No matter what you use, it seems they always fail and no one is interested.
Even a free app like duolicious has this problem.
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Profit is gained by engagement.
Engagement is the opposite of solving the problem.
So an intermediate platform is not a working solution for dating.
Best interests of people looking for other people and the intermediary are in direct contradiction.
Duolicious? That owl has been busy, I see.
Dating apps are SUPER saturated now. Didn’t used to be like that way back in the beginning. OKCupid was cool because it was free and had no limitations. Bumble is one of the better ones these days, as far as I’m concerned.
Sorta related, if you’re really interested in using them and are a straight cis person I highly recommend trying them out from the other side. Create a more or less generic account of the opposite gender and see what kinds of messages, likes, or whatever you end up with. It will be mind boggling how different it is from what you are used to and give you an idea of what you will need to do to actually make a match.
I think apps and websites where you can see everyone without limits or algorithms are fine. Apps like those still exist. They are just like social networks with no gamification.
So I don’t think it’s the apps, friends. If it hurts no matter where you touch, maybe it’s your finger that’s broken…
I generally hate thinking like this, but ultimately, as with everything, there comes a point where it’s actually beneficial and probably the only healing move left, to admit that the problem might be in one’s self, not others (or the tools used, as in this case).
But that does not mean that the metaphorical finger is inherently fragile or unavoidably always broken. Just realizing this, as much as our psyche fights against it both to avoid admitting fault or conceding that there’s a lot of work to do, can start the processes to get the finger working and healthy.
I also don’t like how often this line of thought is turned around and used as a weapon, when it can actually be very hopeful and healing after the initial struggles trying to accept it (and failing to do so, defensively fighting against it with all your cells for a good while).
Well put. And let’s not forget that society is in many ways against us and expectations are high. Are you fit? Do you have good hair and teeth? Do you already have children? Are you in finance? Etc etc. And this is true in apps and irl. So the only thing you have control of, is accepting yourself, loving yourself, and growing for sake of yourself. With some luck, you grow into someone that someone else also loves.
I almost rejected someone that was truly into who I was as a person. I almost shrugged it off as them just being horny all the time. It’s almost scary to find someone that actually likes us and all our weird quirks.
I think apps and websites where you can see everyone without limits or algorithms are fine. Apps like those still exist. They are just like social networks with no gamification.
So I don’t think it’s the apps, friends. If it hurts no matter where you touch, maybe it’s your finger that’s broken…
I think there was a time fairly early on when at least one was built to do the job it was advertised to.
I think more than half of Lemmy’s members were born after that though.
Well, sorta. As someone else pointed out the economic incentives for most dating app owners are diametrically opposed to the needs of the users. There is also a huge consolation in the market with the majority of the apps by user count being owned by a single company which leads to enshittification.
There are a few exceptions but they very much aren’t for everyone.
OKCupid from 20 years ago was great before it sold out. But it’s only accessible to time travelers.
Next are the more event based or hookup apps which tend to cater to kinksters, swingers, poly, and queer folk. I’m thinking of things like FetLife, Grinder and Plura. They work well for their audience since those communities tend to have events that people will keep coming back for even if they have successfully found someone on the app. In fact success finding someone might make them more likely to keep on the app and bring in their friends.
But for monogamous straight people? Dating apps are a hellscape.
They work. I don’t know why people like to perpetuate that dating apps make suboptimal matches. Dating apps match people up on some basic metrics. It’s up to the people to form connections. They dont have a magic ability to keep people from long term relationships.
If anything people might be more picky or idealistic because dating apps exist, so they’ll likely not commit because of their high standards or FOMO. But that’s more of a society issue not the dating apps themselves.
I’m a man and I sought out relationships exclusively through online dating*. It was extremely discouraging, but it did eventually work three or four times (depending on how you define a long term relationship) over the course of years of trying. Each success was a big deal.
I used the free version of the old OkCupid - the one where you wrote a long profile and answered a bunch of multiple-choice questions. I only sent messages to women who seemed highly compatible with me, and I put some thought into every message. My rough estimate is that one in twenty messages received a reply. One in five replies lead to a date. One in five dates was the start of a long-term relationship. So that’s “only” about 500 messages per relationship, and that took several years. (There weren’t 500 women on the site who lived nearby and seemed compatible with me at any one time.)
I have no idea how well the modern “swipe” apps work. Frankly they seem gross and I never seriously tried using them.
Edit: I should add that I looked a little worse than average, had weird hobbies, and possessed enough social skills to sit quietly and not embarrass myself or the people I was with. I wasn’t exactly hot stuff.
*I have been introduced to women by a friend or relative a few times, but that friend/relative was the one who took the initiative.
With that kind of hit rate and timescale did you ever think the apps were unnecessary vs just meeting people? Or were you not really in a position to meet people by other means anyway?
No, there were always lots of people relatively near me. Even when I lived in New Hampshire, I was only an hour away from Boston. Now I live in Manhattan. My issue is the standard one that nerds have: intense social anxiety, and all the solitary habits formed by decades of social anxiety.
The funny thing is that when my dog was alive, I made sure that he had an active social life. I would even ask strangers with dogs if their dogs would like to meet mine.
Damn, I can’t even do this: my dog has worse social skills than I do (we tried but she is a rescue with a hard previous life)
Mine was weird because he had very intense separation anxiety but as long as I was with him, he loved everyone and wasn’t afraid of anything. He could even watch fireworks with me - when the noise started, he gave me a look and when he saw that I was calm, he didn’t worry either.
I met my partner through a dating site. In the two years prior to that, I had used the site to meet over two dozen other women, which led to no long-term relationships but did result in a few short flings.
I can say that what helped me was expectation management. This was actually my second time using a dating site, and the first time around I was super picky, looking for “green flags.” Correspondingly, I messaged very few women, and met even fewer (four in two years). The second time, I realized that someone having a sparse profile didn’t mean they were a boring or lazy person. Sometimes it does, but other times it just means they aren’t very good at writing about themselves.
I’ll also say there’s only so much the metrics of dating sites can tell you about someone and your compatibility with them. There’s a level of response bias to the questionnaires on these sites, i.e. people answer the questions based on what they think a potential partner might like, not their genuine beliefs and preferences. You’ll never discover your actual compatibility with someone unless you talk to them, so I took the approach of, “unless there are explicit deal breakers in your profile, I’ll ask you on a date and we’ll see how things go.”
There’s also the expectation management for the frequency of matches, responses to messages, dates, and beyond. Dating apps aren’t magic machines that will get you hooked up in hours. They take work, and you’ll see a lot of rejection (most of it just utter silence). There can be long dry spells. Sometimes you’ll need to take a break because you’ve literally messaged everyone on the site and you need to wait for more members. And sometimes, they just won’t work for some people. That sounds harsh, but it’s true. Success for many of these sites and apps is highly dependent on one’s physical attractiveness, and some people simply did not win the genetic lottery.
The first dating apps designed for straight people always had an unbalanced ration of men and women, which appears to have gotten worse over time. Early on a few people I know did find people, dated, and married. They were mostly people who had niche interests for our area and were successfully connecting with people at least a couple hours away who they never would have met in person.
But that was well over a decade ago and I don’t know of anyone having success since those early years.
I think they are worse now than they used to be, but they do work for some people. I was always suspicious of the PII gathered so I stayed away from them. Craigslist personals worked back when they existed, and Reddit can work. An important tip: copyedit your SPAG (spelling, punctuation, and grammar) to hell and back before sending a response, since the slightest error WILL hurt your chances.
Without wanting to sound patronising, dating apps absolutely do work, but it’s the users that make them work. If your profile photos are shit, or your chat is uninteresting or unfunny, you’re not going to succeed.
I’m a middle-aged male divorcee who’d been off and on Tinder for about 4 years, and I’d describe myself as average-looking, but I met a number of women on it. Without the dating apps, my in-person shyness would have prevented me from meeting anyone. They were an absolute godsend for me.
They were “decent” 14 ish years ago. And they worked a fair amount. I know married friends who met on them.
That said the Internet in general has fallen off a cliff with enshitification…
I know people today that still use them and do ok.
“Free” anything is going to be complete shit.
Like anything else in life it takes work, during 8 months I was doing it I spent 10-15 hours on it. And that wasn’t “scrolling” profiles. I was constantly tweaking my profile, looking for was to improve it. Also when I did “match” someone I worked on my greetings, interesting things to say, etc.
I would even keep snippets of texts. (The one I was on had a question/answer part.
Dating is a lot of work for many people.
