus42 1y ago
Are there any dating apps that try to bridge the two worlds? That is, put focus on having short video conversations with as many people as possible, rather than just selecting people based on their profile/pics and then texting.
keskival 1y ago
OkCupid used to work on the basis of high bandwidth of information and excellent matches. This wasn't profitable enough though so they changed to the Tinder-style swiping which doesn't work. More engagement interactions means more opportunity to show ads. If you find people good matches they will just leave the app.
designwhine 1y ago
Makes you wonder why innovation hasn’t bridged this gap yet, especially when user dissatisfaction is so obvious. Is the winner-take-all dynamic just too strong?
trashface 1y ago
I don't think speed dating is going to replace apps. I did some dating pre-app, it wasn't big then. Its unnatural, and doesn't appeal to many personalities. I'm one of the men apps don't work for, easy to see why we hate them. For women, I think they say they don't like apps, but they do like the fact they get an endless stream of potentially date-able men from them. So their revealed preference is they like the apps, and that is why the apps continue to be relevant.
kelnos 1y ago
To the point about the incentives of for-profit companies: dating apps are more profitable if they take longer to match you with someone you like. If everyone finds their ideal match within a week, they cancel their subscription and the company makes no more money off them. If the company puts some barriers in the app that slows down the process, you remain their customer for longer. Of course, there's a tension: they can't drag it out too much, or you'll get frustrated and leave. OkCupid used to write about this effect, back when they were independent and free. But once they were acquired by Match Group they deleted their old blog and stopped talking about things like that.
- voidmain 1y ago
  Yes. OkCupid basically solved dating, at least for people like me. It took me 2 dates to find the love of my life, and then I left the site (and all dating sites) forever. I paid them $0. Match Group, whose sites are designed to keep you single or in repeated failed relationships forever, made lots more money, bought them out, and ruined the site so they would stop shrinking the market. It's a lot like how tech companies, data and advertisers have ruined news, friendship, phone, email, politics, ...
sandspar 1y ago
I think the Job To Be Done of dating apps is "kill time on the couch". Dating apps aren't competing with speed dating; they're competing with Bejeweled. Basically dating apps are to love as Duolingo is to learning a language.
strenholme 1y ago
As someone who is on the dating scene after my wife died of cancer some thoughts: 1) There are a lot more men on the dating apps than women. 2) Using just pictures to judge men doesn’t really work for women. See https://archive.ph/20251006053755/https://medium.com/the-knowledge-of-freedom/women-do-not-think-80-percent-of-men-are-below-average-904c738bbade https://archive.ph/20251006053755/https://medium.com/the-kno... for discussion. My personal experience, based on what I’m going through and what friends have to say: 3) 17 years ago, it was possible to meet and know really attractive women on the apps. 4) These days, the really attractive women no longer use apps. 5) The apps are optimized for engagement, not giving people successful romance. Right now, the woman I’m currently dating is someone I met at church, not on the apps. The men I know who have success with women prefer the women they meet outside of the apps. As a shy geek without too many social connections, the apps (websites, actually) were a very positive game changer 17 years ago. These days, they are more a liability than asset when it comes to dating.

152 points by tobr 1y ago

I think the author missed an important factor: misaligned incentives. Dating apps make money when users spend time (and money) on the platform. Users who find a partner tend to leave the platform, so dating companies are incentivized to prevent that from happening. Those companies then have more opportunities to up-sell those users on premium features, which they're more likely to purchase due to repeated failure and/or feelings of inadequacy.

cbondurant 1y ago
This is exactly why I always make it a point to discourage my friends from using dating apps. A dating app that is effective at solving the problem it is ostensibly designed to solve will never make money as people will be matched quickly and will have no need to pay for the service. So clearly no profitable dating app is good at matching people. I'm of the opinion that using a tool that is constantly setting you up for romantic failure and rejection in the name of keeping you on its platform is a really good way to wreck your mental health.
- zelphirkalt 1y ago
  On the other hand, if it was so easy to find a match, then we wouldn't be trying to use dating apps. I think it is just generally hard to find a good match for many people these days.
  - nradov 1y ago
    The other side of that is that many people are simply terrible and really unsuitable for being in any sort of long term stable relationship. No dating app can solve that problem (unless maybe they incorporate mental health and life coaching services, which seems kind of sketchy as a combination). Whether the situation has gotten generally harder these days is impossible to say but I certainly don't envy those still in the dating pool.
10000truths 1y ago
This is often parroted, but the reasoning is flawed. The vast majority of the platform's growth will come from new users, who are entering the dating scene. If they fail to capture that audience (say, by having a reputation of not performing as advertised), then no amount of upsells or string-alongs of existing users will sustain them, as their user base will only ever decrease, and investors will see that and withdraw accordingly.
- djoldman 1y ago
  > The vast majority of the platform's growth will come from new users... Userbase expansion is new users less leaving users for a time period. So there are two factors, not just "new users." In any case, Match Group apps are well into the phase of focusing on extracting the most money possible from their paying users as opposed to gaining new users. After all, infinite users are useless to a company, even if it costs nothing to support them, if none of them pay.
- parpfish 1y ago
  And to add to that- seeing a real world friend go on dates or start a relationship because of an app is better than any marketing you could ever buy. If you want to drive top-of-the-funnel growth, make the product good even it causes some folks to drop out once they’re in a relationship.
  - CuriouslyC 1y ago
    They don't need that. What option do most young people have? Most young men can't approach women, most young women can't handle being approached and we don't have shared spaces where people can get to know each other and pair off anymore. Young people think the apps are dumpster fires, they hate them, but the alternative is sadly worse.
- Etheryte 1y ago
  I don't think this counterargument holds. It's a hell of a lot easier to get a customer who already paid once to pay a second time than it is to get a customer to pay for the first time. Also, I think most people are well aware that by and large, dating apps have a very low success rate for the majority of their users. People use them anyway.
brudgers 1y ago
Users who find a partner Tinder is not Match is not Grind. People partner for various reasons and durations.
e2e4 1y ago
Facebook dating has different incentives. https://www.facebook.com/dating https://www.facebook.com/dating
- jeffbee 1y ago
  The only thing I can dream up less appealing than that would be dating on Nextdoor.
- phkahler 1y ago
  IMHO they should be the best one and use that to draw people to FB. They don't need to keep people in the dating app since its not the primary business.
feoren 1y ago
[flagged]
- DaSHacka 1y ago
  > This is exactly why a dating app should be developed and provided by the government. Side note: If this gives you the heebie jeebies, you are part of the problem. Bravo, I haven't laughed this much in a while. God-tier satire.
- linguae 1y ago
  I’m sure there are many people who don’t want their dating lives influenced by whatever rulers are in charge of their governments. Democrats won’t like a MAGA dating service, and vice versa.
  - tbossanova 1y ago
    What about a nonprofit instead?
- sqrt_1 1y ago
  I think Japan did this last year https://japandaily.jp/japans-government-initiatives-to-boost-marriage-and-birth-rates-through-dating-app/ https://japandaily.jp/japans-government-initiatives-to-boost...
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- tomhow 1y ago
  Please don't use HN for ideological battle like this. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - feoren 1y ago
    Anyone can decide a statement is "ideological" just by disagreeing with it. The statement "the government can and should provide services to its people if those services are important to its future and the free market is incapable of providing them" should not, and did not used to be, ideological. The fact that such a statement is far outside of the current Overton Window is the result of a decades-long propaganda campaign to destroy everyone's faith in government so it can be looted, and everyone who parrots "government bad" is (knowingly or not) playing a part in this propaganda campaign. I assume the issue you have with my comment is that I knew 95% of readers would immediately regurgitate "but government bad!", but of course I was right that that happened. When the Overton Window shifts to the point where saying "people should be decent to one another" becomes a radical ideological statement, make sure you flag every comment that says that too. We can't have radical ideologues on HN, after all.
TimTheTinker 1y ago
Bingo. This is the effect that keeps (a) incumbent platforms in place, (b) users on those platforms, (c) and potentially new platforms from coming online and offering a "superior" experience.
KolibriFly 1y ago
I'm not sure it's purely malicious. It might just be the result of optimizing for engagement metrics
NoahZuniga 1y ago
This is pretty obviously addressed in the article. The premise of the article is why don't users migrate to better platforms when the large ones are extracting as much money as possible (because the incentives are misaligned)
ta12653421 1y ago
By far absolutely _not_ true: - i have worked in the space for some years for two of the biggest platforms in my country - dating sites track a lot KPI and discuss them and test them thoroughly - the KPI "do-more-users-leave-our-platform-earlier-if-our-matching-algo-is-just-too-good" - I promise: In alle the years, this question WAS NEVER - NEVER!!!!!!! - raised, regardless wich Manager or which Exec. This metric isnt even debated. And here comes why: the most important thing to form a relationship are "technicals" which can NEVER be introduced into an app. There may be some advances in genomic matching, but no body deployed this so far and it wont happen unless Apple watch as a gene encoding module. There are one night stands, there some marriges (we had a "winners board" in our office), but 99% of all cases when people met, its going to be "failure" (in a sense "no match") Regardless how good your algo is - it doesnt matter when it comes to a reality check. Therefore, Dating apps have absolutely no fear of you signing off because you fond someome - its very likely that you will come back soon, second: From operators perspective it would be a good thing if people would tell "i found my match on XYZ", but sine this does happen only super rarely, there are only few such stories. So - NO: Dating sites do fear someone deleting the account. (except: you are a startup and have to keep every profile to gain some size)
- thomastjeffery 1y ago
  And yet, the premium features are overtly aligned against user success! I believe you that these app devs think they are optimizing for user success, but that doesn't change the incentives that frame their work. The greatest utility of a dating app should be that it provides a higher number of opportunities. This feature is explicitly broken by the most popular dating apps. Often, it is put behind a paywall, which has the same effect as being broken.
  - kelnos 1y ago
    > The greatest utility of a dating app should be that it provides a higher number of opportunities. I'm not sure I agree with that. Limiting opportunities can actually be a better experience. Too many choices can lead to decision paralysis.
  - 1y ago

ed 1y ago

I don’t think speed dating is as popular as submarine[1] articles suggest. But the constraint of being in-person and with a limited set of options may be helpful for some people. The paradox of choice is a significant issue on apps. I do agree that bandwidth is significantly higher in person, we’ve evolved efficient pattern detection, and wish it were more acceptable to meet up for a quick coffee immediately after matching. But a few bad apples spoil the bunch. There’s an alternate explanation - that the fittest companies prioritize engagement and revenue until reaching some threshold of user dissatisfaction. The healthiest businesses often have customers who wish they could leave, but can’t. 1 - https://paulgraham.com/submarine.html https://paulgraham.com/submarine.html

johnfn 1y ago
Tangential from your point, but I don’t think this is a submarine article. This is just a single blogger. “Submarine article” typically refers to articles written by large news corporations (NYTimes eg) and incentivized by PR firms - none of which applies here. The reason I mention this is that “submarine article” is typically used to cast suspicion at the aims of the article. I can’t see any reason to do that to this article.
- ed 1y ago
  I was suggesting OP may have been influenced by submarine articles since the popularity of speed dating is a potentially unfounded premise of their argument. (Personally, I know very few folks who’ve done speed dating but of course that’s anecdotal.)

Aaargh20318 1y ago

From the article: > (…) pictures also give lots of information about important non-superficial things, like your personality, values, social class, and lifestyle. This is the one thing that puzzles me most about dating apps: where do all these pictures come from? People seem to have pictures of them doing all kinds of activities. When I’m out with friends doing whatever, no one is taking pictures. Even if they did, it’s not like we exchange pictures afterwards. I genuinely don’t have any pictures of myself. Are me and my friends weird for not documenting every second of our lives?

DaSHacka 1y ago
I've been around someone trying to get into dating apps, he just started asking us to "take a picture of him real quick" while we're doing outings with the bois "so I can out it on tinder". I assume most people are this way, you just have others start taking pictures of the things you normally do (but didnt normally take pictures of) when you feel the need to make/flesh out a profile.
- rendaw 1y ago
  I've asked friends before, but the photos they took were uniformly terrible.
  - Der_Einzige 1y ago
    Ask women (ideally an Asian woman) and they will take pictures in the top 10% or better of what an average person can take. The only more reliable group are professional photographers - and consider that zoomers prefer iPhone or even Kodak style of photos vs a Sony or canon ultra realistic style
    - plasticsoprano 1y ago
      I would say, instead of "ideally an Asian woman", a millennial woman. Was recently in a tourist spot for a work outing, we asked a random person to take our photo in front of the big monument and the photos were awful, including a finger of the photographer in each photo. This woman was in easily 50+. Gave the phone to a passing millennial aged woman and got 10 well compositioned photos in both landscape and portrait mode.

zug_zug 1y ago

I think it's actually very simple... the paradox of choice. You introduce somebody to your attractive single friend there's a real chance they hit it off and form a relationship. You introduce them to 100 attractive friends, one makes more money, one has a more stable job, one is flirtier, etc then it's both exhausting and none of them seem like a great opportunity. I think there are certain basic psychological facts that are anti-standard-economics that nerds (and therefore tech companies) almost always tend to be completely blind to. This is one of them.

nkrisc 1y ago
Commonly called “analysis paralysis”. For most people, I believe, once you have more than a small number of options it’s basically impossible (or feels so) to analyze and compare all options to make what seems like a rational and logical decision. So some people will just get frustrated and pick one arbitrarily, or give up and pick none. A small number of people will make a spreadsheet and devote way too much time to over-analyzing the situation, and maybe never come to a satisfactory conclusion. This applies to almost anything, even “which restaurant should we go to tonight?”
- 1659447091 1y ago
  > ...once you have more than a small number of options it’s basically impossible (or feels so) to analyze and compare all options to make what seems like a rational and logical decision.So some people will just get frustrated and pick one arbitrarily, or give up and pick none. In this context (non-work related decisions) I find the “analysis paralysis” stems from a person not knowing themselves well enough or knowing themselves but not sure how to assert it without coming off in an off-putting way. For the latter, “which restaurant should we go to tonight?” I take that as whatever I pick is it so I pick what I want (as long as I know the other people dont have allergies to the place or something) and that's it. When people ask for a place to pick they usually mean it (from my experience), and they are happy to tag along whereever -- otherwise they will suggest something and ask others opinion, I take that to mean they want to go there but don't want to seem bossy or some other weirdness, and so we go there unless I have a problem with it that I'll voice and suggests something similar. For the former, I think people are too worried about coming off as "selfish" (and avoid learning themselves). It makes sense because some people really are, and being around them makes decent people really not want to be that. But knowing what you like and want especially when it's not what you have been told to like and want is the biggest hurdle to getting past the “analysis paralysis” here. If you know you and what you like and want than there is really not much to analysis, the analysis should be happening everyday of your life so when these big things come up you have a solid foundation to go on. Otherwise, a lot of it is trying to figure out what the best option is according to outside guidelines you've been given -- which is great for work, but not so much for oneself. Of course, maybe there are people who can't do the above for whatever, but it's a skill to know what you like and want and a skill to put it into practice without being rude, just like talking to random people or programming. You get better with real world practice/exposure.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

SpicyLemonZest 1y ago

I'm just not sure there's a real phenomenon here. People's complaints about dating apps match up pretty precisely with common complaints about dating more generally. It's an inherently frustrating process! I think it's pretty telling that the alternatives people talk about are always alternative strategies for how to meet lots of people. The most common pre-app experience, where you didn't meet lots of people and married a random person in your social circles rather than a best friend who gets you and shares your key interests, isn't something most people are interested in.

tern 1y ago

A major factor in my world: the coolest people don't use dating apps because they find the experience awful and they have no problem meeting people in real life The spicier version: dating apps select for personality disorders, and as such, being on a dating app in the first place is a negative signal For what it's worth, I think this has always been true of the web in general (forums, chat, social media, comments sections, etc.)

aleph_minus_one 1y ago
> A major factor in my world: the coolest people don't use dating apps because [...] they have no problem meeting people in real life > The spicier version: dating apps select for personality disorders, and as such, being on a dating app in the first place is a negative signal I guess a lot of people you would call "cool" I would rather call "annoying self-centered people who are often very concerned about their public image (i.e. narcists)". Yes, this people may have a much easier time finding dates in real life, but if you are rather into different kinds of people for a relationship and are more on the introverted side, I guess dating in real life is not the best idea for success.
- whynotmakealt 1y ago
  My personal philosphy is that dating is extremely hard in dating apps to the point that its not worth it I personally just try to talk to people (girls) my age who have similar interests and maybe express if I feel any emotions to them and accept or embrace both rejections/acceptations. That being said, there is this idea of desperation of constantly needing someone to love you or is it too much to ask for being loved etc. I had created a place even whose intentions was to help people struggling in finding relationships but that made me realize that people just used it to ship each other or have controversies or use it as a way to meet/date and I was none the wiser/ didn't think much of it as I was decently happy thinking that some people connected because of my efforts yet i personally felt really weird with my niche hobbies and my place felt so mainstream that I couldn't be myself in my own place or didn't feel like it so I quickly abandoned it and now its just abandonware really I personally feel like dating irl is the best thing after all my experiences or talking to people in general online, Even in dating irl, I would consider for many reasons that dating apps are still net negative. As I said, personally the best thing I feel like doing right now is maybe working on myself to be more confident and if i find a girl attractive and want to know more, then to directly approach her. Atleast, that's my goal in dating to be confident enough and to work on. myself on being a better partner.

lordnacho 1y ago

Everyone is playing the secretary problem. If you're popular, you have to turn down a lot of candidates before you try to find one that's in whatever you measure to be in your league (better than all the ones you saw previously, but I wonder how many people are really going with that). If you're on an app, that's a lot of people. At the same time, there's a bunch of people who aren't so popular who are now done checking a short queue of candidates, and willing to go with whoever shows up next above their bar. But those people are still busy rejecting everyone in a seemingly infinite line of suitors. So we have a problem getting people to match. Add to this that the sexes are not distributed the same way. There's a few ultra hot guys who will never not have a date, and there's a more even number of hot women who the less hot guys are waiting on. If you're speed dating or doing any other real-world dating, your queues are a lot shorter. You will feel like your idea of the market is set much sooner, and you can start picking out a candidate.

krackers 1y ago
Maybe we need to spread the word about the optimal stopping rule [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem
- 0x264 1y ago
  The secretary problem is a bad way to formalise the problem of dating and the stopping rule doesn't work in that context, for a very simple reason. The secretary problem is a solution to the problem of having to make repeated choices. In essence it's a solution to the problem of having to choose a secretary every morning for the day. You can even say it's a solution to the problem of a computer process spending a few seconds consuming an infinite stream at the top of every hour for the next hour. It's not a solution to the problem of making a (hopefully) unique choice.
KolibriFly 1y ago
There's less "maybe someone better is one swipe away" and more "this is who's here tonight"

nextworddev 1y ago

Nerds will do everything to avoid practicing game, including writing blog posts

BoingBoomTschak 1y ago
Not everyone is a disgusting hedonist wanting "game", you know?
- trallnag 1y ago
  I don't understand how hedonism fits into your argument. I can be a hedonist enjoying myself privately in my own four walls to the fullest without needing any game and pick-up artists.
  - BoingBoomTschak 1y ago
    You're reading B => A where I wrote A => B. If you're searching for "game", I reserve myself the right to use the word hedonist when describing you.
    - trallnag 1y ago
      1) Good point. 2) Fine.

etothepii 1y ago

My guess is that most startup founders are in a relationship. I've been in a monogamous relationship for nearly 16 years I would thus not be in a position to be a first customer.

roenxi 1y ago

The author didn't consider a more basic selection bias that the 3 contradictory facts are driven by different groups of people. That makes it rather easy to reconcile 3 apparently contradictory views. You can't jump-start a new market for a dating app with in-person speed daters because they are the people who refuse to use an app! And it is worth being a little suspicious of the people who 'hate' dating apps. There are valid criticisms, but the people who are just bad partners are going to turn up somewhere and it might be that pool of people - they tend not to be big on reflecting on their own flaws with rigorous intellectual honesty and would blame the apps.

Der_Einzige 1y ago
Being bad at apps means you are either ugly, or your pictures are bad. There’s plenty of examples on dating apps of people making fake bios with extremely handsome men described as being evil (I.e child abuseres) and who still had lines of women who wanted to date him. He had excellent photos and an obvious 6 pack. His pictures looked professional and showed his (large) social group where he was obviously the leader. I do not blame anyone for not being successful on dating apps because I believe a persons current physical appearance and attractiveness have little to do with their character or suitability as a partner.
- throwaway2037 1y ago
  > Being bad at apps means you are either ugly, or your pictures are bad. For the record, I assume you are speaking about men whom are seeking women. The reverse is certainly not true. > He had ... an obvious 6 pack. This is very specific. Did he have shirtless photographs? I assume yes. It fascinates me that if you listen to what women say, 95% will say they dislike dating profiles the most when the man has shirtless photographs. Yet, 95% of women will also say that guys with a six pack are hot. It reminds me of the old adage: "Watch what women do, not what they say."

aleph_minus_one 1y ago

Concerning "dating apps suck": OkCupid was decent in its heyday. But even at that time, there were very few users of it near the city where I lived or even in the country where I lived. Thus, it simply was nevertheless not useful to me. But no other dating site uses a similar algorithm; perhaps most people care about other things in dating than what OkCupid is optimized to give them.

Bissness 1y ago
That OkCupid was allowed to be sold to the Match Group was yet another massive antitrust failure Founders selling out should also be viewed more critically than it currently is.
- relaxing 1y ago
  Truly one of the more despicable examples of enshitification. OkCupid was amazing for those who made full use of its “here’s who I am and here’s who I want” question matching system. Removing those features and turning it into another swiping app was a terrible anticompetitive move.

johnfn 1y ago

Controversial take, but have we considered that possibly dating apps dont suck, and that this perception is driven by a vocal minority of the people who have the worst experience on them? (A sad fact is that dating will just suck for some % of the population. Is it possible that if there were no apps the same % would be saying how IRL dating sucks?) I know many people in stable LTRs or married who met through dating apps. But I don’t think you typically find these people participating in discourse about dating apps. If anything they’ve probably moved on to complaining why wedding planners and baby books or whatever suck.

Gigachad 1y ago
The fact is that younger generations are increasingly more single and finding it harder and harder to date. If dating apps are primarily to blame could be up for debate but something about the modern world is clearly not working.
- vladms 1y ago
  I mean, we’re already six years past COVID—something that placed a heavy mental burden even on older generations. I can only imagine how much worse it was for younger people. I’d argue we’ll need another 20 years before most of the effects fade. Even before then, I don’t think dating apps were the only issue—it was more the general lack of human interaction, with everything shifting online. Being in a relationship is nothing like just "chatting" or being "connected." I’m not complaining, but during my teenage and young adult years, I feel like I had less-than-ideal real-life experiences, which shaped my social skills and expectations. Talking to people in their 30s now, I get the sense they’re only experience this much later in life.
  - aleph_minus_one 1y ago
    > I mean, we’re already six years past COVID—something that placed a heavy mental burden The only new factor that COVID brought in concerning dating is that it separated society into two groups which in German are disrespectfully called "Coronazis" (those who defended the restrictions of civil rights because of COVID-19) and "Covidioten" (those who did not believe in the COVID-19 fearmongering and the government measures). Both of these groups realized that they are not compatible with the other group on a human level and are thus no suitable dating matches. This actually lead to the inception of a new dating site for those who are skeptical of official COVID-19 narrative or feel attracted to people who share personality traits of such people: https://www.conscious-love.com https://www.conscious-love.com

jacob235 1y ago

The problems, in my view, are bandwidth and behavior, but not for the reasons noted. In a dating profile, you can carefully curate every part of your first impression. This means that 1) you need to have basically a perfect profile (doesn't mean you come off as the hottest, just that it's all green flags) because otherwise you are not putting your best foot forward, and 2) the dating profile is not reflective of the reality of the person. This leads into behavior, as you can spend however much time you want vibing and talking through text, but meeting and spending time together in person will invariably be different. This results in two major high-pressure, high-filter events as opposed to the one from initially meeting in person.

socalgal2 1y ago
Nice theory but in my experience 98% of profiles are generic and say almost nothing.
aleph_minus_one 1y ago
> The problems, in my view, are bandwidth and behavior, but not for the reasons noted. In a dating profile, you can carefully curate every part of your first impression. This means that 1) you need to have basically a perfect profile (doesn't mean you come off as the hottest, just that it's all green flags) because otherwise you are not putting your best foot forward, and 2) the dating profile is not reflective of the reality of the person. I would rather create a very honest profile because if some potential candidate is rather into the "artificial persona" that I project in my profile, when the relationship gets more serious, the match will soon realize that in real life I'm not a particular good fit.
- cindyllm 1y ago
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knotimpressed 1y ago

Not related directly to the article, but I’m so glad there’s a “tell me mistakes I made to fix” box. I wish more sites, hell even news sites had that.

vintermann 1y ago
Well, it could be related to the article, but I don't know how successful a "tell me mistakes I made to fix" box would be on dating sites.

noduerme 1y ago

I went to a speed dating thing once that tried to incorporate its own (clearly homemade) tech stack into the experience. Every few minutes you'd get a text telling you who to find next... to look for the person in the red scarf or cowboy boots or something. By the time you found them and found somewhere to sit, you had a few minutes to talk. It felt a bit unnecessary. In any case, maybe it was just how totally random in age and interest the people there were, but the result wasn't like cramming 15 online dates into the span of a single one. It was more like 15 conversations with people I would never have had the slightest impulse to contact via an online dating app. Most of the conversations had what felt like a comfortable mutual vibe of "we both understand we could not plausibly be attracted to each other." Then again, in online dating, I've come to realize that most guys incessantly swipe right, while I almost always swipe left.

rolandog 1y ago

I may be showing my age, but my wife and I both agree that we were very lucky to have met just before the dating apps became a thing.

nunez 1y ago

People always "hated" dating apps, even when I used them back in the early 2010s. However, like the iOS keyboard, people will put up with some annoyances if the overall product is valuable, and swiping for a mate (or, back in simpler times, answering heaps of questions on OkCupid and doing lots of clicking) is easier than doing so through church/school/work/bar/other opportunities through consistent exposure. (To wit: I met many incompatible people through the usual methods and met my wife through OkCupid, so the dating apps aren't useless!) Also, as a former speed-dating host, speed-dating has always been something people mostly did for the entertainment value. I never did the math on it, but if I had to guess, it probably had about the same odds of finding someone than the apps back then.

kesor 1y ago

So ... dating apps just need to remove text messages and replace them with voice messages. Problem solved. Thanks!

imtringued 1y ago
Isn't it weird that they are called online dating apps and you can't date people online on them? You know, doing things like video calls. It's like Omegle and Discord are the actual apps where you get to date, whereas the dating apps are where you beg for attention.
- Der_Einzige 1y ago
  Discord is where you go to be groomed into believing that you want to date anthropomorphic animals or worse.

temptemptemp111 1y ago

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Seattle3503 1y ago

People come to dating apps for all sorts of reasons, and with different levels of investment. Pretty much every woman I know who has used a dating app has said she has gone on a dating app to alleviate boredom. That's probably not fun for the person on the other end if they are actually trying to find a partner. If someone shows up to a speed dating event, that indicates minimum level of investment in the interaction.

bjackman 1y ago
I think this is an inevitable side effect of the business model. I signed up for these apps to find love, that's the "strategic" reason I use them. But 99 of the time, the actual reason in the moment that I opened the app is for a dopamine hit. This is a double-edged sword because if the apps hadn't been addictive I just wouldn't have used them that much and I would have ended up with less dates. On the other hand, it obviously plays a part in the toxic underpinnings that make the whole experience so miserable in the long run Hard to see how you can really address this with design. E.g. OkCupid didn't use to have this dopamine-driven property at least back in the day when I first used it. I found it fucking boring, I didn't invest enough time into it, and ultimately I never met anyone in person (sure, I think part of the reason was also the people I saw there also seemed boring, but that can't be completely orthogonal). Looking for dates on there gave me a similar feeling as looking for a house on property sites. Yes, I really want a house and there are houses here. But I am still hating this experience of looking at houses.
- throwaway2037 1y ago
  > Looking for dates on there gave me a similar feeling as looking for a house on property sites. Yes, I really want a house and there are houses here. But I am still hating this experience of looking at houses. I like this final paragraph. You touch upon an important emotional issue. Most people want to believe in the fairy tale stuff of chance meetings, true love, etc. The whole idea of a "marketplace" to find a partner is so off-putting. Yes, it is practical, but it is emotionally unsatisfying.

ianpenney 1y ago

Article leans heavily towards American social norms which are so far from global norms because it treats the U.S. model of dating (apps, atomized urban life, and market logic) as universal, ignoring that in much of the world relationships still form through family, community, or social context rather than algorithmic matchmaking. It’s a very “Silicon Valley is the world” kind of framing. For example a lot of communities in Canada just don’t work like this. Highly incompatible with this kind of social network, mostly due to the pre existing real social fabric. And: shout out to Max and Chris because they really got it with OKC in the beginning, which this article doesn’t seem to say anything about other than just to name drop.

relaxing 1y ago
You want one guy writing a blog to be an expert on dating worldwide? I don’t like rampant US-centrism either, but at some point just write your own article on dating in Canada eh? I’m guessing the author wasn’t around for the glory days of OKCupid. A distant memory at this point.

locallost 1y ago

I like these types of opinions that challenge entrenched beliefs, i.e. network effects etc. But in the end I don't think there's a contradiction -- if you have 30 people in the room speed dating, you have 30 people in the room. If you have 30 people on your app, you have 0 people on the app because most of them are there at different times and then they give up because nobody's there except them. People gravitate towards where everyone else is, in the case of a dating app it's where thousands of people in your area are, and for speed dating it's where 30 people per event are.

thenthenthen 1y ago

That filter graph: looks attractive and is not insane, i feel the last part could be its own category. I am prolly insane as well, but I would say 90% of my ‘dates’ through apps were, completely and utterly mental. The other 10% were amazing and friends for life!

andy_ppp 1y ago

Alain de Botton claims (probably with only anecdotal evidence) that we tend to find love in people who remind us of the template our parents gave us… so this is an explanation why certain individuals end up attracted to loving terrible people. How would you hope to possibly convey this? Also social proof is such a big deal for women, I think being in public your date can pick up on all sorts of qualities like self worth and confidence that are extremely difficult to convey on dating apps…

throwaway2037 1y ago
> I think being in public your date can pick up on all sorts of qualities like self worth and confidence that are extremely difficult to convey on dating apps… In my personal experience, when I meet people from dating apps, there is a huge disconnect between "online charm" and "in-person charm". So much so, that I now try to arrange an in-person meeting ASAP when I connect with someone. You really know very quickly if the other person is showing enthusiasm and effort, and if you have a connection.
- ta12653421 1y ago
  this: > ASAP when I connect with someone < Just one point to add: Have a 5min call before to hear the voice. Weeks ago I had an "experience" with someone, her texts were absolutely OK but with small typos, some which are typical if you are learning the language but all in all it was possible to have a conversation. Then we met. She could barely form a useful sentence in real life conversation in our langugage, and she didnt speak English :-/

KolibriFly 1y ago

Dating apps feel bad not necessarily because they are less effective, but because they encourage a mindset that's draining: endless swiping, ghosting, the paradox of choice, etc.

Nexus42 1y ago

Are there any dating apps that try to bridge the two worlds? That is, put focus on having short video conversations with as many people as possible, rather than just selecting people based on their profile/pics and then texting.

keskival 1y ago

OkCupid used to work on the basis of high bandwidth of information and excellent matches. This wasn't profitable enough though so they changed to the Tinder-style swiping which doesn't work. More engagement interactions means more opportunity to show ads. If you find people good matches they will just leave the app.

designwhine 1y ago

Makes you wonder why innovation hasn’t bridged this gap yet, especially when user dissatisfaction is so obvious. Is the winner-take-all dynamic just too strong?

trashface 1y ago

I don't think speed dating is going to replace apps. I did some dating pre-app, it wasn't big then. Its unnatural, and doesn't appeal to many personalities. I'm one of the men apps don't work for, easy to see why we hate them. For women, I think they say they don't like apps, but they do like the fact they get an endless stream of potentially date-able men from them. So their revealed preference is they like the apps, and that is why the apps continue to be relevant.

kelnos 1y ago

To the point about the incentives of for-profit companies: dating apps are more profitable if they take longer to match you with someone you like. If everyone finds their ideal match within a week, they cancel their subscription and the company makes no more money off them. If the company puts some barriers in the app that slows down the process, you remain their customer for longer. Of course, there's a tension: they can't drag it out too much, or you'll get frustrated and leave. OkCupid used to write about this effect, back when they were independent and free. But once they were acquired by Match Group they deleted their old blog and stopped talking about things like that.

voidmain 1y ago
Yes. OkCupid basically solved dating, at least for people like me. It took me 2 dates to find the love of my life, and then I left the site (and all dating sites) forever. I paid them $0. Match Group, whose sites are designed to keep you single or in repeated failed relationships forever, made lots more money, bought them out, and ruined the site so they would stop shrinking the market. It's a lot like how tech companies, data and advertisers have ruined news, friendship, phone, email, politics, ...

sandspar 1y ago

I think the Job To Be Done of dating apps is "kill time on the couch". Dating apps aren't competing with speed dating; they're competing with Bejeweled. Basically dating apps are to love as Duolingo is to learning a language.

strenholme 1y ago

As someone who is on the dating scene after my wife died of cancer some thoughts: 1) There are a lot more men on the dating apps than women. 2) Using just pictures to judge men doesn’t really work for women. See https://archive.ph/20251006053755/https://medium.com/the-knowledge-of-freedom/women-do-not-think-80-percent-of-men-are-below-average-904c738bbade https://archive.ph/20251006053755/https://medium.com/the-kno... for discussion. My personal experience, based on what I’m going through and what friends have to say: 3) 17 years ago, it was possible to meet and know really attractive women on the apps. 4) These days, the really attractive women no longer use apps. 5) The apps are optimized for engagement, not giving people successful romance. Right now, the woman I’m currently dating is someone I met at church, not on the apps. The men I know who have success with women prefer the women they meet outside of the apps. As a shy geek without too many social connections, the apps (websites, actually) were a very positive game changer 17 years ago. These days, they are more a liability than asset when it comes to dating.