‘It’s quite soul-destroying’: how we fell out of love with dating apps

The problem with dating apps is the commodification of human relationships. The way people use these apps is too superficial. They're looking for the perfect man or woman, so if there's something they don't like or that person has a flaw, they don't take the time to really get to know them on a deep level. There's a lot to choose from! FOMO!

Perfection does not exist in this world and we must really try to connect on a deep level. Unfortunately, some people use these apps for window shopping and shallow relationships.

Once you realize their business model incentivizes them to not get you a life partner because then you'd stop using the app, they kinda don't make sense to use.

Here to offer hope and advice to anyone that's given up. I'm a 52-yo American male and have knocked it out the park with dating apps. In the 4-years since my wife left, thank god, I've had 15-20 dates and 5 steady gf's for a bit. Getting married 11/24 if y'all want to come!

Pro tips:

• Post a variety of pics. Nothing controversial like guns, dead animals, any other women your age. Or your fucking truck/motorcycle/sportscar. If your Confederate flag bed sheets are really important to filter people, go ahead I guess. If the person you're looking at does not have a wide range of pics, red flag. Women are great at glamour shots. Take the worst pic of the bunch and assume that's what they look like IRL. Worst case, you're pleasantly surprised. (Happened to me many times!)
• Don't be too judgmental. All you're aiming for is a first date, see how it goes. What's it cost a man? Dinner for two? Better yet, I dated a woman who said neither party should pay anything on the first date. If you don't click, no one's out anything. Go to a park, thrift storing, antique mall, whatever floats your boat. It costs nothing to walk around, talk and gauge each other's interests and mutual attraction.
• Sorry, but this bit can be expensive. Sign up for half-a-dozen sites. If you're fishing, it's best to bait 6 poles vs. one, right? Try the free options of course, see how it goes, but spread yourself around as much as possible. You never know. And that bears repeating. You never know what will happen. More on that shortly.
• Keep initial communication short and sweet. Too much gets lost in text, too many misunderstandings. "Hey! Love (something in their post that you're seriously interested in, or why else are you contacting them)! (question about something you want to know about them)? Want to (go to the park, get coffee, go thrift storing, whatever)? And then go on the damned date, and do it ASAP, before something stupid happens like a misunderstood text, other plans/dates cropping up, whatever. Just go. If I have to say, "Don't be an ass and pressure for the date.", you're not ready for a relationship.

How I met my fiancé:

She hit me up on eHarmony. Gods that site sucks. Only date I ever got there. Blew her off because her pics were... not so great. She had nothing interesting to say about herself, barebones bio. 3-months later I'm revisiting and saw her "like". "Yeah, what about this girl again?" She posted more about herself, and more attractive pics and here we are.

About the judgmental thing; If I knew then what I know now, the date would have been a hard NO. She's a city girl (Manilla), never even been in the woods. No shit. Jealous as fuck, and I've spent 30-years saying that's the one thing I won't abide. She was a Christian preschool teacher at private school. Fuck all that nonsense. You get the idea.

But we click so hard it's silly. I feel like I've landed some kind of fantasy girl. And she feels the same! 11/24/23, NW FL, you're all welcome to the wedding.

Who would have thought that looking at 5 pictures and a shit bio would lead to you not being able to find a meaningful relationship?

When the apps suffer turbo enshittification, everybody tires of it fast. Tinder is little more than an ad front for Instagram, over half of every profile's bio (which is hard to see on purpose, because of how Tinder works) is just @whoever . Tinder may also show a profile you already "Nope"d a second time, same with a profile you give a "Yeah", effectively wasting a like.

Then there's the heavy push for users, mainly men, to pay for premium. But wait, there's premium Gold and premium Platinum! And also stuff you have to buy separately!

Tinder was good back in 2015. It became absolute shit with time. That the majority of other dating apps literally abandoned what set them apart (like OkCupid, which had comprehensive profiles to be filled and ditched it all for the same like/dislike schtick) doesn't make people trust in them either. "Same shit, less people".

Not to mention fake profiles and bots, because of course the apps will pretend they have more users than they actually have. How else will desperate men pay for platinum premium?

The apps served a purpose. They raised the available pool of possible dates from "who's in this bar with me right now" to "everyone in a 10 mile radius" or whatever, and everyone is there for the same reason, mostly.

But it also doesn't have to be all or nothing. It shouldn't be. Use an app you like and also go to in-person dating events. Just use apps if that's your speed. Fuck the apps and go out there and meet people at the local cafe, or board game night, or beer league softball, or whatever. It can augment the old ways. It doesn't have to replace the old ways.

Dativerse when? Seems like this is ripe for disruption by a free solution

The dating apps would still be useful if they haven't broken themselves in order to make short-term profit.

If they hadn't all sold out to the same company who then ruined each one of their purchases that would also help as then there would still be some competition in the market. But sadly it's now become monolithic and completely pointless

I found my girlfriend just before COVID popped off, but I would argue that dating apps are insufferable now due to how polarizing the world is.

Just having basic conversations with people online, including Lemmy, is so tiring. Like how I was called names for saying Windows just works, and then as I was being attacked for it, I was literally typing the comment from a Linux distro that currently wont allow Steam to download at higher than ~120Mbps, despite my internet being 1900Mbps. Then the guy continued to go off, calling me names, telling me that I am such a moron, all because I showed a live example of how Linux wasn't "just working"?

The internet is so exhausting and toxic these days.

I did online dating for many years. I used match, eharmony, tinder, pof, okcupid.

I fully understand the 'soul destroying' comment. For me it was a lot of work for little return. I started off being selective. Messaging one person at a time so I didn't end up getting two responses and having to put someone off or turn one of them down. That was naive it turned out as I got very few replies. So I started messaging multiple people at once. I always tried to personalise things but my effort varied with how optimistic I was feeling about online dating.

Ultimately I think I got responses about 10% of the time. From them, 10% turned into a date, from those maybe 50% would get to a second date.

So overall it every hundred messages I'd write , 1 would end up in a date. I went on quite a lot of dates over the years, but I had to devote so much time to getting them it was, soul destroying.

I never thought i was unattractive, but online dating made me question if I really was. I never thought I was an ass, but online dating made me question if I really was. I would sometimes have very long conversations before meeting to find there was no chemistry in person. Sometimes I would like them when we meet and they would ghost me. Sometimes they liked me and I didn't like them, but I always tried to be honourable and tell them, not ghost them since I didn't like it happening to me.

I am male in case my experience doesn't make it obvious. I often spoke to some of the women I got on better with about how online dating was for them and their experience was pretty awful for different reasons. Generally they were bombarded by messages and a good number of them were obscene. Guys trying to hook up rather than date. To manage their inbox was a real challenge and they probably missed out on good matches because of the noise.

My overall impression of the whole thing is that it generally sucks regardless of whether you are the one doing most of the messaging or whether you are receiving messages. I also think it makes it more like shopping than dating, dehumanising people. Do I want the 8K 42 inch TV or the 4K inch TV? Actually, can I even afford it?

All that said in the end it worked for me. Over 6 years since I last logged in and I think it was a bit of an addiction, or perhaps desperation born of loneliness.i also have a daughter now and there were times I thought that was never going to happen.

So for me online dating was years of frustration, difficulty and upset, but in the end I'm glad I did it but it took a long time.

I gave up on online dating last year and I won't be back. If that means I'll end up dying alone, I'm honestly more comfortable with that idea than suffering though anymore of the bullshit that's Tinder/Bumble/Hinge/etc. It's become such a miserable experience for both sides (men and women).

As someone who had used online dating on and off for 10+ years, I can tell you one of the big problems - money and greed. I know it's always easy to just "blame capitalism", but I've seen first-hand the paradigm shift from an actual useful service (i.e. a way to meet people that you would otherwise not meet) to the blatant greed it's become. The dating apps are so obviously profiteering off people's loneliness it's fucking disgusting. Back before Match bought everyone up, these services used to actually be okay for what they were.

Dating apps are deeply, deeply enshitified because the economic incentive for them is the exact opposite of what monogamous users want. Specifically, the apps want you to keep subscribing, plus buy the super platinum plus extra added packs, but never really find someone and date them, because then you stop paying. Old school pre-sellout OKCupid had a great analysis of this in their blog, which was taken down the day they sold out.

This is why the few sites/apps that cater to non-monogamous or event based communities are still reasonably decent, e.g FetLife, Bloom and Feeld, though Feeld is partially down the enshitification pathway.

I'd be really interested in seeing what a fediverse dating app would be like, something that didn't have the financial incentive to enshitify, and maybe had a match/search system like old-school OKC.

EDIT: missing word.

Most dating apps are looking to make a profit first and provide a good service second. This is terrible, but we live in a capitalist hellscape so it's not surprising.

HOWEVER. A lot of people are really bad at using dating apps. This is kind of a peeve of mine and I've been thinking of writing a book (or at least a blog post) about how to do better.

The premise is "throw the ball back". So many people match and then just drop the ball. Their profile says they love NK jemisen so you write "she's great! Did you read her new book 'the city we became '? It's a total love letter to New York". A fine message. And they write back "No". End of message.

My dude that's not how this game works. They've thrown you the ball with their message. You've caught it. Now throw it back by asking a question of your own.

If you're not interested or don't have the energy to be present, don't say anything. If you're not interested, just unmatch. If you don't have the energy, come back when you do. If you never have the energy, delete the app you're not ready.

And to all the people who just message with "hey": please do better. You look incompetent when you do that.

That's true of like all text messages, come to think of it. Some of you assholes probably message me at work on slack with "hey" instead of starting with the important part.

Also don't be a fucking pen pal. If they matched and responded to your initial topic well, just ask them out. That's what you're both here for.

I'm an extremely average guy who doesn't date men. If I can do this so can all of you.

This has definitely been my experience. 8 years after my last relationship and I'm still single. I'm an average looking guy, I put up nice pictures, I filled out the profile, I spent time crafting a good opening message, etc... I had maybe 30-50 conversations, most of which quickly died out, some just wanted to keep talking for weeks before we met, at the end I think I ended up with less than ten actual dates, none of them went to a second date.

My first therapist even suggested an experiment (edit: this was actually my idea,but he supported it): replace my profile pictures with those of a male model and see if I get tons of messages or it stays the same. I ended up getting about 3 or 4 more messages total then usual, none of them went anywhere either.

Dating websites were useless, turning them into phone applications just made them even less engaging then they already were.

An extremely tiny percentage of dating website users get anything positive from it. You might as well play a lottery instead.

I really loved OkCupid back before they sold out. They would share a lot of interesting data on their blog posts, and seemed genuinely interested in making successful matchups based on how your profile was presented to others. It was fun to be on there and didn't feel like you were just being presented for "dateable" you were if you didn't want to be.

I also met my wife on OkCupid, but that was just before the site really took a nosedive. Pretty annoyed they deleted my account without warning, so the first message she ever sent me is gone forever.

Coming from somebody in their early thirties who has had nothing but atrocious luck with women in general, I've mentally checked out of dating.

Every dating app is now a carbon-copy of Tinder where you can't pull a lady unless you look like a fucking Chippendale, are above 5'11" tall, have your own property and are sufficiently wealthy. It also doesn't help that Match Group hold a virtual monopoly over the market, with Bumble as their only credible competition. They literally profiteer from making the experience as miserable as possible so they can sucker you into paying a £40/month subscription.

Match also put the bare minimum into moderating and policing their apps. The sheer volume of love scammers, fake users and spammers shilling OnlyFans pages is massive, and it feels like they really couldn't give a shit about enforcing their own rules.

Online dating really is that soul-destroying, and the longer I spend trying to use any app, the less it surprises me that the incel, MGTOW and red pill communities are growing, and that people like Andrew Tate and Sneako have such a huge following despite being such garbage human beings.

At the same time I wish there was a better alternative.

It used to be socially acceptable to ask a stranger for their phone number. Some would agree, some wouldn’t and I’d thank them for their time.

I tried this in 2019 at a restaurant and got a look like, “wtf is wrong with you?”

I did well on dating apps when the format was like email because I could showcase my personality, which doesn’t come through easily in a text message format (never been good at small talk with strangers; writing letter let me really express myself). Luckily, I’ve found my partner, though I was worried it’d never happen.

Modern dating apps also suck for dating if you have average looks.

I used dating apps for 10 years. Got maybe a dozen replies and 1 date. So I'm looking at like a .00001% success rate. It's heartbreaking how unattractive that makes me feel.

I guess we’re ignoring the subscriptions and bot accounts. The primary reason I never paid for any of it nor spent longer than a month on any of them.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

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“I’m always in a state of flux.” Lacey’s approach might not suit everyone looking for love, but she is one of a growing number of people rejecting swiping on a screen and taking their dating lives offline.

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Many say the apps feel like work and there is a genuine sense of burnout as people struggle to commit to what is essentially hours of admin a week alongside their day jobs and other responsibilities.

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“You really have to set some standards – people can be so keen to help that they tend to overestimate how good-looking or interesting their mates are, or they try to suggest the only single person they know, no matter how unsuitable – but it has worked quite well.

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The benefit of meeting someone vouched for is also driving Clare, 38, from Bath, to explore her options, after having signed up to numerous dating apps over the years, only to quit after a few months each time.

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She has done slow dating at Shambala festival, with an emphasis on doing exercises that could help to make emotional connections, including questions like, “What are you most proud of in your life?” and “What’s the biggest challenge you’ve overcome?”

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“You have the opportunity to meet heaps of other cute, single people in real life with no stuffy or awkward first-date vibes because if you don’t click with someone, you can just excuse yourself and chat with someone else,” she says.

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The original article contains 2,349 words, the summary contains 269 words. Saved 89%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

This lines up with the experience of single friends I've seen. I wonder how much of it though is that those who are left on the dating market are on there for a reason?

Namely they select for avoidant types who when trouble arises are more likely to embrace singledom

The discussion of this same article on Hacker News is shockingly redpilly.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38055947

No it isn't. Those things are nothing but trouble

TBH app based dating has entirely ended the possibility of dating for me. It’s just not worth the effort and constant rejection. Add on being lower than normal attractiveness, and 5’5” to boot, it just isn’t something that makes it worthwhile anymore.

I’m no catch myself, and would need to do a lot of working on myself first if I wanted to date, but it’s not something that seems worth the effort now. It’s been so commodified that I just don’t have the will or want to put in the work.

I was on dating sites for years, met one person I was with for a few months but otherwise never felt much of a connection with anyone to even want a second date. I met my longtime present partner in person, and I don't know if we would have clicked online. For me, there's still a factor that can't be captured by an algorithm

Pim Tool likes to rant about online dating, but the reality is that there are dudes that can only date this way.

The thing that concerns me though is that eventually more people are going to identify as "awkward" and will refuse to go on dates with anyone they meed IRL and feel like everyone should only contact them online. We already see this with irrational fears of talking on the phone where millennials and zoomers insist on communicating exclusively through texts.

Of course not, most of the dates are still found by going outside

"Fell out of love"

Quite a shame how the partner who had a spouse that beat the shit out of them and stole their wallet every day FELL OUT OF LOVE with that spouse...

You do understand you’re gonna give this kid a complex based on a single anecdote?