Online dating industry in crisis as shares fall and nearly half of all users report negative experiences on the apps
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https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/article/2024/aug/17/dating-apps-decline-bumble-tinder
Good.
commercial dating apps are a dirty business anyways.
I’ve never used one of those apps, but the risk of being defrauded or, worse, assaulted, would be way too high for me to take that sort of chance.
I can’t imagine how unpleasant I would feel if I was defrauded or harmed because of using a dating website. I’m going to call that ‘appalling’, although that’s too weak a word.
I’m so happy that I met my wife through circumstance and chance and we just love each other and that’s it.
I got married before smartphones were a thing. I’m just lucky my wife loves me even though I’m an idiot.
It’s really not that hard, don’t give out personal info. Meet in a public place.
Long cons are a thing. I think I would just try to date people I already knew or just stay single. But I’m not the most trusting soul after getting burned a couple of times when I owned a business.
Yeah but that’s not an issue with dating apps. That’s just an issue with humans.
True, but dating apps put you in touch with strangers as possible dates rather than people you already know. I admit this is way out of my ballpark and I’m just speculating about myself. I don’t think I’d do anything like speed dating if that’s still a thing either.
There’s no one I know that could be a potential partner. I’m assuming many people are in a similar boat. We have to date strangers anyways, app or no app.
That sucks.
I don’t know if this is a thing anymore but “back in my day” your friends/family/coworkers/roommates would try to hook you up with other people that they know are single and might be a good match. Especially the older ladies in your life, that was like their mission in life. Aside from that, you might ask someone who runs in overlapping circles that you’ve seen a few times if they want to get coffee or lunch.The closest thing to Tinder-type dating would have been “cruising” on a Friday and Saturday night, driving up and down the Main Street of your town, hanging out in parking lots to talk and make plans for the night. Even then, you would ask “where do/did you go to school” and “do you know ____” “are you related to” type questions to establish your “degrees of Kevin Bacon” relationship in the social network.
So there was no need to date total strangers. That would be considered kinda weird and suspicious, which is why online dating was heavily stigmatized in the late 90’s/early 2000’s. I went on a few match.com and eharmony dates but kept it secret, telling only my closest friends, out of shame. They thought I was crazy, meeting up with strangers like that.
A few horny guys would try to chat up every random stranger and it occasionally paid off for them, but that wasn’t really normal behavior.
I think we’re all more mobile now, moving from city to city for work, so those networks are probably shattered for most people.
I feel so incredibly lucky that I dodged the dating app bullet, it seems awful for guys to try and compete in that space. And for women, having creepy dudes be creepy with no repercussions, with no way to tell their mother/aunt/sister to smack some sense into them… not great.
Like I said, I’d probably just remain single in that case. I just am not trusting enough of total strangers. If a friend set me up with someone, I’d do that. But I would be too suspicious to date a total stranger.
Just me personally.
Different strokes for different folks. Been on many dates with strangers, it’s almost always enjoyable. Turns out 99% of people are just normal people. The 1% of crazy people are the stories you hear that make people not want to go outside. Id just rather not live my life in fear.
Never met anyone good off those apps. Now Craigslist, I have met friends for life.
I met my husband of 8.5 years on Craigslist Casual Encounters. Those were the times.
Now Craigslist, I have met friends for life.
Or at least the rest of it.
Met my fiance on a dating app, but I think they really peaked in the pandemic for the reasons the article stated that nobody had anywhere else to go.
Now it’s likely just filters for people who spend the time cultivating a social presence elsewhere.
As a guy, these apps suck. I’ve met a few people on them, but it’s very obvious that they are deliberately hiding matches and people that are your type behind a paywall. It’s not in their best interest to show you people that have the same interests as you, it’s better if they bundle them all up and slap a big fat price tag on the front.
People are starting to realize these apps aren’t about hooking up or making connections, they’re about squeezing desperate people looking for love into giving money for the promise of finding it.
People don’t even use these apps to actually meet people. There are much better ways to actually meet people and we all know it. They all involve getting out and interacting with human beings in meatspace. We use these apps for parasocial stimulation. We look at the faces scroll by, gaze into their eyes, and it tricks our stupid brains into thinking we are having social interactions. That’s the actual product they are selling.
I don’t think these are for parasocial interaction at all. Maybe for social media as a whole yes. But dating apps are pretty much intentionally trying to meet people. Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok sure, those are just interaction simulators. But those aren’t what we are talking about here.
I know what I said.
I know anecdote doesn’t mean data, but I met my wife on OKCupid. We’re both asexual trans women, and the notion of finding someone so compatible like that would have been terrible had we done it in real life, locally only. She was in Boston, I was in Portland. And asexual trans women are a minority of a minority, so it would have taken forever in real life.
Then again, OK Cupid has since enshittified.
you could still find each other online and get to know each other there, and then IRL. It just wouldnt be over a dating app.
The internet is basically free, so i don’t see why we’re skipping over that one here.
Too late, already married!
You’re getting downvoted, but you’re right. They sell hope.
Some people do use apps successfully, but from the Sankey charts I saw on reddit, the vast majority of interactions go nowhere. On the other hand, most interactions I’ve had IRL usually lead to at least a few dates.
Wrong, I went on them to get laid. I would not use a method that didn’t work
I always have great conversations with girls on apps. Then when we set up a date I get ghosted the day of. The one time the date actually would have happened the girl was a LOT larger than her pics. And I have no problem with dating a bigger girl but I do have a problem with liars. Never again.
Similar situation here. Lots of ghosting, or unmatching the day of a scheduled date. Had two dates in the last few months of using the apps. First woman was about 15 years older than her pics. Not unattractive by any means, but felt lied to from the get go. The other, let’s just say she had some work done after most recent pics, and the surgeon shouldn’t be practicing.
Maybe he was practicing on her
My wife and I met through eHarmony about 15 years ago now, and have been happily married over 10 now. Prior to meeting her I’d tried a handful of other dating apps but never had any luck. I had very similar stories about ghosting, unmatching, etc.
I have no idea if eHarmony still works the way it used to, but back when I met my wife it was fairly different from the likes of Match.com, Tinder, etc. When setting up your profile you had to answer a bunch of fairly specific questions that covered everything from if you were looking for casual dates, long term, marriage, if you have/want kid, etc. to things like activities you enjoy to how important things like family, religion, career, etc. are to you.
When they show you a potential match you get to see how they answered those questions along with a more open profile. If both of you indicate interest in communicating with each other then you’re first led through some rounds of guided communication to begin with. As I recall you would both pick 3 or 4 multiple choice questions from a list of 30 or so to ask the other person, and they would do the same. After you both answered those questions then you would do the same with more open-ended questions and so on. Only after a few rounds of that would you be able to chat/email with the other person.
What I realized while using eHarmony is that it kind of forced you to invest time & some conscious effort to communicate with potential matches. That resulted in more of them being open to proceed further. I went on dates with a few women I met on eHarmony before I met my wife.
As I said before I have no idea if eHarmony still operates this way or not. That’s how they did things 15 years ago and it could have changed a lot since then.
From what I hear 15 years ago online dating is wildly different than today.
Can confirm.
OKCupid was a serious service 15 years ago. Now it’s borderline scam.
15 years ago the first iPhone came out. Probably related.
I had an iPhone 15 years ago so let me apply what i remember from that to solving a problem with your current phone. lol
Hey that doesn’t sound so bad.
Are you sure about being ghosted? Or is the app just cutting your connection?
Same thing you described happened to me so many times I’ve lost count. Furthermore, I’ve compared profiles with some women I did met IRL and wouldn’t you know, what you see in your “profile preview” or whatever is not necessarily how anybody else gets to see you. We’ve seen profile pictures being removed or entire profile texts being wiped out, sometimes just before the first date.
Some people became aware of the enshittifaction/ gamification many years ago and resorted to putting their IG handles or phone numbers into their profiles “in case we get interrupted.” When some dating sites starting cracking down on that, too, they started putting this info into their pictures instead.
And that’s not even mentioning the bots and “controllers,” as they used to be called, whose only purpose is to extract private information from you. At least in the EU, dating apps have had to disclose their existence in the TOS for some years. They all do.
TLDR; The game is rigged beyond belief.I’ve never seen any app mess with my matches. I’ve been unmatched plenty of times, but for every one I can think of, it was for a reason. One was clearly just using it for attention, one clearly had no interest during the date, one apparently took personal offense to my opinion that I didn’t like boba tea (and this after she asked what I thought was overrated!)
I currently have one match just sitting there weeks after going on two dates, and I guess neither of us felt strongly enough about it either to talk about a third date, or to confirm the end of it. So it doesn’t seem to cut anything off for me.
You have to build in a nearly 10:1 cost. For every ten tentative contacts, only one is going to pan out. That’s just the cost of playing. If you don’t like it, there are better ways to meet people.
Put “NO FAT CHICKS” in your profile, I’m sure she was more disappointed to get you and would have appreciated the heads up. In fact, wear a shirt that says that and save everyone from wasting their time.
You’re are an idiot. I do date bigger girls, I do not date liars.
I would prefer if we treated others with respect and honesty. She lied, so there is nothing to be done
In fact, wear a shirt that says that and save everyone from wasting their time.
The chick could have just…not lied and saved everyone from wasting their time as well.
Hmmm.
Sounds good to me I haven’t met anyone so I can happily quit them now methinks, especially if they will financially suffer at this point
Met my now-wife on Bumble in 2019, but I have a feeling it peaked around that time based on all the stories I’ve heard.
Might have to do with commodifying relationships, but who am I to guess 🙃
Historically I’ve had a lot of success and met some really great women, even had awesome relationships with a few, but things changed at some point after Covid. I barely see anyone that isn’t almost the exact opposite of what I look for that’s alongside the litany of notifications to buy something
That was my experience as well. Before and during COVID (~2019-2021) I had matches and dates on Tinder consistently (depending on usage up to 1-3 per week) with most of them going somewhere. Had some of the best and most interesting connections in that time.
Found a GF, broke up 1.5 years later, and tried dating apps after some time again… Those were a shitshow now - the matches were noticeably worse and less frequent, even with the premium sub. I just gave up after some time.
The editor had far too much fun coming up with that headline 😄
Can we fix dating already and stop trying to make it a business?
Not until we address the root cause. It starts with cap and rhymes with fascism.
Ah yes, all those great socialist dating apps are crushing it on the open market … Like … And …
The issue is that services cost money inherently. No matter what app, the user base has to have the infrastructure behind it to support all the users.
Guys, maybe you don’t know this but Twitter and tinder DONT FUCKING RUN ON YOUR PHONE! THEY ALL RUN SERVER SIDE.
So there is some kind of cluster, probably aws or azure or Google web services on the back end.
So who is paying for it to run if customers aren’t? Ads? Jesus? Someone has to pay for that service run. Not to mention the people salaries to support and maintain that system.
Interesting. Maybe you should try the Fediverse sometime.
The fediverse also costs someone money to run. If you want to set up a fediverse dating app and have everyone’s likes and kinks mirrored to dozens of servers run by people with almost no obligation to keep it private, good luck
No, you must pay to find your soulmate. If you’re too poor to pay, you’re too poor to date. /s
Why don’t you work on your side-gig instead. That we will also find a way to take a massive cut of.
These apps are a service, and as such - in theory - it’s not out of the question to ask for some sort of payment.
HOWEVER, the price they ask is so damned high it’s not worth it.
I think Tinder wants $35/m to let you “see your likes” (the people who have swiped right on you), and as far as I know that’s basically the only way to ever see them because just using the app regularly they never seem to show up. I think I’ve had 40 Likes in a queue for about a year because they just never show up in day to day usage. I assume it’s all bot profiles from other countries at this point.
It will all be people you already swiped left on or don’t pass your filters.
It’s all people outside of your search parameters that’s why they never show up. So basically it’s people you’re not interested in anyways and it’s not worth paying them money to find that out.
Why did they all go for the swipe model? That vastly reduced the size of their customer market while splitting that reduced market across several apps.
Right? Even OKCupid ditched their highly successful model in favor of swiping.
Even back then it was basically common knowledge that they separated people on attractiveness and compatibility. I stopped using it right before tinder really took off and they switched to be more like tinder.
I really liked the personality tests on OKCupid that they used to match you with people. I don’t think there’s anything out there like that today.
Well Match saw the success of Tinder so they switched a lot of their apps to do the same. Then they bought Tinder and filled it with ads and enshittified it. Then people flocked to other apps because the old ones were shit. Then Match bought those too and made them shitty too worth swiping and ads. There have been no stellar new apps so people are avoiding them. Eventually there will be a cool new dating app that people will flock to that Match will buy and not learn anything from the catalogue of apps their strategy has killed and they will make that one shitty too.
Good, maybe politely* asking people out in public spaces other than “the fucking bar” will become acceptable again rather than creepy.
*To clarify, I mean stuff like “I think you look cool, wanna grab some coffee?” not like “Ay lemme taste the inside of your butthole gurl.”
Maybe women like not having men randomly coming up to them trying to express interest and pursue a date, and not having to deal with the fear of what they may do if rejected?
IDK I’m not a woman.
I don’t think women really feel any differently about it than men do.
Sure, then women should start approaching men. The apps are not the answer, social media is doodoo.
Women like not being approached by men they don’t find attractive, but women also like being appreciated and approached by men they find attractive. And you can never know in which group you fall. And if you just always do what other people desire, you will never get anywhere in life.
Some people legitimately just want to be left alone.
I agree, I’ll be honest that’s why I use these apps. Because when I’d try to just talk to a girl in person and be friendly I get the sense they think I’m either being creepy or want to get in their pants. When I’m just an introvert just trying to start up a conversation lol
Aww man, throwing shade on my best lines, bruh
Lmao it seems 5 people agree with you. Sorry butthole tasters, I didn’t mean to say I don’t count myself amongst your ranks, as I most assuredly do. I only mean to say that leading with it is probably not the least creepy move one could pull in a grocery store.
probably not the least creepy move one could pull in a grocery store
So you’re saying it’s definitely not the worst, right?
Yeah it’s only pepper spray bad, and if you play your cards right security won’t put you in a leglock.
You can still do that, but as rsuri says, you cannot be so direct. It’s too confrontational and girls don’t really appreciate that. You have to invent some plausibly deniable reason to start a conversation. This also gives the girl an out if she is not really interested. Then you just allude to your interest in her, which don’t worry she will pick up on immediately. At some point you will either hear, “… and my bf and I” or you hear nothing of that genre. At the end you can ask for a number. That’s not exactly the end of the story. Most of the time, the conversation continues through text only for her to drop you before a date is planned. But it’s in any case a way better experience than Tinder, unless you’re some hunk who can write “6’4” on Tinder and get 100+ matches.
No, it won’t, because it has never not been creepy. People should be allowed to go into public without constantly being approached. The part you don’t get is that being asked out for coffee once is novel, twice is fun, but after that it gets old really fucking quick. I do not want to have to deal with that every time I just want to do some fucking laundry.
And 90% of the people who do/did this are legitimately creeps.
I’m old enough to remember life before the apps. I could never figure out how to make that work. Approaching girls was stressful and hard and there was a lot of ambiguity because you’d need like some ulterior motive for talking to them and then would have to shift to dating which I never had the confidence to do. Like I’d offer to send her some class notes or something and I’d get her email. But then what?
Just walking up to a random girl and saying:
I think you look cool, wanna grab some coffee?
Would have an extremely low success rate I’m sure. Girls need to feel comfortable first, after all strangers who approach you in a public place tend to be people you’d rather not talk to. Now if you’re at a bar and a friend introduces you and you have a conversation first, well that could work and it’s kinda how my parents and older cousins met in the pre-app days. But if you’re me in college and you’re an engineering nerd and have only a handful of equally nerdy friends, those conversations are hard to come by. And that’s the role the apps filled for me - the introduction.
“Ay lemme taste the inside of your butthole gurl.”
🥵 I think I need a cold show now
