The fact that one company repeatedly bought out its competition and now owns, according the the article, 45 dating apps probably has a lot to do with why they suck. Instead of competing by trying to be better, just buy out the rivals, gut them, and make everything worse. As long as the dominant player has lots of capital to buy any upstarts and the regulatory environment lets them do it, it can be an easier way to make money than actually being good would be.
As well as regulating them, Western governments might want to actually fund high-quality, not-for-profit dating systems of some kind. Improved health for citizens, lessened extremism, not to mention possibly boosted population growth could result.
Yeah, to NPR's credit they do touch on this, but I think this is yet another facet of American life and business where the answer is the same, and simple.
There is a monopoly in this sector of the economy and the monopolist's profit incentives are opposed to human life. In particular this monopoly stands to make the most money by lying and claiming to facilitate the creation of relationships, while in actuality not delivering that promise so that you stay subscribed.
Match is just doing what economic incentives compel it to, but they are incentivized to prevent people from developing secure long-term relationships and starting families, which is pretty sinister.
It's all right there and clear as day, simple economics, and Match is probably breaking the law at this point as it erodes our belief in love itself.
By standard Economic theory, that is not a stable strategy, since it incentivises starting new dating apps. It only has to be moderately successful to ensure a profitable exit. Over time, Match would run out of money.
Given that Economists overwhelmingly get these things right more than our intuitions, I'm really curious what explanations they have.
I feel like there's a genius adversarial strategy to be had here. It seems to me the dominant player is overvaluing the possibility of being displaced and is misallocating capital to acquire competition of dubious merits. I can leverage this by making a passable clone of their product in the hopes of being bought out for much more than I'm worth.
idk is Bumble a lot better? I don't think it is and now they've added ads that have a timer to skip. The fundamentals of this market makes me think dating apps are destined to be trash.
In a free market, if such a company's products are crappy, as you propose, then that means there's an opportunity for anyone that wants to make profit to provide an app that isn't crappy; they'd get rewarded for it.
The question shouldn't be "how do we stop this company", it should be, "why aren't people providing competing, non-crappy, apps?". Let's fix the root issue rather than proposing regulation to regulate a problem that shouldn't exist.
Former dating app founder here - lots of thoughts on the space - feel free to AMA
High level though, there's a lot of human behavior which makes dating frustrating with or without apps.
At it's core, even in the best case, dating has A LOT of rejection. Dating apps introduce more opportunity for incremental validation (you got liked!) but also incremental rejection (you got ghosted!) and the sheer number of interactions that lead to nothing is much higher and more quantifiable than IRL (you've all seen the r/tinder sankey diagrams)
Two "solutions" I believe would generally benefit dating
1. Apps are more transparent and equitable with how they expose profiles to other users. Don't bias toward highly liked people to increase perceived "quality" and shadow-hide show profiles that aren't liked often (and then ask them to pay lol). Show people more randomly, to better represent the true cross section of people on the app.
2. Daters set some type of routine that works for them - say "I'll try to go on ~1 date per month". Being intentional about this helps minimize the feeling that each date is so fatalistic / it's the end of the world if the person who seemed awesome when messaging is actually a jerk. It'd be nice if an app facilitated this type of routine and figured out a feedback mechanism to reward users who were generally pleasant / respectful on their dates.
I'd like to bring back an article, more analytical on this paratox (the title, Why You Should Never Pay For Online Dating, speaks a lot), from the old and now dead OkCupid blog.
Funnily, this post was deleted just after the acquisition from the Match Group in 2011.
OkCupid really went to pot after the acquisition. You can't even browse/search any more. It's all Tinder-style matching. Is that what people really want?
Online dating has gotten progressively worse over the past ~10 years. Even Craigslist personals is gone... Where can one meet a weirdo nowadays?
Oh man my comment on how Match group is a gambling app company is up there. I've been online dating for 20 years with pretty decent experiences as a short, ugly man, but now indeed the app/online dating situation is the worst ever. Some of this is probably due to me being older though.
Thanks. a great article. Over 10 years old and still spicy.
Bookmarked for further research.
Oddly, OKCupid came out in our interviews as "one of the better" types
of business and produced the most long term matches. Has anyone got
some other data sources on quality and satisfaction in dating apps,
with some large sample sizes?
A couple years ago, post pandemic, I tried these apps for the first time in my life (mid forties), and I had the what is apparently the typical hetero male experience of no matches.
It wasn't bad dates or ghosting or catfishing all that stuff you read about. Just no dates, no chats even. Gave up after a few months and deleted them, I doubt I'll ever go back on there.
Its perhaps controversial, but I definitely didn't "lead with my wallet" on my profile. And maybe for an average guy that is the only viable strategy, but of course that is selecting for a particular type of relationship.
Committed relationships found by judging other people's personality and looks are completely unnatural for human beings, and a result of conditioning by society.
The natural state is living immersed in a place where other beings are and spontaneously interacting with them without a developed ego/personality filtering the interaction, as the closest relatives to human (chimpanzees and bonobos) do.
This makes the socially-conditioned relationship model very unstable, since such a relationship will only work if, as long as and to the extent that the conditioned beliefs happen to match the other person and their beliefs.
Since the conditioned beliefs are fundamentally false (because they are of the form "you will be happy if X" but happiness is actually the absence of any such belief) they are unstable and they will mutate once their falsehood is partially realized, and this process, along with viral cultural propagation, also creates many different conditioned mindsets that make matching and intimacy very challenging.
So the problems with dating apps are just a very specific effect of what is the fundamental nature of human beings and reality.
The tech is superficially premised on the idea that humans will behave the same in captivity. Necessity and familiarity are critical variables in the right environment for pair bonding that can't be replicated through technology that exists to undermine those two things. Technology solves the necessity of people to depend on one another or invest their time in interpersonal experiences; it's easier than ever to shut the world out and not worry about survival. It also allows people to be distant while creating the illusion of connectedness, and people are going to be much less likely to invest in new relationships in that case. Take those things away and all you have is the primitive instinct to act on, which is what today's dating apps are specifically tuned to. If you want more than that, it's almost too bad, because opportunities for the sexes to engage in meaningful shared experiences are few and far between today. You're lucky if you see the same person more than once at a coffee shop. Go to a night club today, and chances are it will be predominantly full of people who for some reason aren't actually interested in having fun or giving anyone a chance outside of their clique. Workplaces are not only far more remote-oriented today but are less hospitable to relationships among coworkers than ever. Meetups are basically a joke now, and let's not even get into the bar.
Younger generations are correct in getting out of the dating app game, even if perhaps it will take a while for people to actually return to meatspace for dating, by and large.
It's said that it's better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all, but Alfred Lord Tennyson never used a dating app.
Dating apps are a world of abundance, a buffet of sausages for women. For men they are a pit of hell, unless you're either (1) in the top 10% (2) have low standards.
Here are some Tinder stats [1]
- a man of average attractiveness is “liked” by approximately 0.87% (1 in 115) of women on Tinder.
- the bottom 80% of men (in terms of attractiveness) are competing for the bottom 22% of women and the top 78% of women are competing for the top 20% of men.
Anecdotally I have never had anything remotely resembling "success" on a dating app. I almost never get matches, my messages almost never get replies, and even when I get to the point of scheduling a date, they virtually always drop off. And then even when they agree to a date, they often cancel on the day of, and on multiple occasions even block me.
In real life meeting women in person, I've ever had any issues with dating.
It annoys me that people speak of "dating apps" collectively without addressing the enormous discrepancy between the male and female experience on them. It's analogous to speaking about the pros and cons of something like monarchy without considering that your experience of monarchy is going to drastically depend on whether you're the king or his subjects.
I don't really see a solution either. Men need to get off the apps and meet women in person, because otherwise they're fighting for the bottom of the barrel (I don't say this to put anyone down - the point is that you're going to have access to way better quality as a man if you meet people in real life).
Dating apps by and far are quite useless. If you ever want to know how insidious they are, just download one, finish your profile, and swipe for 10 minutes a week.
Since you are not an "active user" they will give you the most attractive people to swipe on. Every couple of days they will give you a "limited time" discount on gold or platinum or whatever. The push notifications are my favorite part, "you could be missing out on the love of your life!!!".
Not to mention the interactions with the UI are littered with casino like visuals. The whole purpose of the app is to get you addicted and spending time and money on it.
It's much easier to naturally meet people in real life through work/school. If you can't there, go hang out at coffee shops or bookstores or something and just hang. Strike up conversation with people, just live. You'll get rejected and some people will be rude but it's all real. You could also always pick up hobbies and meet people there. Just be social, don't spend time and money on these machines of misery.
Until dating apps explicitly measure success in terms of matches made and users deleting the app at all levels of their business, the quality of their products will suffer
If a product team is incentivized to bring in revenue over creating long term relationships, then it will always make decisions that sacrifice the latter for the former
Investors need to understand and accept that these business measure success in that way or find a different stock
Otherwise the apps will have a slow trickle of users leaving after a slew of mediocre first dates or little to no high quality matches
It's only a paradox until you realize that dating apps would shoot themselves in the foot with such a user-hostile model, trashing their brand. Hanlon's Razor directs us to the simpler explanation, which is that 90% of people on dating markets stay on dating markets; for which there are many, many highly personalized reasons. No dating app can fix its users' mindsets.
There are three rules on dating apps, and they haven't changed in the last couple of decades: be attractive, don't be unattractive, and inject humor. The fourth rule is to remember that if you want to be treated like a customer then make sure you pay for the product rather than being the product; the fifth rule is to have patience over things outside of your control.
I found my wife on Hinge in a suburban-bordering-rural part of the country (so not a lot of people on the apps in absolute terms) right before its acquisition and actually had better success broadly speaking on Bumble. The trick was, unfortunately, to pay for it. Have super likes or whatever they're called. Pay for the membership to see people who like me without having to swipe. Pay to boost my profile so more people see it and potentially like it. The worst part (for me), actually spend time curating photos and writing thoughtful answers to things - the former being much more important than the latter. Even with all of this I'd hit nights where I had seemingly swiped one way or the other on every eligible bachelorette within 100 miles. Maybe I had.
Unfortunately I don't have any reproducible or generalizable advice from meeting my wife. She was my only match on Hinge, neither of us paid for it, and we moved to phone conversation and dates within 48 hours.
I really like this take, and I think it becomes extremely self-evident once you think about it for a bit, and talk with people who use dating apps IRL.
"Dating apps are incentivized to keep people going on mediocre first dates" is such a tired take that would require such incredible sophistication and secrecy to pull off, "we can't make the matches too shitty, but we also can't make them too good, damn it Jim that match was too high quality! now they'll stop paying!" its comic book villain stuff that cannot possibly explain why all of these apps suck.
"For which there are many highly personalized reasons" -> Look, yes people are responsible for their own mindsets. But in the words of a recent tweet (I wish I could cite but I can't find it) concerning learning comprehension tanking in K-12 students: Its Phones! Its just phones. Its obviously phones! You hear this crap like "well, its a highly complicated situation with many variables and possible explanations" Nope! Its literally just phones!
Dating is hard, weird, and scary. Its one of the most vulnerable things humans do. We're putting kids on a dopamine treadmill from childhood, and we're surprised that, at best, we've got cohorts of individuals growing up who love the matching but stop when it gets any more difficult than a swipe?
I completely agree. I'm always amused by the idea that dating apps have this secret, sophisticated algorithm that gives you dates that are nice but leave you wanting more. Human relationships are hard and I doubt that the best experts in the field could come up with something like that, and it's certainly impossible for an algorithm without any information about the person. I always feel that these complaints come from the frustration of not being able to find the perfect partner, from people who don't even come close to the standard they want in a partner.
In my experience, online dating is a pretty well functioning marketplace. People have a limited amount of time to date, so they'll take the best one they can get. Of course, online dating narrows down the ranking process to superficial information, but I don't think there's a technical solution to that. As a man I've seen both sides of the coin. When I started out with online dating I didn't have good pictures, no good bio, no good writing skills and didn't pay. I went months without a good match and even longer without a date. Then I decided to clean up my profile, highlight my strengths as a potential partner, learned to carry a fun conversation and started paying for the product and suddenly had to reject women, simply because I had too many options for any given night.
Dating apps are just a more extreme form of real dating. Dating always has been a competition, people will choose the best partner they can get. The advantage of the real world is that people often don't have many choices, but the disadvantage of the real world is also that people don't have many choices. Apps get rid of that disadvantage, but also of that advantage.
I don't doubt that many users are approaching dating apps suboptimally but I don't think its fair to completely throw out the idea that these companies are knowingly trading quality of service for profitability.
Network effects are such a huge piece of the puzzle that can draw people to a service despite it being a bad experience (see FB marketplace), and app companies have gotten extremely good at finding the optimal amount of user hostility (see the vast majority of mobile games).
Beyond that, Match can afford to be user hostile because they have proven able to consistently buy basically everyone in town. Who cares if Tinder gets a bad rap, there's a very good chance users go to another Match Group service and they can buy practically any non-Match service that springs up.
> It's only a paradox until you realize that dating apps would shoot themselves in the foot with such a user-hostile model, trashing their brand.
This is sarcasm right? What dating app has a stellar reputation? Which one hasn't been outright caught or isn't widely suspected of using fake profiles to string users along? Or hasn't failed to prevent obvious scammers/rapists? Or hasn't leaked/sold their customer's data?
The idea that dating apps have a precious reputation that they must carefully maintain or no one would use their services is beyond ridiculous
An actually good date is worth potentially hundreds of dollars. I’m surprised there isn’t an app which meets this need. Yes there is “The League” but even that is just a more exclusive Tinder. No, make a matchmaker app for high paying customers that uses human curation. $500 for 3 dates.
The article doesn't mention this at all but there seems to be an abundance of "content creators" on dating sites targeting men. They will chat with you for a day or so and then try to sell you their "product."
It's anecdotal but this happened to me several times. You also hit a bunch of profiles that are clearly promoting similar services.
I'm sure it's not great for women either, but dating apps in modern times are pretty awful for men.
For a straight male, you’ll see a surprisingly large number of fake profiles. Anecdotally, women seem to report this too. (Reddit has MANY such posts!) So identity verification is a real problem.
As an iPhone user, I’d seriously consider using a dating app that ONLY allowed you to “Sign in with Apple”, in the belief that it’s the “best” way to ensure a real human is behind the sign-in, more-so than email/pwd, or even Facebook or Google sign-ins.
btw, I'm just throwing out that "Sign in with Apple" is "best" only to challenge "Sign in with Facebook" or "Sign in with Google" folks to explain why not.
At the very least, it's nice to have Apple whip up a random email address for you every time a site asks for one.
The problem with dating apps is that most people on there are looking for validation and dopamine hits, not actual dates.
The value of the dating app for most people is the dopamine hit they receive upon getting a new connection and the expectation that when they open it again they might see someone new and interesting. Once they’ve gotten the validation of the match there is very little reason to move forward with an actual date.
6 years ago you could actually match with real local people that you even met before, now you just get matched with Asian crypto scammers and Thai women.
They scammed me out of 60€. Don't waste your money or mental health on this.
I had a wake up call with Craigslist. 15 years ago I found every apartment or sublet or room for rent through Craigslist, no problem, never had an issue.
After moving back to the states last year after a decade abroad, I tried Craigslist to find an apartment and literally every single one was a scam. Times change.
My theory of dating apps is that the hurdles in front of them will largely define your experience with them. For instance Tinder in China is behind the Great Firewall and requires you knowing it exists despite it not being marketed whatsoever there, both of which create a strong selective effect on who is on the app, making it a very different experience than Tinder elsewhere despite the app itself being the same (hint: I had a great experience with it, largely well-educated global-minded people with an anti-authoritarian bent and high motivation to take dates seriously, at least when I was using it many years ago).
In trying to make a dating app “easy” you create a new selective effect for who it will appeal to, which may be (but usually is not) positive.
The "enshitification" of dating apps is long overdue, in fact I'd say it's one of the easiest to predict.
"Enshitification" almost follows a formula: take any app that does not have a direct path to revenue, add investor cash, watch the enshitification as the apps founders try to please investors. Dating apps here have an additional issue which is you are guaranteed to have users "fall off", either a user finds someone and drops off or the user get frustrated and drops off, one of these outcomes is basically guaranteed for a dating app.
And this is just my opinion but I feel like unlike other apps, users are more resistant to paying for dating apps because it makes you look like a looser and dating is is inherently viewed as something that should be "free" (at least the meeting aspect)
I guess my question is what did investors really expect?
I never had a problem getting matches on dating apps, but it’s hard to not let that go to your head. Often times I feel like I’m just swiping through a catalog looking for a quick fix.
For real relationships, having a strong network of friends who can introduce you to new people organically is key. Without that, you have nothing and basically must rely on dating apps. If you go out and do stuff just because you want to meet people and not actually do the activity, it is real easy to pick up on and puts people off.
> Basically, a new app starts up, and hopeless romantics looking for real love begin flocking to it. But so do sleazy types who lie on their dating profiles.
That pretty much sums up every social media site. Hasn't seemed to happen here, but I'm sure it's because of damn good moderation. A quick shufti through New, shows a lot of spammers and hypers, pushing their wares, just like they do, in LinkedIn, and StackOverflow.
Dating apps for most people seem like a complete waste of time and actually detrimental to your life. There are exceptions, of course, like people much too busy.
As a male, it seems guaranteed (probably due to supply vs demand disparity?) that you will only have matches that are significantly less attractive than you. I think most people will consider me average in looks. I don't think I've ever matched with a girl that was average on online dating in the 5 years I tried it. I also got professional photo help and put a lot of effort into it etc. As another commenter mentioned, more than half the women I met up with also had an STI.
There has been some research done on the attraction thing, and it has been shown that if women don't know you, they are exceedingly likely to rate men as mostly ugly. If they do know you, however, their ratings are more of a bell curve. So if you want the most attractive possible match (for you), and have the best chance at someone you have the most chemistry with, I think you have to just meet a lot of women in person and get to know them first. It is unfortunate because people are seemingly less social nowadays? So it is kind of a problem that makes itself worse.
> As a male, it seems guaranteed (probably due to supply vs demand disparity?) that you will only have matches that are significantly less attractive than you.
This seems to wildly vary across apps, but that's not generally been my experience. I've also found that folks can have a very different conception of attractiveness than their prospective partners.
I’ve found that it’s not just the photos but the writing and content on profiles.
It was surprising to me how many people had really poorly written profiles or just photos.
I’m guessing I’m a 4-5 but have matched with really attractive, and more importantly, very smart, successful, and interesting people. At first I was surprised but women tell me that many people on dating apps put in little effort or just can’t do basic things like carry a conversation beyond “hey” and “your [sic] beautiful.”
I find that the apps are useful for meeting lots of people in person and testing out chemistry. I’m not sure a better way to meet people IRL.
I’m in my 40s and only have my own experience so YMMV.
I’m curious how you knew half the women you met had an STI. Are you asking this?
Your points are all valid, but is it really a waste of time and detrimental? If your ultimate goal is to meet someone long term, what is a better use of your time? Even if your chances are slim, and several dates in a row fail, you just need one to succeed.
[+] [-] not2b|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Exoristos|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] safety1st|2 years ago|reply
There is a monopoly in this sector of the economy and the monopolist's profit incentives are opposed to human life. In particular this monopoly stands to make the most money by lying and claiming to facilitate the creation of relationships, while in actuality not delivering that promise so that you stay subscribed.
Match is just doing what economic incentives compel it to, but they are incentivized to prevent people from developing secure long-term relationships and starting families, which is pretty sinister.
It's all right there and clear as day, simple economics, and Match is probably breaking the law at this point as it erodes our belief in love itself.
[+] [-] BurningFrog|2 years ago|reply
Given that Economists overwhelmingly get these things right more than our intuitions, I'm really curious what explanations they have.
[+] [-] IIAOPSW|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] benced|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PaulHoule|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] tayo42|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] interstice|2 years ago|reply
How is this not an issue? Non competes?
[+] [-] passwordoops|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thegrim33|2 years ago|reply
The question shouldn't be "how do we stop this company", it should be, "why aren't people providing competing, non-crappy, apps?". Let's fix the root issue rather than proposing regulation to regulate a problem that shouldn't exist.
[+] [-] sweetro17|2 years ago|reply
High level though, there's a lot of human behavior which makes dating frustrating with or without apps.
At it's core, even in the best case, dating has A LOT of rejection. Dating apps introduce more opportunity for incremental validation (you got liked!) but also incremental rejection (you got ghosted!) and the sheer number of interactions that lead to nothing is much higher and more quantifiable than IRL (you've all seen the r/tinder sankey diagrams)
Two "solutions" I believe would generally benefit dating
1. Apps are more transparent and equitable with how they expose profiles to other users. Don't bias toward highly liked people to increase perceived "quality" and shadow-hide show profiles that aren't liked often (and then ask them to pay lol). Show people more randomly, to better represent the true cross section of people on the app.
2. Daters set some type of routine that works for them - say "I'll try to go on ~1 date per month". Being intentional about this helps minimize the feeling that each date is so fatalistic / it's the end of the world if the person who seemed awesome when messaging is actually a jerk. It'd be nice if an app facilitated this type of routine and figured out a feedback mechanism to reward users who were generally pleasant / respectful on their dates.
[+] [-] sakawa|2 years ago|reply
https://web.archive.org/web/20100821041938/http://blog.okcup...
Latest discussion on this:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33163930
[+] [-] icedchai|2 years ago|reply
Online dating has gotten progressively worse over the past ~10 years. Even Craigslist personals is gone... Where can one meet a weirdo nowadays?
[+] [-] carabiner|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nonrandomstring|2 years ago|reply
Oddly, OKCupid came out in our interviews as "one of the better" types of business and produced the most long term matches. Has anyone got some other data sources on quality and satisfaction in dating apps, with some large sample sizes?
[+] [-] trashface|2 years ago|reply
Its perhaps controversial, but I definitely didn't "lead with my wallet" on my profile. And maybe for an average guy that is the only viable strategy, but of course that is selecting for a particular type of relationship.
[+] [-] devit|2 years ago|reply
The natural state is living immersed in a place where other beings are and spontaneously interacting with them without a developed ego/personality filtering the interaction, as the closest relatives to human (chimpanzees and bonobos) do.
This makes the socially-conditioned relationship model very unstable, since such a relationship will only work if, as long as and to the extent that the conditioned beliefs happen to match the other person and their beliefs.
Since the conditioned beliefs are fundamentally false (because they are of the form "you will be happy if X" but happiness is actually the absence of any such belief) they are unstable and they will mutate once their falsehood is partially realized, and this process, along with viral cultural propagation, also creates many different conditioned mindsets that make matching and intimacy very challenging.
So the problems with dating apps are just a very specific effect of what is the fundamental nature of human beings and reality.
[+] [-] ravenstine|2 years ago|reply
Younger generations are correct in getting out of the dating app game, even if perhaps it will take a while for people to actually return to meatspace for dating, by and large.
It's said that it's better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all, but Alfred Lord Tennyson never used a dating app.
[+] [-] michaelt|2 years ago|reply
The experiences are as different as night and day - and the different user groups have completely different requirements of the product.
The article is interesting, but IMHO they've really missed the key asymmetries that make good dating apps so hard to build.
[+] [-] TruthSeeking|2 years ago|reply
Here are some Tinder stats [1]
- a man of average attractiveness is “liked” by approximately 0.87% (1 in 115) of women on Tinder. - the bottom 80% of men (in terms of attractiveness) are competing for the bottom 22% of women and the top 78% of women are competing for the top 20% of men.
Anecdotally I have never had anything remotely resembling "success" on a dating app. I almost never get matches, my messages almost never get replies, and even when I get to the point of scheduling a date, they virtually always drop off. And then even when they agree to a date, they often cancel on the day of, and on multiple occasions even block me.
In real life meeting women in person, I've ever had any issues with dating.
It annoys me that people speak of "dating apps" collectively without addressing the enormous discrepancy between the male and female experience on them. It's analogous to speaking about the pros and cons of something like monarchy without considering that your experience of monarchy is going to drastically depend on whether you're the king or his subjects.
I don't really see a solution either. Men need to get off the apps and meet women in person, because otherwise they're fighting for the bottom of the barrel (I don't say this to put anyone down - the point is that you're going to have access to way better quality as a man if you meet people in real life).
[1] https://medium.com/@worstonlinedater/tinder-experiments-ii-g...
[+] [-] leach|2 years ago|reply
Since you are not an "active user" they will give you the most attractive people to swipe on. Every couple of days they will give you a "limited time" discount on gold or platinum or whatever. The push notifications are my favorite part, "you could be missing out on the love of your life!!!".
Not to mention the interactions with the UI are littered with casino like visuals. The whole purpose of the app is to get you addicted and spending time and money on it.
It's much easier to naturally meet people in real life through work/school. If you can't there, go hang out at coffee shops or bookstores or something and just hang. Strike up conversation with people, just live. You'll get rejected and some people will be rude but it's all real. You could also always pick up hobbies and meet people there. Just be social, don't spend time and money on these machines of misery.
[+] [-] charliebwrites|2 years ago|reply
If a product team is incentivized to bring in revenue over creating long term relationships, then it will always make decisions that sacrifice the latter for the former
Investors need to understand and accept that these business measure success in that way or find a different stock
Otherwise the apps will have a slow trickle of users leaving after a slew of mediocre first dates or little to no high quality matches
[+] [-] solatic|2 years ago|reply
There are three rules on dating apps, and they haven't changed in the last couple of decades: be attractive, don't be unattractive, and inject humor. The fourth rule is to remember that if you want to be treated like a customer then make sure you pay for the product rather than being the product; the fifth rule is to have patience over things outside of your control.
[+] [-] pc86|2 years ago|reply
Unfortunately I don't have any reproducible or generalizable advice from meeting my wife. She was my only match on Hinge, neither of us paid for it, and we moved to phone conversation and dates within 48 hours.
[+] [-] 015a|2 years ago|reply
"Dating apps are incentivized to keep people going on mediocre first dates" is such a tired take that would require such incredible sophistication and secrecy to pull off, "we can't make the matches too shitty, but we also can't make them too good, damn it Jim that match was too high quality! now they'll stop paying!" its comic book villain stuff that cannot possibly explain why all of these apps suck.
"For which there are many highly personalized reasons" -> Look, yes people are responsible for their own mindsets. But in the words of a recent tweet (I wish I could cite but I can't find it) concerning learning comprehension tanking in K-12 students: Its Phones! Its just phones. Its obviously phones! You hear this crap like "well, its a highly complicated situation with many variables and possible explanations" Nope! Its literally just phones!
Dating is hard, weird, and scary. Its one of the most vulnerable things humans do. We're putting kids on a dopamine treadmill from childhood, and we're surprised that, at best, we've got cohorts of individuals growing up who love the matching but stop when it gets any more difficult than a swipe?
[+] [-] Extasia785|2 years ago|reply
In my experience, online dating is a pretty well functioning marketplace. People have a limited amount of time to date, so they'll take the best one they can get. Of course, online dating narrows down the ranking process to superficial information, but I don't think there's a technical solution to that. As a man I've seen both sides of the coin. When I started out with online dating I didn't have good pictures, no good bio, no good writing skills and didn't pay. I went months without a good match and even longer without a date. Then I decided to clean up my profile, highlight my strengths as a potential partner, learned to carry a fun conversation and started paying for the product and suddenly had to reject women, simply because I had too many options for any given night.
Dating apps are just a more extreme form of real dating. Dating always has been a competition, people will choose the best partner they can get. The advantage of the real world is that people often don't have many choices, but the disadvantage of the real world is also that people don't have many choices. Apps get rid of that disadvantage, but also of that advantage.
[+] [-] enragedcacti|2 years ago|reply
Network effects are such a huge piece of the puzzle that can draw people to a service despite it being a bad experience (see FB marketplace), and app companies have gotten extremely good at finding the optimal amount of user hostility (see the vast majority of mobile games).
Beyond that, Match can afford to be user hostile because they have proven able to consistently buy basically everyone in town. Who cares if Tinder gets a bad rap, there's a very good chance users go to another Match Group service and they can buy practically any non-Match service that springs up.
[+] [-] throwaway2037|2 years ago|reply
Is that advice for men? I hope so. In my experience, women don't need to be funny to be successful on dating apps.
[+] [-] autoexec|2 years ago|reply
This is sarcasm right? What dating app has a stellar reputation? Which one hasn't been outright caught or isn't widely suspected of using fake profiles to string users along? Or hasn't failed to prevent obvious scammers/rapists? Or hasn't leaked/sold their customer's data?
The idea that dating apps have a precious reputation that they must carefully maintain or no one would use their services is beyond ridiculous
[+] [-] janalsncm|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] droptablemain|2 years ago|reply
It's anecdotal but this happened to me several times. You also hit a bunch of profiles that are clearly promoting similar services.
I'm sure it's not great for women either, but dating apps in modern times are pretty awful for men.
[+] [-] blendo|2 years ago|reply
As an iPhone user, I’d seriously consider using a dating app that ONLY allowed you to “Sign in with Apple”, in the belief that it’s the “best” way to ensure a real human is behind the sign-in, more-so than email/pwd, or even Facebook or Google sign-ins.
Except maybe ID.me as used by the IRS and the VA?
[+] [-] throwaway2037|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blendo|2 years ago|reply
At the very least, it's nice to have Apple whip up a random email address for you every time a site asks for one.
[+] [-] FirmwareBurner|2 years ago|reply
This way you can also avoid the poor Android users and clear them off the gene pool. /s
[+] [-] orasis|2 years ago|reply
The value of the dating app for most people is the dopamine hit they receive upon getting a new connection and the expectation that when they open it again they might see someone new and interesting. Once they’ve gotten the validation of the match there is very little reason to move forward with an actual date.
[+] [-] shimonabi|2 years ago|reply
6 years ago you could actually match with real local people that you even met before, now you just get matched with Asian crypto scammers and Thai women.
They scammed me out of 60€. Don't waste your money or mental health on this.
[+] [-] hombre_fatal|2 years ago|reply
After moving back to the states last year after a decade abroad, I tried Craigslist to find an apartment and literally every single one was a scam. Times change.
[+] [-] presentation|2 years ago|reply
In trying to make a dating app “easy” you create a new selective effect for who it will appeal to, which may be (but usually is not) positive.
[+] [-] _fat_santa|2 years ago|reply
"Enshitification" almost follows a formula: take any app that does not have a direct path to revenue, add investor cash, watch the enshitification as the apps founders try to please investors. Dating apps here have an additional issue which is you are guaranteed to have users "fall off", either a user finds someone and drops off or the user get frustrated and drops off, one of these outcomes is basically guaranteed for a dating app.
And this is just my opinion but I feel like unlike other apps, users are more resistant to paying for dating apps because it makes you look like a looser and dating is is inherently viewed as something that should be "free" (at least the meeting aspect)
I guess my question is what did investors really expect?
[+] [-] deadbabe|2 years ago|reply
For real relationships, having a strong network of friends who can introduce you to new people organically is key. Without that, you have nothing and basically must rely on dating apps. If you go out and do stuff just because you want to meet people and not actually do the activity, it is real easy to pick up on and puts people off.
[+] [-] ChrisMarshallNY|2 years ago|reply
That pretty much sums up every social media site. Hasn't seemed to happen here, but I'm sure it's because of damn good moderation. A quick shufti through New, shows a lot of spammers and hypers, pushing their wares, just like they do, in LinkedIn, and StackOverflow.
[+] [-] Madmallard|2 years ago|reply
As a male, it seems guaranteed (probably due to supply vs demand disparity?) that you will only have matches that are significantly less attractive than you. I think most people will consider me average in looks. I don't think I've ever matched with a girl that was average on online dating in the 5 years I tried it. I also got professional photo help and put a lot of effort into it etc. As another commenter mentioned, more than half the women I met up with also had an STI.
There has been some research done on the attraction thing, and it has been shown that if women don't know you, they are exceedingly likely to rate men as mostly ugly. If they do know you, however, their ratings are more of a bell curve. So if you want the most attractive possible match (for you), and have the best chance at someone you have the most chemistry with, I think you have to just meet a lot of women in person and get to know them first. It is unfortunate because people are seemingly less social nowadays? So it is kind of a problem that makes itself worse.
[+] [-] breather|2 years ago|reply
This seems to wildly vary across apps, but that's not generally been my experience. I've also found that folks can have a very different conception of attractiveness than their prospective partners.
[+] [-] prepend|2 years ago|reply
It was surprising to me how many people had really poorly written profiles or just photos.
I’m guessing I’m a 4-5 but have matched with really attractive, and more importantly, very smart, successful, and interesting people. At first I was surprised but women tell me that many people on dating apps put in little effort or just can’t do basic things like carry a conversation beyond “hey” and “your [sic] beautiful.”
I find that the apps are useful for meeting lots of people in person and testing out chemistry. I’m not sure a better way to meet people IRL.
I’m in my 40s and only have my own experience so YMMV.
I’m curious how you knew half the women you met had an STI. Are you asking this?
[+] [-] francisofascii|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway2037|2 years ago|reply
How did you know? Did they tell you or did you "discover" it x-days later?
[+] [-] badcppdev|2 years ago|reply
You seem to have an idea of your attractiveness which doesn't match the measurably evidence and yet you discard that evidence. Why?
I get the impression that attractiveness is very important to you. Ironically I think that might be a very unattractive trait.