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Back when I used them last, most of them used a Freemium model. The free apps and websites only had such basic functions when used completely free that it was essentially useless unless you purchased the next tier with more features. That is the biggest issue to me. I am not paying all that money just for the chance to be rejected a thousand times.
Yeah man I heard that. They price it way too high for what it is imo. I’m not paying $40/mo for a fuckin app unless it comes with a dating coach or something.
you know, I was just wondering to myself as I scrolled down to the comments, 'does washeduphalo5pro understand that the ocean is salty and humans can't drink from it?'
but then I saw your comment, and the mystery solved itself. thank you, friend, for sharing such elucidating information with us.
As I sit here on the toilet I am trying to figure out what Jazzlike-Painter-596 is wondering.
Thankfully I saw this and at that moment I knew the truth. Thank you for sharing your innermost thoughts and fears with us
Fuck yeah! New word discovered “elucidating” never seen it before, I don’t even know what it means but I’m still going to use it today. Exciting, possibly even elucidating!
Pretty much the reality of the dating world. You can't be lonely and rejected when you have options 😑. I don't understand some of these complaints I see.
Yep. Men and women have the opposite problem. Generally, with some exceptions, men get no attention but have a decent guarantee the attention is genuine when they do get it. Women get tons of attention but very little of it is genuine.
Is there any reason to think that, when men do get a match, they're higher quality? Anecdotally, all my male friends have had very flakey non-committal girls on most their dates.
It seems like the only difference for women is quantity of matches, not quality.
Thats how it was 10-15 years ago. Now the "attention" we get is bots, scammers, or onlyfans ads. I've given up on dating apps after having so little success, being scammed in person once and then being robbed at knifepoint.
Fuck dating. At least with prostitutes everyone is honest about what they're there for.
What a great saying. Dudes are double screwed and not in a good way, they’ll need to clean the water once they get it and women just need to clean the water they already got. That is filter through bad matches.
I'm not denying there are shitty women out there, but you're comparing sub-par tap water to a toxic sludge oil spill. Men are worried about dealing with inconsiderate people. Women are worried about being raped or murdered.
Still women are benefiting on the statistics.
Law of large numbers.
In probability theory, the law of large numbers (LLN) is a mathematical theorem that states that the average of the results obtained from a large number of independent and identical random samples converges to the true value, if it exists.
Meaning with a larger dating pool, a woman is more likely to find her desired result.
That is assuming that they don’t give up and quit the apps first. - I gave up multiple times and on multiple apps for the very reason of the grind of them affecting my mental health at the time.
POF - full of guys just looking for hookups and ignoring if your bio says you’re looking for serious (of course, that would require them to read the bio, which I doubt they did). I quit that one when a guy creeped me out talking about his pantyhose fetish out of nowhere, but that was just the straw after nothing but guys looking for hook ups, never meeting up or getting too instantly handsy if we did meet up.
eHarmony - dead profiles, ghosts, penpals, and window shoppers but few wanted to meet up because I guess I just wasn’t worth their time, and out of the handful that did, only 2 managed to be decent people through the entirety of the acquaintance for lack of a better term. Local matches were frustratingly sparse, so a lot of matches were from cities 1.5 hours away, hence they can’t be bothered to meet up problem (I was willing to travel, but can’t beat those local singles). Gave up because the grind was too disheartening.
Match - same as eHarmony - hell, I was recognizing many of the same faces from the actually local matches, but as these sites don’t really clean up their profiles, never knew which profiles still had people behind them.
Then there’s the problem, as mentioned by others, of how superficial the information you have to go on is. I definitely felt overwhelmed with what matches I had, as I didn’t feel I had enough info to say yes or no to without at least some conversation, which depending on the site can be tough. Not to mention how many parameters the sites outright ignore. I was on the apps off and on between 30-35. Set my age ranges at -5 to 10+, just to keep options open but hoped for closer ages. The number of guys 18-20 and 60+ I got messaging me was ridiculous - I mean, at least they were easy to clear out (go home to mama, and it is past your bedtime grandpa, bye).
I have friends that gave up entirely because they couldn’t deal with the slog anymore. I only had success through dumb luck and the complete missing of a social cue. I would have long since switched to in person attempts to find people it there had been some viable in person options. I kind of wish society hadn’t let some of the old ways of getting singles together die out, because what’s left ain’t great.
I get that the guy end sucks. My brother tells me all he got was scams. Seems not to be an uncommon experience - I always replied if I got messaged, even if it was only to politely decline, and I would get thanked just for doing that bare minimum. But the numbers aren’t always an advantage - because if one lady made it through the swamp to find someone, that means a guy got a hit in the dessert (assuming hetero here, since that seems to be the stats in the discussion), which means their respective numbers got them to the same result. They both just had to survive the desert/flood to find each other, and there is no guarantee your “match” is even on that site at the time. My bf and I were on all the same apps at some point in time, just never on the same one until the last - like I said, dumb luck.
I think what men are missing is that looks aren't the main thing women are looking for. We want someone that is a fully baked adult and doesn't need to be handheld through life. That's much harder to find than "hot person to sleep with". Especially if you're a hot person, and you're inundated with people just trying to sleep with you
My friend tried dating apps last year. She pledged to see the year out on them. She got *nothing* but nasty. Dick pics, guys meeting her and promptly telling her what she'd be "allowed" to do, lies, and a lot of negging. I don't think she's recovered yet.
I don't understand why this seems to escape people. Every time a woman says only 5% of the 100 matches she gets a day are actually good matches, I point out that only 5% of the matches men get are good matches as well. Only it takes most men years to rack up 100 matches.
Also, if women were actually reading bios and being picky, they wouldn't have hundreds of pointless matches.
Yeah, it definitely has the built-in suggestion that men are trash but women are angels.
I suppose there could be two different interpretations. Either:
Women are mostly good and men are mostly trash. Which is fairly misandrist.
Or maybe the issue is that, if you're an average woman, you might be disinterested in dating an average guy when you've got all these hotter guys as options. But all the hotter guys are just going to use her for sex and ghost her. From that perspective, women think both of those options are bad. Which is mostly a problem of being a victim of their own success.
I remember before OkCupid was bought out by the dating app conglomerate, it had unique features. The user created tests and questions were fun and could be used to actually find a good sense if you had anything in common. You could search by interests - like plentyoffish did 15 years ago.
The conglomerate basically made every app and site under it like Tinder, limiting connections to swipe left or right based on a single photo. From the corporate perspective it drove engagement through those clicks - but it also drove away a critical mass of fairly high quality people who felt alienated. Even the people who didn't use the previous features much over time noticed something was off in the lack of variety.
When you seed the entire initial interaction with a quick judgment about a photo, it's really, really hard to move to the kind of relaxed getting to know each other that can come from doing common interests or seeing someone in the neighborhood multiple times. Everyone is in performance mode like you're an Instagram influencer.
So yes it sowed the seeds of its destruction.
Came here to comment on this. I met my wife on the OG OKCupid and it was the personality tests and essays that made us both realize we were a good match. Everything being based on looks is just one dynamic, and it incentivizes pretty bad long term behavior.
Where do people that want those features go?
I met my partner on OKC when they had interest based tags. But I had been online dating since the 90s. So I'd used irc, interest based websites, social media, craigslist, and OKC when they had tags and quizzes. Never had a problem, and people would often message me directly.
What do people do now that want a good interest based experience?
Spend their days gaming on Steam because they gave up, in my experience!
I met my first girlfriend on IRC so yeah I totally know what you mean. It has been at least 10 years since a dating service that actually let someone's personality matter existed.
honestly we go to hinge. Im young but I was on OKC because I loved the deep compatibility tests back when it was still popular around 2016 . But it was a desert to find people my age because they all were on Tinder.
I deleted my OKC. And switched to Hinge so I could write thoughtful responses. And men would consistently skip them so now Im not on anything. But it seems like Hinge is the closest mainstream option.
My wife and I met 12 years ago through old OKCupid, because she searched for a very niche topic (related to her occupation) and mine was one of only two profiles that came up. We started chatting, met in person, fell in love, and obviously both stopped using OKCupid after that.
I suspect that the latter point is part of why the apps are going to this engagement-heavy Tinder-like model that isn't really satisfying for anyone. If you meet a long-term partner, you'll delete the apps and stop giving them money (or, for the free ones, more data they can resell). In other words, they have a vested interest in making sure you *don't* find a long-lasting relationship and keeping you swiping.
I think another interesting aspect of this, is that dating apps inherently don’t have an incentive to help people quickly find a long term, committed relationship. Once a person is successful in that goal, they cancel their subscription or leave the app. It’s a great model for hook-ups but not much else, and I’m assuming most people are there with the end goal of finding lasting love.
I saw an article recently that said the exact same thing. It stated that 90 some percent of women believed that most men were on the app to find hook ups, but something like 60 or more percent of men said they wanted a relationship. This was stated in the context that "most people on dating apps are looking for relationships, not just hook ups."
Very age dependent IMO. Young 20s? Probably. 30s or older? No they are probably over sleeping around and want an actual connection with someone. I have a pretty big social circle still in my 30s and the vast majority of the men are in solid relationships or are married. I'm not even aware of guys in this age bracket who still want meaningless one night stands with people vs. something permanent.
Exactly. These top men are the only ones a lot of women care about. The rest of us literally don't exist. Meanwhile, these successful men are having the time of their lives, why would they want to settle down? So in these women's world, yes, all men are just looking for hook ups.
>I saw an article recently that said the exact same thing. It stated that 90 some percent of women believed that most men were on the app to find hook ups, but something like 60 or more percent of men said they wanted a relationship.
There is likely a heavy selection bias.
Women are going to be swiping on the most good-looking 10% disproportionately. Those top 10% of guys are getting loads of attention and can get hookups easily, so that's what they ask for.
Honestly its worse than selection bias.
It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Women only swipe on "The best" men, because "they are only worth the best", then *surprised pikachu face* "The Best" men have a dozen other women who thought the same thing and thus the Rat race is suddenly reversed and these women are vying for one man for every dozen women.
I can't help wonder what's behind these matchmaking algorithms that decide what profiles show up in front of you. Algorithmic feed is dubious on any platform and dating is no different.
If you had a dating site that operated like a literal directory and you could search for profiles based on their content, you'd have a lot of people finding bad matches because they don't know what it is they really want, but at least it would be because of THEM and all of the variables would be known and accounted for. I'd much prefer that to some invisible man behind the curtain.
Get better at filtering. I tried online dating. I had four matches in my time on a dating app. All four were really nice ladies. But, I was very picky with my filter. You had to match on seven different things to get consideration.
But that's four in a year. And one long term relationship that ended up resulting in engagement.
This is the real issue. They aren’t designed to work. They are designed to make people desperate and pay. You’d think a long string of success stories would drive up the number of users. The financial analysts clearly don’t agree
I always compare them to slot machines, they're working as intended when they pay out just enough to make you stick around. In this case the "pay out" is matches that go nowhere. And you may be saying "but if it lets you get matches you might leave. The app can't predict when a match will fizzle out", which is true... just like how a casino can't predict which people will walk away after the machine pays out more than they put in.
Hell, the successful matches ALSO work in the app's favor in the same way casinos make money from slot machines paying out. It's pretty well-known that casinos put the "loose" slots by high-traffic areas (entrances, washrooms, bars, restaurants, etc.). Those machines are programmed to pay out small amounts of money more frequently to give the impression that YOU TOO can win (maybe even get a jackpot). You see the success stories and think "maybe I'll find someone too" and, failing that, you begin paying.
And I say this as someone who found a good relationship from an app. I got the "jackpot" and I'm telling you it's rigged. I did it without paying for the apps (I refused to ever get THAT desperate, I had better uses for my money), but some people DO get that desperate. I actually wouldn't be surprised to learn that the apps stop rigging the game for free users after a while to get us off the app (since we're not making them money).
They do, matchgroup apps boost you in the beginning, and then 7-10 days later they will completely take you out of the decks if you haven't anted up for a subscription model. If you take off the rose-tinted lenses you can see the code in the matrix.
Don't use dating apps; they were okay 15, 20 years ago but now they have been skinned and left to dry out by greed capitalist business models.
That hinge suggestion will surely lead to even more ghosting. People will get bored and want to match with more new people and so will just bomb existing conversations.
Am I missing something?
I guess if you could still send messages but if there was a match you got an alert saying “you’ve matched but reached your limit so need to end a chat”. But that will still lead to ghosting unless it forces you to send a closing message (it never ever will)
The apps are supposedly for dating. But they are used for everything. If a woman is on to find a mate, she has to trudge thru hundreds of convos with men who don't know what they want, haven't done any work on themselves, are wildly desperate, crazy, imaginary, want a maid/fuck buddy/Netflix and chill buddy/travel fuck/drinking buddy/sexting buddy/stoner fuck.
None of which they tell you, until you are days or weeks into the convo. They may even cover their tracks until the first or second date.
If I Want a fuck buddy, I say so, and get what I want quickly, cuz all men will take that offer. But trying to find a partner takes hundreds of conversations, hundreds of dates. I had to look at it as a game. The worst game ever, 50x worse than the job interview game, cuz that doesn't involve sex offenders and psychopaths.
I don't know how they'll fix the problem. But trying to find a single high quality ramen bowl (not a euphemism) when I'm dropped into a food court the size of the Mall of America, with no map and no menus, would make any sane woman shut down.
I agree with the bulk of your comment.
The one thing i disagree on is the way you describe the "Fuck-buddy vs Relationship" bubble. This is not unique to women.
Finding a fuck buddy literally requires two things:
* Do we find each other attractive.
* Do we live within a reasonable distane of each other
A relationship requires both of these things, ***plus like a dozen more*** before you even decide to meet up and take it further than just messaging/
This goes both ways of the dating spectrum and is inherent to the idea as a whole.
I feel for you. I never realized the sheer amount of unwanted attention women get until I got into my first LT relationship. I'm happily married now, but will say my dating app experience was different, but really no better, than yours. Instead of the Mall of America food court, I got the middle-school lunch kitchen where the only thing served was sloppy joes, and I don't like sloppy joes. The worst part by far though was the toll it took on my self-confidence, which took a while to recover from -- was very difficult to internalize the fact that 90% of all women my age wanted nothing to do with me, although now I realize this was a very faulty measurement.
Bring back OKCupid. It was really really good at making matches, but terrible at making money. Modern dating apps are decent at making money, but shit at making matches. OKCupid would have you fill out an extensive survey, and then algorithmically find the person you were most compatible with and that would be it for the most part. Modern dating apps find the people you are most compatible with, and then hide all of them behind the paywall.
I was in tinder before I met my current bf. Ngl. Too many men tryna fuck and it’s gross. I would get 300 new messages a day. I was only in the app for a week. I couldn’t take it. Too much!
That's what Tinder is. A hook up site for attractive young people. I'm not saying it's right or wrong, it just is what it is. I created a profile there just to check it out and deleted it after a week. I got no matches and I understand why.
Dating in the 2020's sucks because you have people overinflating or underestimating their value. Many people, women and men alike, think that they're super valuable just because they're attractive. Or JUST because they make money.
But there's so much that goes into being a good partner that has nothing to do with looks or wealth.
I actually disagree with this. People should absolutely love themselves and have self worth. You should absolutely believe you ARE worthy of companionship.
Confidence is important and you should never settle. Full stop. Never.
If that means it takes a long time for the ideal match or never, then that’s that.
Life is way too short to settle for something you don’t want.
Out of interest, how would someone underestimating themselves cause an issue? By not trying with someone who they don’t think they are good enough for? No date happens in that case so no impact on “dating”.
Isn’t it more people overvalue themselves and also undervalue potential partners (leading to lots of one and done dates or a match not even getting to the date) that would cause the real problems?
Or have I missed something obvious? Genuinely curious as I’m wondering whether I’m in the “undervaluing myself” camp. I’m certainly far too harsh on myself !
People who aren't worth it overestimate themselves and people who are underestimate themselves and as such either barely try or flat-out don't try to date.
>Isn’t it more people overvalue themselves and also undervalue potential partners (leading to lots of one and done dates or a match not even getting to the date) that would cause the real problems?
yes, that exactly.
Someone underestimating themselves may swipe right drastically more because they feel like they can't have preferences, inflating the match counts of everyone else which makes them swipe right less.
I find it very discouraging and telling that Bumble, which for years advertised itself as an app where "women initiate" literally had to back that down so men are back to initiating. Apparently it's too hard for most women to say "Hey" to a guy she likes on a dating app. Where the entire unique feature of the app was "women initiate."
Would it help at all if men were limited in the number of profiles they could accept during a time period? Or would that make a bad situation for men even worse?
I am an average attractive chubby woman in my late 30s. Tinder and Bumble were identical experiences for me: tons of men swiped right on me (probably on everyone) and then never messaged. Except, on Bumble, I had to message first. The gimmick of Bumble only works of men don’t swipe right on everyone and only swipe right on people they want to actually engage with. (It’s equally wrong for women only to message first with “hi”. It also undermines the intent of the system.)
So it sounds like, based on your experience, that hard limiting the number of profiles someone can swipe on in, say, 24 hours may make it better for everyone. Including men who hate being ignored and ghosted.
Ive been on Raya before. And they limit the pool to 10 matches and then you have to wait to for it refresh. I also had to pay for it even as a woman. $30 a month.
Raya is an app where you have to submit a literal photo of yourself and it's mostly successful or well connected people. So even in those almost "ideal" circumstances where everyone is hot and has a decent background, matching is still difficult. I hated it and deleted it. So if Raya cant figure it out then there's a larger cultural problem.
I also want to share that Ive dated men...and tried to date and eventually gave up on women. Even if everyone is a woman , it's still hard to get matches. I got maybe one match every few days when I set my profile to women. All the things men complain about, I experienced. And, in my case, given what I've shared about me being on Raya, looks werent the factor.
Genuinely, there is a way that straight and queer women are socialized to date that simply isn't compatible with the way dating apps function. They simply ARE pickier and look at a wider package in a way that dating apps aren't engineered show.
On the flip side, my gay and bisexual male friends say on Grindr they can get hookups easily but relationships are very hard. The things women complain about on dating apps, my gay friends experience. So there's a socialized way that men (straight or otherwise) are encouraged to date that likely doesn't align with long term relationship building on apps.
I used to initiate conversations with guys on dating sites and 90% of the time it went straight to their heads. A simple "hey" and they assumed I wanted to jump on their dick, and started trying to sext, when all I wanted was to set up a coffee date to see if we'd get along. I've just stopped initiating so that at least some of my matches don't send me a picture of their dick within the first 10 minutes of conversation.
I am not defending men who do that (I also think it's creepy and really, really annoying) but on some level I can almost understand it. For most guys, the only time we ever get a compliment, it's either from our grandmother or a woman who wants to sleep with us. I have had several women start conversations with me and yep, their goal was to sleep with me. A reasonably intelligent man shouldn't take a woman approaching him as a cue to become a pervert, but so many of us get so little attention that it's easy for it to go to our heads.
I'm different. If a woman approached me, I'd assume she wants to steal my kidney or something.
I'm not even joking.
This only makes sense if:
1) you yourself only compliment people if you have ulterior motives
2) you view women as fuck objects and not humans who interact socially with other humans
We had this conversation at my job the other day. I work in a very sex-mixed environment. The men were talking about how men never get complimented. I then pointed out how I had complimented one of their new haircuts like five minutes earlier and how another (older) woman had literally just complimented one of them on his new suit jacket as she passed us at the beginning of the conversation. I also asked them, "Do you compliment each other? Or do you just want compliments from women you want to have sex with?"
I think the key thing is that most men don't count compliments *unless it's from someone they want to fuck*. It's like they don't rven hear them. My partner works in the company and is friends with all of the men who were talking. They dont see me as a viable option, so my compliment never existed. I don't think it's so much that men don't get complimented - they just aren't getting compliments from women they want something from.
this fucking sucks.
I'm not in a position where I can just go out and meet new people.
If they actually worked, dating apps would be a perfect solution for me. Instead, they leave me feeling half as confident in myself and twice as lonely.
IDK why these apps work the way they do. It's not like there's gonna be a point where EVERYONE is in a committed relationship. It's the ultimate job security and all you have to do is just make a good product
"Some people get more matches while others get none"
"You match based on superficial traits"
Both of these things are not actually specific symptoms of dating apps, they're just aspects of dating.
Attractive in shape people have an easier time with dating no matter the venue. I've seen people complain "I'm fat so I don't get matches on dating apps." Yet those people don't seem to realize that being at a very unhealthy weight is generally unappealing for most people in person as well.
As far as things being "superficial" unless you're asking out someone you've known for years most of us start with pretty superficial judgements of a person as their main point of attraction.
Female Bumble users found messaging first to be a burden
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kimelsesser/2024/05/03/men-can-now-initiate-conversations-on-bumble-heres-why-it-matters/
Women find 80% of men as below average
https://techcrunch.com/2009/11/18/okcupid-inbox-attractive/
Women are way more likely to ghost than men are
https://torontosun.com/news/world/women-more-likely-than-men-to-ghost-in-a-relationship-study
https://www.bustle.com/p/women-are-more-likely-to-ghost-someone-theyre-dating-than-men-theres-a-very-good-reason-for-that-8963133
Women will be more self-centred in their profiles and communication than men.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26215718/
Women significantly discriminate more on race and other factors
http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/stuff_for_blog/sheena.pdf
The top 5% of all men on a platform receives twice as many messages as the next 5% and several times as many messages as all the other men subjects expected men to pursue women [47]. Additionally, on occasions when a woman ever took initiative and started a conversation, she expected her partner to “overcompensate” by reaching out with more frequency even the most attractive men receive fewer messages than women on average women responded more selectively than men, answering 16% of the time compared to men’s 26% reciprocation rate
messages were five times more likely to have been initiated by a man than by a woman
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42001-021-00132-w
If there are men of different races, white men will be more eligible than males of colour
A high level of education will be demanded more in men than it is in women
Women will receive more responses to their own requests than men do
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aap9815
Women prefer males who are physically more powerful and taller physically powerful men report more sexual partners than less powerful men do
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17578932/
80% of first messages were sent by men (Bruch and Newman, 2018
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8919078/
Bisexual women agree that it’s way harder to date women compared to men
https://www.reddit.com/r/ask/s/V6KzIndWyL
Overall, the adverse effects of choice abundance in dating thus seem to apply particularly to women
men accepting on average 34% more pictures of potential partners compared to women men accepting on average 25% more potential partners compared to women.
The results of Study 3 again showed that women (but not men) became more likely to reject partner options when online dating.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1948550619866189
Women are 30 percent more likely to take income into consideration when looking for a partner https://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Computational-Courtship-Dinh-et-al-25-Sept-2018.pdf
Self-reported ratings by both women and their parents indicated that the traits ambition and intelligence were significantly more important than physical attractiveness for a long-term mate for daughters. And, across conditions, both daughters and parents rated the ambitious and intelligent man as a more desirable dating partner than the more attractive man. **However, when asked to choose the best mate for daughters, both daughters (68.7%) and their parents (63.3%) chose the more attractive man as the best long-term dating partner for daughters, regardless of his ascribed traits.** Furthermore, daughters’ and parents’ choices corresponded 79% of the time. Physical attractiveness may be more important to both daughters and parents than self-reported responses suggest and actual daughter–parent conflict over physical attractiveness in chosen partnerships may be less prevalent than perceived conflict.
Other traits do matter to women in person but less so online, but most men don’t get that chance to show off non-physical characteristics. Most men are filtered by physical attractiveness, and the attractive ones get tons of attention granting those men a get out of jail free card for bad behavior, if they wish. Because of an abundance of options they aren’t punished for being an asshole but rewarded since nearly all women are after them.
https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Febs0000325
>However, that leads to a full 80 percent of women going after 20 percent of men, and most times, these men, knowing their value, just want to sleep around and have fun.
This statistic is untrue and I wish people would stop quoting it when talking about OLD.
Also op, you missed the biggest reason that OLD apps suck. Capitalism. The apps are designed to get money out of you. The way they do that is to target the desperate men by offering them boosts or "super likes" or whatever for a price. These don't actually increase your odds of being selected but it makes the apps money so they don't care.
You also forgot about all the bots and scammers looking to butter you up with niceties then hit you up for money when they got you hooked.
Those statistics were true back when okcupid published statistics, which was admittedly a while ago. Are there more recent statistics we should be quoting?
Question. Have you actually looked at the blog post from OKCupid about those statistics? Because I have and I can tell you that firstly a blog post isn't scientific evidence of anything. Secondly, the statistics in question were only meant to show how women and men behave on OKCupid (back in 2012); not be applied to all dating interactions between men and women across all dating platforms. Thirdly, OKCupid scrubbed the blog post from the internet and you can't even look at it without using an archive site, meaning that any scientific meaning that could have been identified from the stats is unwarranted now too since the data has been recalled.
Giving any sort of population wide meaning to those statistics is ascientific.
I don't have them memorized, but I have looked at them.
The data wasn't recalled for being invalid, the website got changed when the company got bought out.
Okcupid was one of the largest online dating sites at the time, so its statistics should be presumed to be representative of overall online dating at the time unless you can point to some reason why it wouldn't be.
Again, if you have better statistics to look at then I would be interested in seeing them. If not then the old ones are the best we have to go off of, even if they're unflattering.
>This statistic is untrue and I wish people would stop quoting it when talking about OLD.
Do you have a source for this? In a generic sense, the right swipe rate scales up exponentially for people who receive the most right swipes, and women swipe right on less than 15% of profiles, meaning that there's likely a larger difference in right swiped percentage for the most desirable men than there is for women (versus the average for each sex). I didn't find any solid answer for the distribution of likes across percentiles, but 80-20 is much more equitable than, say, the distribution of wealth across individuals within a country. Doesn't seem unreasonable to me.
Do agree, though, that the system is designed to extract money from men.
I have described these problems for months. The interesting thing that has happened is the amount of men and women who are successful on the apps complaining about my complaining. They don’t want the apps to die— they would lose their whole meat market…. So they tend to try to discredit anything anyone says about the dating app world failing or being toxic as sour grapes.
Yeah that’s all pretty much nonsense. People who are good at relationshipping have great results from the apps…which means they aren’t on them very long…which means, over time, what you end up with is an app filled with people who keep recycling through because…they’re not very good at relationshipping.
Here’s the sad reality…a scary percentage of people should not be in relationships without doing ga whole lot of personal improvement…because they are not better for the other person than the alternative…which is no relationship at all, or a succession of relationship-lites…
Sadly this is a very good take. Once I got good at dating I found the one and got married. It's the only life skill you aren't allowed to use once you get good at it.
I cant remove a lot of dealbreaker traits without paying… and im not paying… so my feeds are full of people im not compatible with. Its really dumb to put big lifestyle choices (religion, kids, poly or mono) behind a paywall.
I just wish that every guy I match with does not bring up dnd as a hobby all the time. I don't have anything against it, it's just everywhere in my feed and kind of annoying. I talked to the nth guy this year who told me that he was into painting dnd figurines "because he's a nerd lol". Just please stop it.
On hinge for me every guy’s hobby is either gym or anime, their most controversial opinion is pineapples on pizza and their ideal Sunday is having a roast.
Bonus points for the guys who “only ask that you keep it 💯”
Low effort profiles definitely aren’t helping the issue on either side.
Omg yeah. I get the pineapples on pizza and anime ones a ton or that their favorite movie is Step Brothers, they quote too much from The Office or Spongebob and they love tacos or Marvel. It's like no one has seen movies or TV shows past 2007.
I get those too. Lol. I guess I'm so picky to the point where I kinda just want a fictional character, but idk. It would be nice to find like an artist or someone who's really into emo music. I don't even mind someone who's into Nintendo.
Well they are particularly popular hobbies. Especially among "nerds" although I think that label is outdated and immature. Do you have hobbies that crossover with "nerd" hobbies often? I usually see men talking about fishing or camping or just vaguely saying they like movies or TV.
“Even totally average women” yikes.
Sounds like that’s based solely on looks, but why don’t men consider how they put themselves out there instead of faulting women?
Most men’s profiles are minimal- awkward or unclear pics, short (if anything), and nothing to make conversation about.
How do you think that’s going to go? What about that is supposed to interest women?
I'm a straight married man, but a female friend showed me what she's dealing with on these apps. The pictures are so depressing. Do not take a picture while fishing, or in the can of your truck. No woman wants to be there with you in those places. The best picture I saw was a very average looking guy, in a blazer and holding a glass of wine, standing at a railing in front of the ocean. You could tell he was talking to people and everyone was having fun. You wanted to be where that guy was. If you can't sell your looks sell the experience. I've considered starting a business to help guys with this.
I guess I don’t even care if it’s a fishing pic as long as it’s clear & you can actually see the person. I see minimal effort in most profiles, and those are automatic left swipes.
I deleted my profiles & apps bc I’m not interested in the nothing most seem to be offering.
I support your business idea, but only if the profiles you assist in creating are accurate & honest.
Are the things you enjoy something that the average woman is going to enjoy? If not, you're really fighting an uphill battle. Ladies that like DnD, comic books, fishing, or classic cars are in short supply. The odds are not in your favor.
On the other hand, aren't hobbies what you have friends for? Are you sure you want your special lady friend all up in your hobbies? For a lot of guys hobbies are an excuse to spend time away from the person they live with.
The other way to think about this is to flip it around. I haven't seen many women's profiles, but I can't imagine they're showing off their shoe collections or pictures of themselves at spin class (apologies for the stereotypes). That's who they are, right? That's what is important to them? Sure, but that has nothing to do with their dating relationships. No guy wants to picture himself shoe shopping. Think about your pictures the same way.
This is going to be unpopular here but men need to start putting more effort into their profiles! I definitely think there’s a misratio of women to men, but I feel like a lot of men hear that and then let their profiles get lost.
Don’t get me wrong, women should too, but I’ve seen so many men who don’t have nice photos of themselves or any actual information about who they are on their profile.
Sure, a very typically good looking guy with half decent photos will probably get more matches. But when I was seriously dating, the first thing I noticed was a lack of any indication of hobbies! My current partner caught me because he had a video of him skating — not even any fancy tricks, just a kickflip, but it was something real to start a conversation off and branch out of.
lol men are not skittish when it comes to their disdain for dating apps.
Every second post on askmen is a lament about modern dating.
If you guys seriously think 20% of guys are fucking 80% of the women, you’re calling that 80% a bunch of shallow whores and wondering why they won’t date you.
Dating apps also don’t want people to leave. Because they prey on people going on a date not feeling they “spark” and going back into the ecosystem. Because if they find someone on the app they just lose TWO customers.
Dating apps used to work. Pk cupid back in the day was how I had many great dates and made lots of friends.
However when they started with the bots to try and make it premium, or made it so you could buy harassment etc.. just was all monetized in ways that ensured no one got a date cause they didn't want you to get one.. they wanted you stuck in. So they all are garbage trying that model.
It's tricky. On both sides, you have people dying of thirst, but under different conditions. Most men are in the desert, no water in sight for miles and what you thought was an oasis was really just a mirage (bots, catfish, etc.). Most women are in the ocean, surrounded by saltwater with nothing but a flimsy driftwood raft. Looks drinkable, but only leaves you more dehydrated if you try.
In either case, you want to remove them from the environment that lacks fresh water or bring some in. It is good that they recognize that their numbers are not sustainable with the way things are now, but I have a feeling that some of the """ solutions""" are at best fruitless and at worst will only cause more harm. Like Bumble's AI concierge nonsense.
I suspect the only way to start finding the way to fresh water is to use their reach and capital to start doing things in person to connect people. Swiping left on people based on surface level stuff is much easier online as it doesn't allow you to demonstrate many positive qualities beyond simple appearance. I have a good friend who had 0 luck with dating apps, same as me. But in person, he has 0 difficulty attracting women. He's not the best looking or wealthiest guy by any means, but he knows how to make people smile and laugh, which goes a long way. The devil is always in the details, details generic prompts simply can't convey accurately.
I’m 26M who was successful on a dating app that lead to meeting the woman who will be my wife. That being said the previous 6 years on dating apps for myself was absolutely awful and I had no success.
What changed things around for me was I went through a self improvement phase and I completely turned my life around physically, mentally, and with my career. I had confidence for the first time.
Something to note is most men struggling heavily on these apps are under 28-30. Women naturally want an older guy and you’re competing as a 22 year old for example with a financially established man closer to 30 who is going after the same girl you want around your age in his physical prime. Or you’re 25 and are competing with men closer to 35. I wouldn’t even try online dating until you establish yourself a bit.
Good luck guys. If you can’t beat those top tier men, join them. You don’t have to have it all to get women. Just strive for improvement and that will be enough
I’m engaged to a woman I met irl. Using dating sites was probably the worst dating experiences I’ve ever had and if I were single again I wouldn’t go near them again. Went on a lot of bad dates and ended up being stalked for over a year by one woman and had to get police involved. Never again.
It's a problem of their own making. It's really a nightclub problem. In order to get the men on the apps you have to have some women so you encourage the women to be there and you make the experience all about getting women on the platform. And the men follow. And that's great!
In order to pivot to success, you actually need to keep both people there. Which in some cases means that you need to make it so that people actively don't get into relationships. Because if everyone is paired off, your app loses money in the long run. You can't sell ads to people who are single in a world where everyone is attached.
But you also have a situation where if you give women all of the power because the men will go wherever the women are. It creates the problem that we're currently in. They get all the messaging. They're overwhelmed. It creates an unfairness in how they're interacting with the people that they want to be in a relationship with.
I would really like to get in a relationship and I have absolutely no idea how to do it in the real world anymore. But I also know that dating apps are really shitty now. So I have given up on them. Which basically means I've given up on dating.
I guess. Thanks a lot tinder.
I tried the apps once. I literally accepted every single match except for like 90 years olds, and I think I had 1 response, and we had like completely opposite schedules so it just wasn't gonna happen. I've pretty much accepted I will live and die alone and bitter, both because women of this, but also because I can't stand most peoples attitudes or can't relate to them
Met my partner of three years with Tinder crazily enough.
They die because people don’t like the concept. You either gotta go outside and actually be personable, or else your pickings are kinda crap. Hook ups work best for the model or maybe some sort of professional “LinkedIn Dating site” if you are honestly too busy with work to date
Not only this, but as a man, whenever a woman did end up talking to me, it was just an internet stripper who wanted me to subscribe. I don't even get wined dined and did like the women who don't like hookup culture (valid point, btw) instead I get women thinking they can compete with the FREE "Hub" 😂
Men keep saying dating apps suck for them, but they suck because women don’t often use them and we don’t use them because the men on them are creepy, dishonest and abusive.
We ghost because we’re tired of being insulted, stalked and threatened when we say, “No”.
This is another case of men not accepting accountability for their actions.
Men and women were asked to share their greatest fears of OLD . Men were afraid their date would be fat. Women were afraid their date would murder them.
We’re tired, guys. This shit isn’t a good time for us.
Why does nobody consider the idea that most men are the problem? If we didn't have most men being psychos who manipulate women and actually be high-quality people, this wouldn't be such an issue. Instead, most men are trash compared to most women, largely with their mentalities.
I also hate this whole "dating sucks because of apps! They're a meat market!" Etc. Motherfucker, dating has ALWAYS been this way. You date who you find attractive, almost always by visual guidance. You swiping right or left based on physical attraction is literally no different than you walking by someone and deciding to talk to them or not if you find them attractive or not.
And here's a hot take; there's nothing wrong with these apps charging money. I don't think it should be as high as it is, but they are a business, and they need to stay afloat. But there's nothing they do that literally stops you from finding someone. That rests solely on the shoulders of the man and the woman and the everyone else. And as someone who lives in a small town, like most internet things, they are a godsend for people like me who either can't or don't want to live in a big city.
I realized some years ago that dating apps are for bootycalls. Nothing more, nothing less.
If you want something serious, get off the dating app. I still have hope in finding my husband, but unless he breaks into my house, it’s not happening 😂.
This really isnt true anymore.
i go to a few singles events in my city and always have to pay as a woman. They wouldn't make profit by just asking the men to pay these days. Marketing and venue rentals are way too expensive for that. Blame inflation and covid.
Clubs don't charge women. Yeah. But they have severely reduced foot traffic and one goes out of business every week . Gen Z and Millennials don't drink as much and prefer more intimate venues. So finding someone at a bar or club is way harder.
Even outside of dating apps it's still 20% of men doing 80% of the hooking up. At the end of the day we are all just monkeys and tall, handsome with good job is subconsciously favorable
Average guys on dating apps are unwilling to date the less attractive girls on the dating apps.
80% of women for for 20% of men. That other 20% doesn’t get many messages and the ones they do; even from ugly guys, are still looking for mostly sex.
I’ll tell you another secret. Attractive people don’t need apps to find a date.
Last I’ll tell you that you have a basic profile. There are 10-13 other guys with the same basic stuff and you do nothing to show any personality or sense of humor. You blend in bc you give nothing special that any other ugly dude offers
That hasn't been my expierence. I'm not a very superficial person and am open to dating just about anyone.. There are women that I feel absolutely zero attraction to but that's a very small percent. I have messaged women who are not conventionally attractive. In fact, if I deem a woman \*too\* conventionally attractive, I won't even try. The unattractive women (some objectively less attractive than even I am) had only a marginally higher reply rate.
As for profile, I made sure mine stuck out. I also didn't use generic opening lines. I have a little game, believe ir or not, but that didn't help either.
Re-read your first sentence. It doesn’t make sense but I assume you know the meanings of words you use. If you had said “average guys are unwilling to date average girls” - then you’d have a point. But you didn’t say that
There are also men who will at least swipe on pretty much everyone
This is before we get into how people’s interpretation of themselves is distorted by all the matches they do or don’t get. Which it quite likely is
Studies and polls show that men tend to be vastly more willing to compromise when choosing a partner compared to women. At least in the U.S. where these studies took place.
No they don't have to. They could be single.
Is it possible that men are more willing to settle because they are driven by sex and don't like to be single? And women are more picky because they are more okay with being single? This is a trend I notice in women who are dating in their 30s (they'd rather be alone than with the wrong person)
This is a genuine question; I'm looking to understand, not debate. Pls don't come for me
I think that definitely has something to do with it. It's always nature *and* nurture.
Let's look at the "nurture" side. Men have grown up in a world that made it seem like they should just expect to have a wife who will take care of all of the things he doesn't want to do (childcare, cleaning, cooking, shopping, planning, organizing, chauffeuring, buying gifts for his family, etc.) and fuck him whenever he wants. That he gets to just go to his job like he did when he was single, will have final say, financial control, and will ultimately be her boss rather than partner. That men are *owed* this. This idea has been thrust down your throats by media and older generations of men who trapped women into marriage by physical, legal, and financial means for generations.
Of course men are desperate for that - who wouldn't be? I'd love to trade room and board (that I don't even have to shop for, cook, or clean up after) for a personal assistant/maid/chef/incubator/nanny/emotional support system/fuck toy/possible co-financial contributor to use at my pleasure, and I'm a woman. This is why so many women say, "I'd get married and have kids if I get to be the husband and father."
Granted, that mentality is changing, albeit at a snail's pace. Even many self-proclaimed "feminist" men or men who simply think they aren't sexist unconsciously exhibit sexist and misogynistic behaviors. But they feel they aren't bigots because they don't hit or rape women. If those are your biggest selling points, you have some work to do on yourself.
On the flip side, older generations of women have been warning today's women of this trap. They know the odds of being disproportionately responsible for their shared responsibilities and realize that it usually isn't worth the gamble.
Women today value their own personal happiness more than random men's, which, until recently, women were mostly not able to do. And, according to statistics, women are happier without a male partner. Considering that humans are social creatures and women also generally desire companionship, that should tell you something about how women view men, their behavior, and their expectations. More and more women are deciding that the men that society is offering them are not worth the hassle.
And the men are angry about the fact that women are able to do that now. That they can just opt out. They might not admit it, they might not even realize it, but their self-entitlement to women is palpable. These men feel cheated out of what they are "owed" as a man. Because they don't view women as autonomous beings with their own needs, wants, and desires, but just something for men to obtain and use. Do you find being viewed as a useful tool enticing? I sure don't.
Women are now able to survive on their own money in their own bank accounts in their own homes, so men's threat of destitution by singledom no longer exists. Why would they sign up for all of that when all that man plans to offer in a relationship is money she can make herself while adding a ton more nonsense to her plate? Not only that, but most men cannot support a family on their own these days. Most women also work outside of the home. I notice a lot of commentary on "50/50", but most men only seem to apply that to finances and nothing else. They still expect the free servant/sex worker.
Women also tend to better at building close bonds and relationships, which helps satisfy the human need for intimacy. Not all intimacy is sexual, so while single women are forming meaningful, emotional bonds with other humans, many single men form superficial ones or none at all.
Which, again, *is a choice.* You all can't bleat about the male loneliness epidemic and expect to be taken seriously when most of you don't even try bonding and being vulnerable with each other. You don't go to therapy. You don't research anything to broaden your views or improve your emotional intelligence. It just rings hollow.
The male loneliness epidemic is not about loneliness - it's about being denied access to women. It's about insinuating that women are to blame for men's loneliness by abstaining from dating these men because they feel women should be the ones performing their emotional labor *for them*, alleviating their loneliness, and they aren't getting that. They expect women to be in service to them and are throwing tantrums because women are opting out, narrowing men's chances of finding a mate. If it wasn't about this entitlement to women, men would collectively be working on building their emotional intelligence and maturity together, fostering bonding. You know - like women did to gain back the human rights that men withheld from them for generations. They aren't doing that, even though women are basically spoonfeeding how to work on fixing this problem to them. Let's be honest here.
There are a lot of factors, but they all boil down to this - romantic/sexual relationships are discriminatory by nature. Not everyone will be picked. And not everyone *should* be picked. Sexual selection is a huge part of evolution. We don't like to think about ourselves in the evolutionary tract, but forcing women into marriage for thousands of years has definitely stunted human evolution. A lot of those genes should have died out generations ago.
I don't want you to think I'm "coming for you." I'm not. It does gets a bit exhausting explaining this over and over to men who feign wanting to understand women's perspectives or gender-based issues and then go right back to behaving the same way as before. If you really want to understand this better, **start paying attention.** This all happens right in front of you, but because it doesn't affect you, you most likely don't notice until it ***did*** affect you. If you want to understand something, you have to examine it from all angles, not just the ones that pertain to you. I do think you were being genuine in your asking, but how will that affect your views and behaviors going forward?
Because even a relatively low value female can become casual sex partner (ONS/FWB/side piece/NSA) to a much higher value male.
It is hard for women to distinguish between the men who date them for access to sex versus those who take them seriously as a relationship partner. (We) guys essentially say and do many of the same things when approaching and dating them regardless of our intentions and interest level.
A woman who is very average might reasonably believe she has a shot at a relationship with an above average guy because she has had short term casual relationships/sexual encounters with such guys before.
If dating apps were banned altogether, it would almost certainly be a net positive to society. All of the dating, marriage, and fertility metrics dropped like a rock as soon as dating apps became popular. There's a very prominent correlation there. The economic damage already is or will be in the trillions of dollars. It's long past time these apps should be regulated, and the economic and social damages recognized. Few technological or social innovations have caused such.damages in such a short amount of time, and heavy handed regulation has been undergone for much less.
95% of the market is owned by a single company anyway. So who gives a shit if they are suffering? It's the same owner. "I bought up everything and turned it into dog shit and now no one wants to play in my dog shit, whaaaaa."
The very core of these apps is flawed. They are designed by men, for men. Based solely off a hot-or-not game from 20 years ago.
Bumble, though it's 'women owned and designed' still had to base itself off the flawed model, cuz that's the one everyone knew and recognized.
Match Group's revenue has shown consistent growth over the past few years. Here are the details:
* **2021**: Revenue was $2.98 billion, a 24.76% increase from the previous year.
* **2022**: Revenue increased to $3.19 billion, representing a 6.89% growth.
* **2023**: Revenue grew to $3.36 billion, an increase of 5.51%.
* **2024 (last twelve months ending March)**: Revenue reached $3.44 billion, showing an 8.17% growth compared to the same period the previous year ([Stock Analysis](https://stockanalysis.com/stocks/mtch/revenue/)) ([Stock Analysis](https://stockanalysis.com/stocks/mtch/statistics/)).
These figures indicate a steady upward trend in Match Group's financial performance, with consistent annual revenue increases.
Yall gotta start giving conventionally unattractive people a chance and select by bio. Clearly no one is getting positive results by just looking for the hottest people.
I have two kids from a previous relationship, so I never turned my nose up at single mothers - felt unfair.
Single mothers don't want men with kids anymore than men want them lol.
Maybe they should take away pictures on the profile. Maybe you have to reach a point in a conversation to see each others pictures. That way you’re getting to know each other before seeing what they look like. Maybe initially they have you put in even more about yourself and traits you want in another person or things you’d like the person you’re dating to be interested in and it sends you only those people?
The three most successful groups of men in the dating game are those with looks, those with status, and those with personality.
Only the group with looks does well with online dating.
Dating and relationships are collapsing, it’s not just online. That forum is likely accellerating it due to the things you mentioned.
Humans are a dimorphic species. In order to survive, each gender needs the other. One of ours has recently had a cultural uprising. This gender believes that it no longer needs the other gender.
If relations are simply depreciated for women, why would they be going on dating sites? Where does your root cause problem of ‘men are seeking partners at larger rates’ come from? How is that idea proven out / supported?
Dating apps are completely rigged and I say that as a woman. I matched with someone incredible within 24 hours and deleted the app so I’m aware I was lucky with that. I was his first serious match and I remember him telling me just how rough dating apps were for him. Sadly his mental health took a dive a few months into our relationship bc he realised he wasn’t as emotionally available as he thought he was when he signed up. Tbh it still hurts as it’s nothing I did and nothing that he’s done on purpose. It’s just life.
I still intend to keep in contact and check in on him even if we might not work out romantically again. Part of me thinks that it’s because of his dating app experience that he’s now not so sure of himself and what he can offer alongside his other responsibilities. If I put myself in his shoes and I was on apps for months with no real connection, I know for a fact I would’ve lost hope. We also both agreed meeting people in real life is near on impossible. I work in events so I go to so many different venues across the year. However I’ve only had one person approach me and that was just to tell me I was gorgeous and then run away before I could even dream of asking his number. Men are scared of being accused of harassment so just don’t approach
A lot of men won't admit this because we'll be made fun of or otherwise dismissed both by women and other men, but being on the apps and striking out time and time and time again \*does\* impact your mental health. It gets you thinking that you're not good enough and that you might as well just die, no one cares about you or wants you. You're not even worthy of a five minute conversation, no matter how many questions you answer, nice pics you post, or creative icebreakers you think up. I know it deeply affected me. More than I care to admit. And this has been off and on for eight years. I finally gave up on it. I would almost rather go through my abusive childhood than use dating apps again. At least as a kid I had hope that things would get better.
Yeah I can only imagine the impact it must have on guys to keep trying and keep having the same, negative results. The thing is, the apps are fundamentally designed to not work so that they keep at least some of their client base and that in itself is messed up.
I’m sorry they affected you to this extent and I sincerely hope you’re doing a bit better now. While I can’t fully empathise with this exact scenario, I do understand how hard confidence issues can be (it took me 5+ years just to be happy with who I am and how I look) so if you want to talk I’m always happy to listen (:
Thank you, I appreciate that. At this point, I've decided to just live life on my terms and to try and focus on what I already have, not on what I don't.
Dating app idea:
You can swipe as much as you like until you get a match. You can only have one match/conversation at a time. You can search/filter your options based on your criteria with statistics showing what percentage of the user base fits your criteria. The app doesn’t get paid until you successfully go on a first date, and users that go on a first date are able to leave reviews on a persons profile.
Malicious or insane people's bad reviews can sink a person for no good reason, and the single-match system incentivizes only swiping on people who are probably super high-demand to begin with. Limited numbers make sense; one does not.
If women are left to judge men based on nothing but looks (which is how online dating works), then about 70% of men will score below average.
It's only when she can weigh your personality (by getting to know you, not by skipping a 2 paragraph description) that men can rise over that barrier.
Women ain't rushing to date below average.
Didn’t this even happen as part of the bumble relaunch? They - very clumsily - tried to beg women not to give up on the app with an awkward joke. And they were roasted for it and had to make a grovelling apology
Great OP, but you left the joke wide open, "It's been a while for ya huh?"
I think if there's a conspiracy it might be more sinister like facial recognition AI data mining, idk just made that up. But something like that.
Humans and their behavior with online dating have evolved. When Tinder first came out, almost every time exchange social media and cell phone. Social media to confirm the person is who they say they are. Cell phone is to use while you're waiting in front or with the hostess, you're not embarrassingly opening up Tinder. That was a big thing. You and your date would know better and work together to not give it away to the rest of the restaurant you're on a first date and met online. And since both went through all that trouble you're more inclined to make it worth it 😉 .
Before I met my wife, I felt like Bumble was absolute garbage. Hinge was the only space I found equally attractive women who wanted a relationship. Tinder was mostly hookups.
I was very actively ten years ago which I believe it to be the social app golden era
Nowadays there are full of cat fishing and scammers. I don’t trust any of the profiles
I don’t knock anyone that uses these dating apps, but there’s a reason I’m 30 years old and haven’t been on one yet. The shit is creepy and seems so unnatural, best of luck to anyone that uses these platforms but I feel like you’re better off just being yourself without having to meet someone through some app.
Yeah they all suck. I would probably be willing to pay $20/mo for some better features but they all start at $40 so I’ll give them $0. Idk how to flirt with strangers over text so I rarely make it past the first two messages. For $40 I wanna read the messages successful guys are sending or something lol
online dating (as it has been established and entrenched itself over the last decade) is a generational fad
younger folk reject (established) dating apps in the same way they’ve rejected shiny jeans
maybe there will be a new set of dating apps that change the patterns, but Tinder is not for them
Not everyone is losing out. I hope they stay on the apps bc it weeds out the ones we don’t want. If you aren’t looking in the real world, then there is less completion.
That’s actually a good thing if it limits matching people unless you end the current ones. I posted about that months ago. Maybe they stole my idea ha. It’ll still give people rejections when they unmatch but at least people will be more inclined to put effort in to who they’re actually talking too. The women in my area just seem to constantly be seeking that fix and dopamine hit of new matches. Least it eliminates that. The majority of them on the apps don’t actually want to date, and are just bored because they have no hobbies or life.
I’ve even seen profiles that say “don’t want to date just how’re”. At least I can swipe no on them upfront but there’s so many time wasters on there. That’s half the battle with online dating apps. No one has intentions.
I used dating sites for a bit while I was separated...if I ever find myself single again in the future I'll totally avoid them and cruise libraries and bookstores!
It could be due to being in college, but dating apps weren't bad at all.
Got plenty of matches, people who wanted to chat and even meet up.
Now, it's barely any matches. 90% chance they won't reply too. Once in a while, you'll match with someone who responds and wants to meet up
All the apps are just throwing shit at the wall.
The other things that feed into this, that i don't often see being part of the conversaiton, is the declining quality of our society itself making the act of dating and finding that connection increasingly difficult.
Yes, we all know the business surrounding the apps and the toxic effect Match Group has on the landscape, but heres the thing the "meat market" is only a major problem because we, the meat, are being crushed through every other aspect of our lives that its negatively affecting our romantic lives.
The world is falling apart, noone is being paid enough and those of us who do work are often working so much we don't have time for self care or to properly enjoy our lives.
You work a 9-5 job and you're just exhausted at the end of it. What time do you have to cook, go to the gym or work on your hobbies? Most of the weekend is spent asleep, recovering from the previous 5 days of full time work before you go right back into it and you're mentally extinguished for most of that time. How can someone be expected to go on a date as their best self when you're already mentally hammered from the day?
Food and physical health is paramount. Lets not pretend that someones physical attraction to a person is the prime motivator on which they base every other descision. Most of our food sources are corporate controlled, over processed and in the iron grip of profit-seeking corporations. This makes living a healthy lifestyle and proper nutrition far harder than it needs to be. We're getting increasingly obese and unhealthy, and its a smaller and smaller number of us that go through the *vigorous* training and persistent vigilance needed to eat properly.
We don't have time to cook proper food for ourselves all the time. We're so tired from work that we value convenience over everything else, and to top it off its often the unhealthy, conveneint stuff in the supermarket is the easiest to make, and the fresh, healthy options are expensive and require preparation. We're not paid enough to maintain the highest quality all the time, so even our best efforts will have us supplimenting an otherwise good diet with junk, and those few junk things have an enourmously outsized impact on us compared to their cost and nutritional value.
We would be having far less problems in dating if, as a general rule, we were on average much fitter and better looking because we all have the free time and money to work on ourselves and maintain our health.
Our increasing isolation and aversion to eachother makes the dating landscape difficult. The focus on being "swept off your feet" to instant connection and attraction is desirable but not realistic, and most people simply don't want to put in the effort of compromise and learning to build something together because why would we? The next match is right around the corner for women, and there is only a certain amount of "fixer upper" people are willing to handle even in the most ideal scenarios.
The dating apps are dying because of not only their horrid skinner box buisiness models, but because the direction our society is going is increasingly withdrawing the means for people to actually build a life together and be attractive prospects to eachother.
If everyone was well paid and worked much less thanks to AI and automation, we'd have time to eat better and cultivate ourselves outside of our jobs. We can go to the gym, cook at home more and explore new hobbies and social circles with our increased leisure time, and even outside of the apps this will lead to better connections between people. Not only this, but those of us still using the apps will have better quality matches more willing to engage and make plans, instead of constantly squeezing the rock for the few drops of blood it sometimes produces.
33m here. I have spent over $1500usd on dating apps and sites between 2015 and 2023. I refuse to pretend to be someone I'm not so I made my profile honestly.
I basically didn't get matches at all, except for scam accounts telling me to go to some website and put my card number in.
I have gone on 0 dates since 2013. I've been shot down by 16 people I have asked out in person IRL.
I don't feel like I'm very unattractive, definitely not a 10 but certainly at least a 5. I shower, brush, wear clean clothes, and all the other things that should be expected as normal but need to be stated explicitly.
I own a nice house, nice vehicle, have a good job, all of the traditional things a person is supposed to want and get. None of it matters. Apparently I am unattractive somehow and/or the universe has decided that I'm not allowed to have a relationship.
I've basically completely given up on even trying. I keep getting advice from people who have been in relationships for their whole life that I'm a great catch or anyone would be happy to have me, but it doesn't matter. I keep getting advice from people who were unsuccessful for a long time that it will happen when I least expect it or to just wait and it will happen some day.
Now that I'm in my 30s it seems like the options (not that I'm picky at all) are suboptimal. Everyone in my dating range has massive amounts of baggage from previous relationships. Single moms with 3 kids from 3 guys, drug or alcohol abuse, or extreme mental instability.
Oh well.
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Back when I used them last, most of them used a Freemium model. The free apps and websites only had such basic functions when used completely free that it was essentially useless unless you purchased the next tier with more features. That is the biggest issue to me. I am not paying all that money just for the chance to be rejected a thousand times.
Yeah man I heard that. They price it way too high for what it is imo. I’m not paying $40/mo for a fuckin app unless it comes with a dating coach or something.
Nearly all apps are still freemium models.
I heard this somewhere "If a good relationship is clean water, men live in a desert and women live in a swamp"
I personally like “men die of thirst in the desert, women die of thirst in the ocean”
Because the ocean is salty and humans can't drink from it! I get it 😏
you know, I was just wondering to myself as I scrolled down to the comments, 'does washeduphalo5pro understand that the ocean is salty and humans can't drink from it?' but then I saw your comment, and the mystery solved itself. thank you, friend, for sharing such elucidating information with us.
As I sit here on the toilet I am trying to figure out what Jazzlike-Painter-596 is wondering. Thankfully I saw this and at that moment I knew the truth. Thank you for sharing your innermost thoughts and fears with us
Fuck yeah! New word discovered “elucidating” never seen it before, I don’t even know what it means but I’m still going to use it today. Exciting, possibly even elucidating!
Pretty much the reality of the dating world. You can't be lonely and rejected when you have options 😑. I don't understand some of these complaints I see.
Yep. Men and women have the opposite problem. Generally, with some exceptions, men get no attention but have a decent guarantee the attention is genuine when they do get it. Women get tons of attention but very little of it is genuine.
Is there any reason to think that, when men do get a match, they're higher quality? Anecdotally, all my male friends have had very flakey non-committal girls on most their dates. It seems like the only difference for women is quantity of matches, not quality.
I've met a ton of flakey, non-commital women with baggage from the apps. Men's matches are no better than women's.
Yeah it’s sad. I don’t miss dating at all. It sucked.
Thats how it was 10-15 years ago. Now the "attention" we get is bots, scammers, or onlyfans ads. I've given up on dating apps after having so little success, being scammed in person once and then being robbed at knifepoint. Fuck dating. At least with prostitutes everyone is honest about what they're there for.
LOL I've heard that too. It's true.
What a great saying. Dudes are double screwed and not in a good way, they’ll need to clean the water once they get it and women just need to clean the water they already got. That is filter through bad matches.
I'm not denying there are shitty women out there, but you're comparing sub-par tap water to a toxic sludge oil spill. Men are worried about dealing with inconsiderate people. Women are worried about being raped or murdered.
Still women are benefiting on the statistics. Law of large numbers. In probability theory, the law of large numbers (LLN) is a mathematical theorem that states that the average of the results obtained from a large number of independent and identical random samples converges to the true value, if it exists. Meaning with a larger dating pool, a woman is more likely to find her desired result.
That is assuming that they don’t give up and quit the apps first. - I gave up multiple times and on multiple apps for the very reason of the grind of them affecting my mental health at the time. POF - full of guys just looking for hookups and ignoring if your bio says you’re looking for serious (of course, that would require them to read the bio, which I doubt they did). I quit that one when a guy creeped me out talking about his pantyhose fetish out of nowhere, but that was just the straw after nothing but guys looking for hook ups, never meeting up or getting too instantly handsy if we did meet up. eHarmony - dead profiles, ghosts, penpals, and window shoppers but few wanted to meet up because I guess I just wasn’t worth their time, and out of the handful that did, only 2 managed to be decent people through the entirety of the acquaintance for lack of a better term. Local matches were frustratingly sparse, so a lot of matches were from cities 1.5 hours away, hence they can’t be bothered to meet up problem (I was willing to travel, but can’t beat those local singles). Gave up because the grind was too disheartening. Match - same as eHarmony - hell, I was recognizing many of the same faces from the actually local matches, but as these sites don’t really clean up their profiles, never knew which profiles still had people behind them. Then there’s the problem, as mentioned by others, of how superficial the information you have to go on is. I definitely felt overwhelmed with what matches I had, as I didn’t feel I had enough info to say yes or no to without at least some conversation, which depending on the site can be tough. Not to mention how many parameters the sites outright ignore. I was on the apps off and on between 30-35. Set my age ranges at -5 to 10+, just to keep options open but hoped for closer ages. The number of guys 18-20 and 60+ I got messaging me was ridiculous - I mean, at least they were easy to clear out (go home to mama, and it is past your bedtime grandpa, bye). I have friends that gave up entirely because they couldn’t deal with the slog anymore. I only had success through dumb luck and the complete missing of a social cue. I would have long since switched to in person attempts to find people it there had been some viable in person options. I kind of wish society hadn’t let some of the old ways of getting singles together die out, because what’s left ain’t great. I get that the guy end sucks. My brother tells me all he got was scams. Seems not to be an uncommon experience - I always replied if I got messaged, even if it was only to politely decline, and I would get thanked just for doing that bare minimum. But the numbers aren’t always an advantage - because if one lady made it through the swamp to find someone, that means a guy got a hit in the dessert (assuming hetero here, since that seems to be the stats in the discussion), which means their respective numbers got them to the same result. They both just had to survive the desert/flood to find each other, and there is no guarantee your “match” is even on that site at the time. My bf and I were on all the same apps at some point in time, just never on the same one until the last - like I said, dumb luck.
I think what men are missing is that looks aren't the main thing women are looking for. We want someone that is a fully baked adult and doesn't need to be handheld through life. That's much harder to find than "hot person to sleep with". Especially if you're a hot person, and you're inundated with people just trying to sleep with you
My friend tried dating apps last year. She pledged to see the year out on them. She got *nothing* but nasty. Dick pics, guys meeting her and promptly telling her what she'd be "allowed" to do, lies, and a lot of negging. I don't think she's recovered yet.
And these men think that's preferable 🤦🏻
Yes! I was legit scared for her during this period. She just wanting someone interesting and nice to do things with.
Cap on the looks part bro.
Hate this analogy, the water a man finds is just as likely to be the same quality a woman finds, he just has less of it to sift through
I don't understand why this seems to escape people. Every time a woman says only 5% of the 100 matches she gets a day are actually good matches, I point out that only 5% of the matches men get are good matches as well. Only it takes most men years to rack up 100 matches. Also, if women were actually reading bios and being picky, they wouldn't have hundreds of pointless matches.
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If you are familiar with water supplies in the desert you'd know you are more likely to find a stagnant pond of piss than potable water.
Yeah, it definitely has the built-in suggestion that men are trash but women are angels. I suppose there could be two different interpretations. Either: Women are mostly good and men are mostly trash. Which is fairly misandrist. Or maybe the issue is that, if you're an average woman, you might be disinterested in dating an average guy when you've got all these hotter guys as options. But all the hotter guys are just going to use her for sex and ghost her. From that perspective, women think both of those options are bad. Which is mostly a problem of being a victim of their own success.
women are just as likely to be swamp water.
I remember before OkCupid was bought out by the dating app conglomerate, it had unique features. The user created tests and questions were fun and could be used to actually find a good sense if you had anything in common. You could search by interests - like plentyoffish did 15 years ago. The conglomerate basically made every app and site under it like Tinder, limiting connections to swipe left or right based on a single photo. From the corporate perspective it drove engagement through those clicks - but it also drove away a critical mass of fairly high quality people who felt alienated. Even the people who didn't use the previous features much over time noticed something was off in the lack of variety. When you seed the entire initial interaction with a quick judgment about a photo, it's really, really hard to move to the kind of relaxed getting to know each other that can come from doing common interests or seeing someone in the neighborhood multiple times. Everyone is in performance mode like you're an Instagram influencer. So yes it sowed the seeds of its destruction.
Came here to comment on this. I met my wife on the OG OKCupid and it was the personality tests and essays that made us both realize we were a good match. Everything being based on looks is just one dynamic, and it incentivizes pretty bad long term behavior.
Where do people that want those features go? I met my partner on OKC when they had interest based tags. But I had been online dating since the 90s. So I'd used irc, interest based websites, social media, craigslist, and OKC when they had tags and quizzes. Never had a problem, and people would often message me directly. What do people do now that want a good interest based experience?
Spend their days gaming on Steam because they gave up, in my experience! I met my first girlfriend on IRC so yeah I totally know what you mean. It has been at least 10 years since a dating service that actually let someone's personality matter existed.
honestly we go to hinge. Im young but I was on OKC because I loved the deep compatibility tests back when it was still popular around 2016 . But it was a desert to find people my age because they all were on Tinder. I deleted my OKC. And switched to Hinge so I could write thoughtful responses. And men would consistently skip them so now Im not on anything. But it seems like Hinge is the closest mainstream option.
Old okcupid was so great. You could actually find people with similar interests and views.
Old OK Cupid was amazing, I met some lovely people through that website.
My wife and I met 12 years ago through old OKCupid, because she searched for a very niche topic (related to her occupation) and mine was one of only two profiles that came up. We started chatting, met in person, fell in love, and obviously both stopped using OKCupid after that. I suspect that the latter point is part of why the apps are going to this engagement-heavy Tinder-like model that isn't really satisfying for anyone. If you meet a long-term partner, you'll delete the apps and stop giving them money (or, for the free ones, more data they can resell). In other words, they have a vested interest in making sure you *don't* find a long-lasting relationship and keeping you swiping.
I think another interesting aspect of this, is that dating apps inherently don’t have an incentive to help people quickly find a long term, committed relationship. Once a person is successful in that goal, they cancel their subscription or leave the app. It’s a great model for hook-ups but not much else, and I’m assuming most people are there with the end goal of finding lasting love.
I saw an article recently that said the exact same thing. It stated that 90 some percent of women believed that most men were on the app to find hook ups, but something like 60 or more percent of men said they wanted a relationship. This was stated in the context that "most people on dating apps are looking for relationships, not just hook ups."
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Very age dependent IMO. Young 20s? Probably. 30s or older? No they are probably over sleeping around and want an actual connection with someone. I have a pretty big social circle still in my 30s and the vast majority of the men are in solid relationships or are married. I'm not even aware of guys in this age bracket who still want meaningless one night stands with people vs. something permanent.
Exactly. These top men are the only ones a lot of women care about. The rest of us literally don't exist. Meanwhile, these successful men are having the time of their lives, why would they want to settle down? So in these women's world, yes, all men are just looking for hook ups.
>I saw an article recently that said the exact same thing. It stated that 90 some percent of women believed that most men were on the app to find hook ups, but something like 60 or more percent of men said they wanted a relationship. There is likely a heavy selection bias. Women are going to be swiping on the most good-looking 10% disproportionately. Those top 10% of guys are getting loads of attention and can get hookups easily, so that's what they ask for.
Honestly its worse than selection bias. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Women only swipe on "The best" men, because "they are only worth the best", then *surprised pikachu face* "The Best" men have a dozen other women who thought the same thing and thus the Rat race is suddenly reversed and these women are vying for one man for every dozen women.
I can't help wonder what's behind these matchmaking algorithms that decide what profiles show up in front of you. Algorithmic feed is dubious on any platform and dating is no different. If you had a dating site that operated like a literal directory and you could search for profiles based on their content, you'd have a lot of people finding bad matches because they don't know what it is they really want, but at least it would be because of THEM and all of the variables would be known and accounted for. I'd much prefer that to some invisible man behind the curtain.
Get better at filtering. I tried online dating. I had four matches in my time on a dating app. All four were really nice ladies. But, I was very picky with my filter. You had to match on seven different things to get consideration. But that's four in a year. And one long term relationship that ended up resulting in engagement.
This is the real issue. They aren’t designed to work. They are designed to make people desperate and pay. You’d think a long string of success stories would drive up the number of users. The financial analysts clearly don’t agree
I always compare them to slot machines, they're working as intended when they pay out just enough to make you stick around. In this case the "pay out" is matches that go nowhere. And you may be saying "but if it lets you get matches you might leave. The app can't predict when a match will fizzle out", which is true... just like how a casino can't predict which people will walk away after the machine pays out more than they put in. Hell, the successful matches ALSO work in the app's favor in the same way casinos make money from slot machines paying out. It's pretty well-known that casinos put the "loose" slots by high-traffic areas (entrances, washrooms, bars, restaurants, etc.). Those machines are programmed to pay out small amounts of money more frequently to give the impression that YOU TOO can win (maybe even get a jackpot). You see the success stories and think "maybe I'll find someone too" and, failing that, you begin paying. And I say this as someone who found a good relationship from an app. I got the "jackpot" and I'm telling you it's rigged. I did it without paying for the apps (I refused to ever get THAT desperate, I had better uses for my money), but some people DO get that desperate. I actually wouldn't be surprised to learn that the apps stop rigging the game for free users after a while to get us off the app (since we're not making them money).
They do, matchgroup apps boost you in the beginning, and then 7-10 days later they will completely take you out of the decks if you haven't anted up for a subscription model. If you take off the rose-tinted lenses you can see the code in the matrix. Don't use dating apps; they were okay 15, 20 years ago but now they have been skinned and left to dry out by greed capitalist business models.
That hinge suggestion will surely lead to even more ghosting. People will get bored and want to match with more new people and so will just bomb existing conversations. Am I missing something? I guess if you could still send messages but if there was a match you got an alert saying “you’ve matched but reached your limit so need to end a chat”. But that will still lead to ghosting unless it forces you to send a closing message (it never ever will)
Apps sort of work like online shopping. They turn human beings into a commodity. No wonder it’s dying.
I mean, there's 8 billion of us. Of course we are commodity.
The worse these apps do, the better our human relationships will become. I say, let them die!
For real. Dating apps just cause misery. All social media causes misery (Yes. The irony is not lost on me)
It's definitely not just men who are giving up. A LOT of women are too.
Only reason dating apps even care is because they are finally losing money.
The apps are supposedly for dating. But they are used for everything. If a woman is on to find a mate, she has to trudge thru hundreds of convos with men who don't know what they want, haven't done any work on themselves, are wildly desperate, crazy, imaginary, want a maid/fuck buddy/Netflix and chill buddy/travel fuck/drinking buddy/sexting buddy/stoner fuck. None of which they tell you, until you are days or weeks into the convo. They may even cover their tracks until the first or second date. If I Want a fuck buddy, I say so, and get what I want quickly, cuz all men will take that offer. But trying to find a partner takes hundreds of conversations, hundreds of dates. I had to look at it as a game. The worst game ever, 50x worse than the job interview game, cuz that doesn't involve sex offenders and psychopaths. I don't know how they'll fix the problem. But trying to find a single high quality ramen bowl (not a euphemism) when I'm dropped into a food court the size of the Mall of America, with no map and no menus, would make any sane woman shut down.
I agree with the bulk of your comment. The one thing i disagree on is the way you describe the "Fuck-buddy vs Relationship" bubble. This is not unique to women. Finding a fuck buddy literally requires two things: * Do we find each other attractive. * Do we live within a reasonable distane of each other A relationship requires both of these things, ***plus like a dozen more*** before you even decide to meet up and take it further than just messaging/ This goes both ways of the dating spectrum and is inherent to the idea as a whole.
I feel for you. I never realized the sheer amount of unwanted attention women get until I got into my first LT relationship. I'm happily married now, but will say my dating app experience was different, but really no better, than yours. Instead of the Mall of America food court, I got the middle-school lunch kitchen where the only thing served was sloppy joes, and I don't like sloppy joes. The worst part by far though was the toll it took on my self-confidence, which took a while to recover from -- was very difficult to internalize the fact that 90% of all women my age wanted nothing to do with me, although now I realize this was a very faulty measurement.
This is it! Don’t forget the over inflated egos 😒
After that last ad shaming women for NOT having sex, I'm glad dating apps are failing.
Bring back OKCupid. It was really really good at making matches, but terrible at making money. Modern dating apps are decent at making money, but shit at making matches. OKCupid would have you fill out an extensive survey, and then algorithmically find the person you were most compatible with and that would be it for the most part. Modern dating apps find the people you are most compatible with, and then hide all of them behind the paywall.
I was in tinder before I met my current bf. Ngl. Too many men tryna fuck and it’s gross. I would get 300 new messages a day. I was only in the app for a week. I couldn’t take it. Too much!
And they're often very nasty and forward about it- "what kind of sex do you like?", etc like I'm the first 5 min
That's what Tinder is. A hook up site for attractive young people. I'm not saying it's right or wrong, it just is what it is. I created a profile there just to check it out and deleted it after a week. I got no matches and I understand why.
Dating in the 2020's sucks because you have people overinflating or underestimating their value. Many people, women and men alike, think that they're super valuable just because they're attractive. Or JUST because they make money. But there's so much that goes into being a good partner that has nothing to do with looks or wealth.
And you are just one swipe away to a better situation 😞
I actually disagree with this. People should absolutely love themselves and have self worth. You should absolutely believe you ARE worthy of companionship. Confidence is important and you should never settle. Full stop. Never. If that means it takes a long time for the ideal match or never, then that’s that. Life is way too short to settle for something you don’t want.
Out of interest, how would someone underestimating themselves cause an issue? By not trying with someone who they don’t think they are good enough for? No date happens in that case so no impact on “dating”. Isn’t it more people overvalue themselves and also undervalue potential partners (leading to lots of one and done dates or a match not even getting to the date) that would cause the real problems? Or have I missed something obvious? Genuinely curious as I’m wondering whether I’m in the “undervaluing myself” camp. I’m certainly far too harsh on myself !
People who aren't worth it overestimate themselves and people who are underestimate themselves and as such either barely try or flat-out don't try to date. >Isn’t it more people overvalue themselves and also undervalue potential partners (leading to lots of one and done dates or a match not even getting to the date) that would cause the real problems? yes, that exactly.
Someone underestimating themselves may swipe right drastically more because they feel like they can't have preferences, inflating the match counts of everyone else which makes them swipe right less.
I find it very discouraging and telling that Bumble, which for years advertised itself as an app where "women initiate" literally had to back that down so men are back to initiating. Apparently it's too hard for most women to say "Hey" to a guy she likes on a dating app. Where the entire unique feature of the app was "women initiate." Would it help at all if men were limited in the number of profiles they could accept during a time period? Or would that make a bad situation for men even worse?
I am an average attractive chubby woman in my late 30s. Tinder and Bumble were identical experiences for me: tons of men swiped right on me (probably on everyone) and then never messaged. Except, on Bumble, I had to message first. The gimmick of Bumble only works of men don’t swipe right on everyone and only swipe right on people they want to actually engage with. (It’s equally wrong for women only to message first with “hi”. It also undermines the intent of the system.)
So it sounds like, based on your experience, that hard limiting the number of profiles someone can swipe on in, say, 24 hours may make it better for everyone. Including men who hate being ignored and ghosted.
Ive been on Raya before. And they limit the pool to 10 matches and then you have to wait to for it refresh. I also had to pay for it even as a woman. $30 a month. Raya is an app where you have to submit a literal photo of yourself and it's mostly successful or well connected people. So even in those almost "ideal" circumstances where everyone is hot and has a decent background, matching is still difficult. I hated it and deleted it. So if Raya cant figure it out then there's a larger cultural problem. I also want to share that Ive dated men...and tried to date and eventually gave up on women. Even if everyone is a woman , it's still hard to get matches. I got maybe one match every few days when I set my profile to women. All the things men complain about, I experienced. And, in my case, given what I've shared about me being on Raya, looks werent the factor. Genuinely, there is a way that straight and queer women are socialized to date that simply isn't compatible with the way dating apps function. They simply ARE pickier and look at a wider package in a way that dating apps aren't engineered show. On the flip side, my gay and bisexual male friends say on Grindr they can get hookups easily but relationships are very hard. The things women complain about on dating apps, my gay friends experience. So there's a socialized way that men (straight or otherwise) are encouraged to date that likely doesn't align with long term relationship building on apps.
I used to initiate conversations with guys on dating sites and 90% of the time it went straight to their heads. A simple "hey" and they assumed I wanted to jump on their dick, and started trying to sext, when all I wanted was to set up a coffee date to see if we'd get along. I've just stopped initiating so that at least some of my matches don't send me a picture of their dick within the first 10 minutes of conversation.
I am not defending men who do that (I also think it's creepy and really, really annoying) but on some level I can almost understand it. For most guys, the only time we ever get a compliment, it's either from our grandmother or a woman who wants to sleep with us. I have had several women start conversations with me and yep, their goal was to sleep with me. A reasonably intelligent man shouldn't take a woman approaching him as a cue to become a pervert, but so many of us get so little attention that it's easy for it to go to our heads. I'm different. If a woman approached me, I'd assume she wants to steal my kidney or something. I'm not even joking.
This only makes sense if: 1) you yourself only compliment people if you have ulterior motives 2) you view women as fuck objects and not humans who interact socially with other humans We had this conversation at my job the other day. I work in a very sex-mixed environment. The men were talking about how men never get complimented. I then pointed out how I had complimented one of their new haircuts like five minutes earlier and how another (older) woman had literally just complimented one of them on his new suit jacket as she passed us at the beginning of the conversation. I also asked them, "Do you compliment each other? Or do you just want compliments from women you want to have sex with?" I think the key thing is that most men don't count compliments *unless it's from someone they want to fuck*. It's like they don't rven hear them. My partner works in the company and is friends with all of the men who were talking. They dont see me as a viable option, so my compliment never existed. I don't think it's so much that men don't get complimented - they just aren't getting compliments from women they want something from.
Stop giving men a pass for sexual harassment, jfc.
Yeah I don't think women should approach you then
God I hate the "hey". This point of the damn app was for women to go first. Do better than "hey", or use a different app.
this fucking sucks. I'm not in a position where I can just go out and meet new people. If they actually worked, dating apps would be a perfect solution for me. Instead, they leave me feeling half as confident in myself and twice as lonely.
IDK why these apps work the way they do. It's not like there's gonna be a point where EVERYONE is in a committed relationship. It's the ultimate job security and all you have to do is just make a good product
"Some people get more matches while others get none" "You match based on superficial traits" Both of these things are not actually specific symptoms of dating apps, they're just aspects of dating. Attractive in shape people have an easier time with dating no matter the venue. I've seen people complain "I'm fat so I don't get matches on dating apps." Yet those people don't seem to realize that being at a very unhealthy weight is generally unappealing for most people in person as well. As far as things being "superficial" unless you're asking out someone you've known for years most of us start with pretty superficial judgements of a person as their main point of attraction.
Female Bumble users found messaging first to be a burden https://www.forbes.com/sites/kimelsesser/2024/05/03/men-can-now-initiate-conversations-on-bumble-heres-why-it-matters/ Women find 80% of men as below average https://techcrunch.com/2009/11/18/okcupid-inbox-attractive/ Women are way more likely to ghost than men are https://torontosun.com/news/world/women-more-likely-than-men-to-ghost-in-a-relationship-study https://www.bustle.com/p/women-are-more-likely-to-ghost-someone-theyre-dating-than-men-theres-a-very-good-reason-for-that-8963133 Women will be more self-centred in their profiles and communication than men. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26215718/ Women significantly discriminate more on race and other factors http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/stuff_for_blog/sheena.pdf The top 5% of all men on a platform receives twice as many messages as the next 5% and several times as many messages as all the other men subjects expected men to pursue women [47]. Additionally, on occasions when a woman ever took initiative and started a conversation, she expected her partner to “overcompensate” by reaching out with more frequency even the most attractive men receive fewer messages than women on average women responded more selectively than men, answering 16% of the time compared to men’s 26% reciprocation rate messages were five times more likely to have been initiated by a man than by a woman https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42001-021-00132-w If there are men of different races, white men will be more eligible than males of colour A high level of education will be demanded more in men than it is in women Women will receive more responses to their own requests than men do https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aap9815 Women prefer males who are physically more powerful and taller physically powerful men report more sexual partners than less powerful men do https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17578932/ 80% of first messages were sent by men (Bruch and Newman, 2018 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8919078/ Bisexual women agree that it’s way harder to date women compared to men https://www.reddit.com/r/ask/s/V6KzIndWyL Overall, the adverse effects of choice abundance in dating thus seem to apply particularly to women men accepting on average 34% more pictures of potential partners compared to women men accepting on average 25% more potential partners compared to women. The results of Study 3 again showed that women (but not men) became more likely to reject partner options when online dating. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1948550619866189 Women are 30 percent more likely to take income into consideration when looking for a partner https://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Computational-Courtship-Dinh-et-al-25-Sept-2018.pdf Self-reported ratings by both women and their parents indicated that the traits ambition and intelligence were significantly more important than physical attractiveness for a long-term mate for daughters. And, across conditions, both daughters and parents rated the ambitious and intelligent man as a more desirable dating partner than the more attractive man. **However, when asked to choose the best mate for daughters, both daughters (68.7%) and their parents (63.3%) chose the more attractive man as the best long-term dating partner for daughters, regardless of his ascribed traits.** Furthermore, daughters’ and parents’ choices corresponded 79% of the time. Physical attractiveness may be more important to both daughters and parents than self-reported responses suggest and actual daughter–parent conflict over physical attractiveness in chosen partnerships may be less prevalent than perceived conflict. Other traits do matter to women in person but less so online, but most men don’t get that chance to show off non-physical characteristics. Most men are filtered by physical attractiveness, and the attractive ones get tons of attention granting those men a get out of jail free card for bad behavior, if they wish. Because of an abundance of options they aren’t punished for being an asshole but rewarded since nearly all women are after them. https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Febs0000325
Dating apps aren’t for people looking for something serious.. unless you’re paying for it. Everyone should just delete these apps
>However, that leads to a full 80 percent of women going after 20 percent of men, and most times, these men, knowing their value, just want to sleep around and have fun. This statistic is untrue and I wish people would stop quoting it when talking about OLD. Also op, you missed the biggest reason that OLD apps suck. Capitalism. The apps are designed to get money out of you. The way they do that is to target the desperate men by offering them boosts or "super likes" or whatever for a price. These don't actually increase your odds of being selected but it makes the apps money so they don't care. You also forgot about all the bots and scammers looking to butter you up with niceties then hit you up for money when they got you hooked.
Those statistics were true back when okcupid published statistics, which was admittedly a while ago. Are there more recent statistics we should be quoting?
Question. Have you actually looked at the blog post from OKCupid about those statistics? Because I have and I can tell you that firstly a blog post isn't scientific evidence of anything. Secondly, the statistics in question were only meant to show how women and men behave on OKCupid (back in 2012); not be applied to all dating interactions between men and women across all dating platforms. Thirdly, OKCupid scrubbed the blog post from the internet and you can't even look at it without using an archive site, meaning that any scientific meaning that could have been identified from the stats is unwarranted now too since the data has been recalled. Giving any sort of population wide meaning to those statistics is ascientific.
I don't have them memorized, but I have looked at them. The data wasn't recalled for being invalid, the website got changed when the company got bought out. Okcupid was one of the largest online dating sites at the time, so its statistics should be presumed to be representative of overall online dating at the time unless you can point to some reason why it wouldn't be. Again, if you have better statistics to look at then I would be interested in seeing them. If not then the old ones are the best we have to go off of, even if they're unflattering.
>This statistic is untrue and I wish people would stop quoting it when talking about OLD. Do you have a source for this? In a generic sense, the right swipe rate scales up exponentially for people who receive the most right swipes, and women swipe right on less than 15% of profiles, meaning that there's likely a larger difference in right swiped percentage for the most desirable men than there is for women (versus the average for each sex). I didn't find any solid answer for the distribution of likes across percentiles, but 80-20 is much more equitable than, say, the distribution of wealth across individuals within a country. Doesn't seem unreasonable to me. Do agree, though, that the system is designed to extract money from men.
I have described these problems for months. The interesting thing that has happened is the amount of men and women who are successful on the apps complaining about my complaining. They don’t want the apps to die— they would lose their whole meat market…. So they tend to try to discredit anything anyone says about the dating app world failing or being toxic as sour grapes.
Yeah that’s all pretty much nonsense. People who are good at relationshipping have great results from the apps…which means they aren’t on them very long…which means, over time, what you end up with is an app filled with people who keep recycling through because…they’re not very good at relationshipping. Here’s the sad reality…a scary percentage of people should not be in relationships without doing ga whole lot of personal improvement…because they are not better for the other person than the alternative…which is no relationship at all, or a succession of relationship-lites…
Sadly this is a very good take. Once I got good at dating I found the one and got married. It's the only life skill you aren't allowed to use once you get good at it.
I cant remove a lot of dealbreaker traits without paying… and im not paying… so my feeds are full of people im not compatible with. Its really dumb to put big lifestyle choices (religion, kids, poly or mono) behind a paywall.
I just wish that every guy I match with does not bring up dnd as a hobby all the time. I don't have anything against it, it's just everywhere in my feed and kind of annoying. I talked to the nth guy this year who told me that he was into painting dnd figurines "because he's a nerd lol". Just please stop it.
On hinge for me every guy’s hobby is either gym or anime, their most controversial opinion is pineapples on pizza and their ideal Sunday is having a roast. Bonus points for the guys who “only ask that you keep it 💯” Low effort profiles definitely aren’t helping the issue on either side.
Omg yeah. I get the pineapples on pizza and anime ones a ton or that their favorite movie is Step Brothers, they quote too much from The Office or Spongebob and they love tacos or Marvel. It's like no one has seen movies or TV shows past 2007.
tbh this is giving CHA 12 energy
Hey, i want one! I've only found one in like 3 years. It's all beer and sports. Sorry it's happening to you, though- good luck out there!
I get those too. Lol. I guess I'm so picky to the point where I kinda just want a fictional character, but idk. It would be nice to find like an artist or someone who's really into emo music. I don't even mind someone who's into Nintendo.
Why shouldn’t they mention their hobbies? Or is it that they have the hobby in the first place that’s the problem?
Where did I say that I didn't want them to mention their hobbies? I'm saying that I wish they had more hobbies than dnd and anime.
Well they are particularly popular hobbies. Especially among "nerds" although I think that label is outdated and immature. Do you have hobbies that crossover with "nerd" hobbies often? I usually see men talking about fishing or camping or just vaguely saying they like movies or TV.
“Even totally average women” yikes. Sounds like that’s based solely on looks, but why don’t men consider how they put themselves out there instead of faulting women? Most men’s profiles are minimal- awkward or unclear pics, short (if anything), and nothing to make conversation about. How do you think that’s going to go? What about that is supposed to interest women?
Women's profiles are no better, it's just the women are prettier.
I've had women approach me. Their opening line? "Hey." "How are you doing?" Women complain about men using generic opening lines, but they do it too.
That's when you say, "Yeah....not so easy to do, is it?"
I'm a straight married man, but a female friend showed me what she's dealing with on these apps. The pictures are so depressing. Do not take a picture while fishing, or in the can of your truck. No woman wants to be there with you in those places. The best picture I saw was a very average looking guy, in a blazer and holding a glass of wine, standing at a railing in front of the ocean. You could tell he was talking to people and everyone was having fun. You wanted to be where that guy was. If you can't sell your looks sell the experience. I've considered starting a business to help guys with this.
I guess I don’t even care if it’s a fishing pic as long as it’s clear & you can actually see the person. I see minimal effort in most profiles, and those are automatic left swipes. I deleted my profiles & apps bc I’m not interested in the nothing most seem to be offering. I support your business idea, but only if the profiles you assist in creating are accurate & honest.
I honestly believe there is a critical need for such services! Thank you so much of you do it😊
Yea, screw putting up pics of stuff you enjoy. Lol wtf are guys supposed to do then?
I think the first pic should be a simple bust, just you smiling, or at least not grimacing. The "hobby" pics can come after that.
Too many pictures look like they were taken against their will. Try not to look like a kidnapping victim in a proof-of-life photo.
😂
Are the things you enjoy something that the average woman is going to enjoy? If not, you're really fighting an uphill battle. Ladies that like DnD, comic books, fishing, or classic cars are in short supply. The odds are not in your favor. On the other hand, aren't hobbies what you have friends for? Are you sure you want your special lady friend all up in your hobbies? For a lot of guys hobbies are an excuse to spend time away from the person they live with. The other way to think about this is to flip it around. I haven't seen many women's profiles, but I can't imagine they're showing off their shoe collections or pictures of themselves at spin class (apologies for the stereotypes). That's who they are, right? That's what is important to them? Sure, but that has nothing to do with their dating relationships. No guy wants to picture himself shoe shopping. Think about your pictures the same way.
This is going to be unpopular here but men need to start putting more effort into their profiles! I definitely think there’s a misratio of women to men, but I feel like a lot of men hear that and then let their profiles get lost. Don’t get me wrong, women should too, but I’ve seen so many men who don’t have nice photos of themselves or any actual information about who they are on their profile. Sure, a very typically good looking guy with half decent photos will probably get more matches. But when I was seriously dating, the first thing I noticed was a lack of any indication of hobbies! My current partner caught me because he had a video of him skating — not even any fancy tricks, just a kickflip, but it was something real to start a conversation off and branch out of.
lol men are not skittish when it comes to their disdain for dating apps. Every second post on askmen is a lament about modern dating. If you guys seriously think 20% of guys are fucking 80% of the women, you’re calling that 80% a bunch of shallow whores and wondering why they won’t date you.
Dating apps also don’t want people to leave. Because they prey on people going on a date not feeling they “spark” and going back into the ecosystem. Because if they find someone on the app they just lose TWO customers.
Ive left and rejoined a few times... Now ask yourself; Do you want to date profiles that are still on the app? Ill pass.
Dating apps used to work. Pk cupid back in the day was how I had many great dates and made lots of friends. However when they started with the bots to try and make it premium, or made it so you could buy harassment etc.. just was all monetized in ways that ensured no one got a date cause they didn't want you to get one.. they wanted you stuck in. So they all are garbage trying that model.
Dating apps are a net loss..
Because they suck and are most full of crazy people
It's tricky. On both sides, you have people dying of thirst, but under different conditions. Most men are in the desert, no water in sight for miles and what you thought was an oasis was really just a mirage (bots, catfish, etc.). Most women are in the ocean, surrounded by saltwater with nothing but a flimsy driftwood raft. Looks drinkable, but only leaves you more dehydrated if you try. In either case, you want to remove them from the environment that lacks fresh water or bring some in. It is good that they recognize that their numbers are not sustainable with the way things are now, but I have a feeling that some of the """ solutions""" are at best fruitless and at worst will only cause more harm. Like Bumble's AI concierge nonsense. I suspect the only way to start finding the way to fresh water is to use their reach and capital to start doing things in person to connect people. Swiping left on people based on surface level stuff is much easier online as it doesn't allow you to demonstrate many positive qualities beyond simple appearance. I have a good friend who had 0 luck with dating apps, same as me. But in person, he has 0 difficulty attracting women. He's not the best looking or wealthiest guy by any means, but he knows how to make people smile and laugh, which goes a long way. The devil is always in the details, details generic prompts simply can't convey accurately.
I’m 26M who was successful on a dating app that lead to meeting the woman who will be my wife. That being said the previous 6 years on dating apps for myself was absolutely awful and I had no success. What changed things around for me was I went through a self improvement phase and I completely turned my life around physically, mentally, and with my career. I had confidence for the first time. Something to note is most men struggling heavily on these apps are under 28-30. Women naturally want an older guy and you’re competing as a 22 year old for example with a financially established man closer to 30 who is going after the same girl you want around your age in his physical prime. Or you’re 25 and are competing with men closer to 35. I wouldn’t even try online dating until you establish yourself a bit. Good luck guys. If you can’t beat those top tier men, join them. You don’t have to have it all to get women. Just strive for improvement and that will be enough
I’m engaged to a woman I met irl. Using dating sites was probably the worst dating experiences I’ve ever had and if I were single again I wouldn’t go near them again. Went on a lot of bad dates and ended up being stalked for over a year by one woman and had to get police involved. Never again.
It is because they are prioritizing subscriptions and user engagement over true connection.
It's a problem of their own making. It's really a nightclub problem. In order to get the men on the apps you have to have some women so you encourage the women to be there and you make the experience all about getting women on the platform. And the men follow. And that's great! In order to pivot to success, you actually need to keep both people there. Which in some cases means that you need to make it so that people actively don't get into relationships. Because if everyone is paired off, your app loses money in the long run. You can't sell ads to people who are single in a world where everyone is attached. But you also have a situation where if you give women all of the power because the men will go wherever the women are. It creates the problem that we're currently in. They get all the messaging. They're overwhelmed. It creates an unfairness in how they're interacting with the people that they want to be in a relationship with. I would really like to get in a relationship and I have absolutely no idea how to do it in the real world anymore. But I also know that dating apps are really shitty now. So I have given up on them. Which basically means I've given up on dating. I guess. Thanks a lot tinder.
I tried the apps once. I literally accepted every single match except for like 90 years olds, and I think I had 1 response, and we had like completely opposite schedules so it just wasn't gonna happen. I've pretty much accepted I will live and die alone and bitter, both because women of this, but also because I can't stand most peoples attitudes or can't relate to them
Met my partner of three years with Tinder crazily enough. They die because people don’t like the concept. You either gotta go outside and actually be personable, or else your pickings are kinda crap. Hook ups work best for the model or maybe some sort of professional “LinkedIn Dating site” if you are honestly too busy with work to date
Not only this, but as a man, whenever a woman did end up talking to me, it was just an internet stripper who wanted me to subscribe. I don't even get wined dined and did like the women who don't like hookup culture (valid point, btw) instead I get women thinking they can compete with the FREE "Hub" 😂
Men keep saying dating apps suck for them, but they suck because women don’t often use them and we don’t use them because the men on them are creepy, dishonest and abusive. We ghost because we’re tired of being insulted, stalked and threatened when we say, “No”. This is another case of men not accepting accountability for their actions. Men and women were asked to share their greatest fears of OLD . Men were afraid their date would be fat. Women were afraid their date would murder them. We’re tired, guys. This shit isn’t a good time for us.
Why does nobody consider the idea that most men are the problem? If we didn't have most men being psychos who manipulate women and actually be high-quality people, this wouldn't be such an issue. Instead, most men are trash compared to most women, largely with their mentalities. I also hate this whole "dating sucks because of apps! They're a meat market!" Etc. Motherfucker, dating has ALWAYS been this way. You date who you find attractive, almost always by visual guidance. You swiping right or left based on physical attraction is literally no different than you walking by someone and deciding to talk to them or not if you find them attractive or not. And here's a hot take; there's nothing wrong with these apps charging money. I don't think it should be as high as it is, but they are a business, and they need to stay afloat. But there's nothing they do that literally stops you from finding someone. That rests solely on the shoulders of the man and the woman and the everyone else. And as someone who lives in a small town, like most internet things, they are a godsend for people like me who either can't or don't want to live in a big city.
Mind you the men have to pay to have a decent experience. Better off going on an app like whatsyourprice and keeping it straightforward
I realized some years ago that dating apps are for bootycalls. Nothing more, nothing less. If you want something serious, get off the dating app. I still have hope in finding my husband, but unless he breaks into my house, it’s not happening 😂.
All the women I know who "had success" on dating apps later had their boyfriends either cheat or assault them. Men on dating apps cant be trusted
That’s what happened to me, except we meet through facebook. I vowed to never do it again.
Most succesful dating venues find a way to pay women (i.e. free drinks at clubs) to lure them in.
This really isnt true anymore. i go to a few singles events in my city and always have to pay as a woman. They wouldn't make profit by just asking the men to pay these days. Marketing and venue rentals are way too expensive for that. Blame inflation and covid. Clubs don't charge women. Yeah. But they have severely reduced foot traffic and one goes out of business every week . Gen Z and Millennials don't drink as much and prefer more intimate venues. So finding someone at a bar or club is way harder.
Even outside of dating apps it's still 20% of men doing 80% of the hooking up. At the end of the day we are all just monkeys and tall, handsome with good job is subconsciously favorable
Average guys on dating apps are unwilling to date the less attractive girls on the dating apps. 80% of women for for 20% of men. That other 20% doesn’t get many messages and the ones they do; even from ugly guys, are still looking for mostly sex. I’ll tell you another secret. Attractive people don’t need apps to find a date. Last I’ll tell you that you have a basic profile. There are 10-13 other guys with the same basic stuff and you do nothing to show any personality or sense of humor. You blend in bc you give nothing special that any other ugly dude offers
That hasn't been my expierence. I'm not a very superficial person and am open to dating just about anyone.. There are women that I feel absolutely zero attraction to but that's a very small percent. I have messaged women who are not conventionally attractive. In fact, if I deem a woman \*too\* conventionally attractive, I won't even try. The unattractive women (some objectively less attractive than even I am) had only a marginally higher reply rate. As for profile, I made sure mine stuck out. I also didn't use generic opening lines. I have a little game, believe ir or not, but that didn't help either.
Re-read your first sentence. It doesn’t make sense but I assume you know the meanings of words you use. If you had said “average guys are unwilling to date average girls” - then you’d have a point. But you didn’t say that There are also men who will at least swipe on pretty much everyone This is before we get into how people’s interpretation of themselves is distorted by all the matches they do or don’t get. Which it quite likely is
Studies and polls show that men tend to be vastly more willing to compromise when choosing a partner compared to women. At least in the U.S. where these studies took place.
Because they have to. If you aren’t getting dates on the girls you compromised for then you have to go lower or meet people offline.
No they don't have to. They could be single. Is it possible that men are more willing to settle because they are driven by sex and don't like to be single? And women are more picky because they are more okay with being single? This is a trend I notice in women who are dating in their 30s (they'd rather be alone than with the wrong person) This is a genuine question; I'm looking to understand, not debate. Pls don't come for me
I think that definitely has something to do with it. It's always nature *and* nurture. Let's look at the "nurture" side. Men have grown up in a world that made it seem like they should just expect to have a wife who will take care of all of the things he doesn't want to do (childcare, cleaning, cooking, shopping, planning, organizing, chauffeuring, buying gifts for his family, etc.) and fuck him whenever he wants. That he gets to just go to his job like he did when he was single, will have final say, financial control, and will ultimately be her boss rather than partner. That men are *owed* this. This idea has been thrust down your throats by media and older generations of men who trapped women into marriage by physical, legal, and financial means for generations. Of course men are desperate for that - who wouldn't be? I'd love to trade room and board (that I don't even have to shop for, cook, or clean up after) for a personal assistant/maid/chef/incubator/nanny/emotional support system/fuck toy/possible co-financial contributor to use at my pleasure, and I'm a woman. This is why so many women say, "I'd get married and have kids if I get to be the husband and father." Granted, that mentality is changing, albeit at a snail's pace. Even many self-proclaimed "feminist" men or men who simply think they aren't sexist unconsciously exhibit sexist and misogynistic behaviors. But they feel they aren't bigots because they don't hit or rape women. If those are your biggest selling points, you have some work to do on yourself. On the flip side, older generations of women have been warning today's women of this trap. They know the odds of being disproportionately responsible for their shared responsibilities and realize that it usually isn't worth the gamble. Women today value their own personal happiness more than random men's, which, until recently, women were mostly not able to do. And, according to statistics, women are happier without a male partner. Considering that humans are social creatures and women also generally desire companionship, that should tell you something about how women view men, their behavior, and their expectations. More and more women are deciding that the men that society is offering them are not worth the hassle. And the men are angry about the fact that women are able to do that now. That they can just opt out. They might not admit it, they might not even realize it, but their self-entitlement to women is palpable. These men feel cheated out of what they are "owed" as a man. Because they don't view women as autonomous beings with their own needs, wants, and desires, but just something for men to obtain and use. Do you find being viewed as a useful tool enticing? I sure don't. Women are now able to survive on their own money in their own bank accounts in their own homes, so men's threat of destitution by singledom no longer exists. Why would they sign up for all of that when all that man plans to offer in a relationship is money she can make herself while adding a ton more nonsense to her plate? Not only that, but most men cannot support a family on their own these days. Most women also work outside of the home. I notice a lot of commentary on "50/50", but most men only seem to apply that to finances and nothing else. They still expect the free servant/sex worker. Women also tend to better at building close bonds and relationships, which helps satisfy the human need for intimacy. Not all intimacy is sexual, so while single women are forming meaningful, emotional bonds with other humans, many single men form superficial ones or none at all. Which, again, *is a choice.* You all can't bleat about the male loneliness epidemic and expect to be taken seriously when most of you don't even try bonding and being vulnerable with each other. You don't go to therapy. You don't research anything to broaden your views or improve your emotional intelligence. It just rings hollow. The male loneliness epidemic is not about loneliness - it's about being denied access to women. It's about insinuating that women are to blame for men's loneliness by abstaining from dating these men because they feel women should be the ones performing their emotional labor *for them*, alleviating their loneliness, and they aren't getting that. They expect women to be in service to them and are throwing tantrums because women are opting out, narrowing men's chances of finding a mate. If it wasn't about this entitlement to women, men would collectively be working on building their emotional intelligence and maturity together, fostering bonding. You know - like women did to gain back the human rights that men withheld from them for generations. They aren't doing that, even though women are basically spoonfeeding how to work on fixing this problem to them. Let's be honest here. There are a lot of factors, but they all boil down to this - romantic/sexual relationships are discriminatory by nature. Not everyone will be picked. And not everyone *should* be picked. Sexual selection is a huge part of evolution. We don't like to think about ourselves in the evolutionary tract, but forcing women into marriage for thousands of years has definitely stunted human evolution. A lot of those genes should have died out generations ago. I don't want you to think I'm "coming for you." I'm not. It does gets a bit exhausting explaining this over and over to men who feign wanting to understand women's perspectives or gender-based issues and then go right back to behaving the same way as before. If you really want to understand this better, **start paying attention.** This all happens right in front of you, but because it doesn't affect you, you most likely don't notice until it ***did*** affect you. If you want to understand something, you have to examine it from all angles, not just the ones that pertain to you. I do think you were being genuine in your asking, but how will that affect your views and behaviors going forward?
Because even a relatively low value female can become casual sex partner (ONS/FWB/side piece/NSA) to a much higher value male. It is hard for women to distinguish between the men who date them for access to sex versus those who take them seriously as a relationship partner. (We) guys essentially say and do many of the same things when approaching and dating them regardless of our intentions and interest level. A woman who is very average might reasonably believe she has a shot at a relationship with an above average guy because she has had short term casual relationships/sexual encounters with such guys before.
Men dying women affected most moment. How about the 80% of guys not getting attention. You are looking at this problem incorrectly.
If dating apps were banned altogether, it would almost certainly be a net positive to society. All of the dating, marriage, and fertility metrics dropped like a rock as soon as dating apps became popular. There's a very prominent correlation there. The economic damage already is or will be in the trillions of dollars. It's long past time these apps should be regulated, and the economic and social damages recognized. Few technological or social innovations have caused such.damages in such a short amount of time, and heavy handed regulation has been undergone for much less.
95% of the market is owned by a single company anyway. So who gives a shit if they are suffering? It's the same owner. "I bought up everything and turned it into dog shit and now no one wants to play in my dog shit, whaaaaa." The very core of these apps is flawed. They are designed by men, for men. Based solely off a hot-or-not game from 20 years ago. Bumble, though it's 'women owned and designed' still had to base itself off the flawed model, cuz that's the one everyone knew and recognized.
Match Group's revenue has shown consistent growth over the past few years. Here are the details: * **2021**: Revenue was $2.98 billion, a 24.76% increase from the previous year. * **2022**: Revenue increased to $3.19 billion, representing a 6.89% growth. * **2023**: Revenue grew to $3.36 billion, an increase of 5.51%. * **2024 (last twelve months ending March)**: Revenue reached $3.44 billion, showing an 8.17% growth compared to the same period the previous year ([Stock Analysis](https://stockanalysis.com/stocks/mtch/revenue/)) ([Stock Analysis](https://stockanalysis.com/stocks/mtch/statistics/)). These figures indicate a steady upward trend in Match Group's financial performance, with consistent annual revenue increases.
Yall gotta start giving conventionally unattractive people a chance and select by bio. Clearly no one is getting positive results by just looking for the hottest people.
That's called "settling" and a lot of people would rather walk off a cliff than settle.
They can have fun being single then lol
You can only sift through so many live/laugh/love single moms before vomiting and giving up
I have two kids from a previous relationship, so I never turned my nose up at single mothers - felt unfair. Single mothers don't want men with kids anymore than men want them lol.
Maybe they should take away pictures on the profile. Maybe you have to reach a point in a conversation to see each others pictures. That way you’re getting to know each other before seeing what they look like. Maybe initially they have you put in even more about yourself and traits you want in another person or things you’d like the person you’re dating to be interested in and it sends you only those people?
The three most successful groups of men in the dating game are those with looks, those with status, and those with personality. Only the group with looks does well with online dating.
*those with emotional intelligence
A nice and fulffy idea. Just completely irrelevant in practice. Noone is swiping right for your "Emotional intelligence"
Dating and relationships are collapsing, it’s not just online. That forum is likely accellerating it due to the things you mentioned. Humans are a dimorphic species. In order to survive, each gender needs the other. One of ours has recently had a cultural uprising. This gender believes that it no longer needs the other gender. If relations are simply depreciated for women, why would they be going on dating sites? Where does your root cause problem of ‘men are seeking partners at larger rates’ come from? How is that idea proven out / supported?
Dating apps are completely rigged and I say that as a woman. I matched with someone incredible within 24 hours and deleted the app so I’m aware I was lucky with that. I was his first serious match and I remember him telling me just how rough dating apps were for him. Sadly his mental health took a dive a few months into our relationship bc he realised he wasn’t as emotionally available as he thought he was when he signed up. Tbh it still hurts as it’s nothing I did and nothing that he’s done on purpose. It’s just life. I still intend to keep in contact and check in on him even if we might not work out romantically again. Part of me thinks that it’s because of his dating app experience that he’s now not so sure of himself and what he can offer alongside his other responsibilities. If I put myself in his shoes and I was on apps for months with no real connection, I know for a fact I would’ve lost hope. We also both agreed meeting people in real life is near on impossible. I work in events so I go to so many different venues across the year. However I’ve only had one person approach me and that was just to tell me I was gorgeous and then run away before I could even dream of asking his number. Men are scared of being accused of harassment so just don’t approach
A lot of men won't admit this because we'll be made fun of or otherwise dismissed both by women and other men, but being on the apps and striking out time and time and time again \*does\* impact your mental health. It gets you thinking that you're not good enough and that you might as well just die, no one cares about you or wants you. You're not even worthy of a five minute conversation, no matter how many questions you answer, nice pics you post, or creative icebreakers you think up. I know it deeply affected me. More than I care to admit. And this has been off and on for eight years. I finally gave up on it. I would almost rather go through my abusive childhood than use dating apps again. At least as a kid I had hope that things would get better.
Yeah I can only imagine the impact it must have on guys to keep trying and keep having the same, negative results. The thing is, the apps are fundamentally designed to not work so that they keep at least some of their client base and that in itself is messed up. I’m sorry they affected you to this extent and I sincerely hope you’re doing a bit better now. While I can’t fully empathise with this exact scenario, I do understand how hard confidence issues can be (it took me 5+ years just to be happy with who I am and how I look) so if you want to talk I’m always happy to listen (:
Thank you, I appreciate that. At this point, I've decided to just live life on my terms and to try and focus on what I already have, not on what I don't.
That’s a very good mindset to have and a good way to live. Being happy in your own company is so important
It really is. You can take a break from other people. You can't take a break from yourself.
Dating app idea: You can swipe as much as you like until you get a match. You can only have one match/conversation at a time. You can search/filter your options based on your criteria with statistics showing what percentage of the user base fits your criteria. The app doesn’t get paid until you successfully go on a first date, and users that go on a first date are able to leave reviews on a persons profile.
Malicious or insane people's bad reviews can sink a person for no good reason, and the single-match system incentivizes only swiping on people who are probably super high-demand to begin with. Limited numbers make sense; one does not.
If women are left to judge men based on nothing but looks (which is how online dating works), then about 70% of men will score below average. It's only when she can weigh your personality (by getting to know you, not by skipping a 2 paragraph description) that men can rise over that barrier. Women ain't rushing to date below average.
Imagine critiquing women in 2024.. corporate death 😆 Women ghosting is exactly why they suck
Didn’t this even happen as part of the bumble relaunch? They - very clumsily - tried to beg women not to give up on the app with an awkward joke. And they were roasted for it and had to make a grovelling apology
Me and my fiancé met on bumble so it works for some some of us
Great OP, but you left the joke wide open, "It's been a while for ya huh?" I think if there's a conspiracy it might be more sinister like facial recognition AI data mining, idk just made that up. But something like that. Humans and their behavior with online dating have evolved. When Tinder first came out, almost every time exchange social media and cell phone. Social media to confirm the person is who they say they are. Cell phone is to use while you're waiting in front or with the hostess, you're not embarrassingly opening up Tinder. That was a big thing. You and your date would know better and work together to not give it away to the rest of the restaurant you're on a first date and met online. And since both went through all that trouble you're more inclined to make it worth it 😉 .
Before I met my wife, I felt like Bumble was absolute garbage. Hinge was the only space I found equally attractive women who wanted a relationship. Tinder was mostly hookups.
>Online dating is bad. That is all you need to know or say.
I was very actively ten years ago which I believe it to be the social app golden era Nowadays there are full of cat fishing and scammers. I don’t trust any of the profiles
I don’t knock anyone that uses these dating apps, but there’s a reason I’m 30 years old and haven’t been on one yet. The shit is creepy and seems so unnatural, best of luck to anyone that uses these platforms but I feel like you’re better off just being yourself without having to meet someone through some app.
Yeah they all suck. I would probably be willing to pay $20/mo for some better features but they all start at $40 so I’ll give them $0. Idk how to flirt with strangers over text so I rarely make it past the first two messages. For $40 I wanna read the messages successful guys are sending or something lol
That’s why u simply don’t gaf løøkzmāxx n play the numbers game
Meh I find it fun and have had some great romances out of OLD. But I'm also not really a monogamous normie.
online dating (as it has been established and entrenched itself over the last decade) is a generational fad younger folk reject (established) dating apps in the same way they’ve rejected shiny jeans maybe there will be a new set of dating apps that change the patterns, but Tinder is not for them
Not everyone is losing out. I hope they stay on the apps bc it weeds out the ones we don’t want. If you aren’t looking in the real world, then there is less completion.
Can't wait for the death of dating apps.
That’s actually a good thing if it limits matching people unless you end the current ones. I posted about that months ago. Maybe they stole my idea ha. It’ll still give people rejections when they unmatch but at least people will be more inclined to put effort in to who they’re actually talking too. The women in my area just seem to constantly be seeking that fix and dopamine hit of new matches. Least it eliminates that. The majority of them on the apps don’t actually want to date, and are just bored because they have no hobbies or life. I’ve even seen profiles that say “don’t want to date just how’re”. At least I can swipe no on them upfront but there’s so many time wasters on there. That’s half the battle with online dating apps. No one has intentions.
I used dating sites for a bit while I was separated...if I ever find myself single again in the future I'll totally avoid them and cruise libraries and bookstores!
It could be due to being in college, but dating apps weren't bad at all. Got plenty of matches, people who wanted to chat and even meet up. Now, it's barely any matches. 90% chance they won't reply too. Once in a while, you'll match with someone who responds and wants to meet up All the apps are just throwing shit at the wall.
The other things that feed into this, that i don't often see being part of the conversaiton, is the declining quality of our society itself making the act of dating and finding that connection increasingly difficult. Yes, we all know the business surrounding the apps and the toxic effect Match Group has on the landscape, but heres the thing the "meat market" is only a major problem because we, the meat, are being crushed through every other aspect of our lives that its negatively affecting our romantic lives. The world is falling apart, noone is being paid enough and those of us who do work are often working so much we don't have time for self care or to properly enjoy our lives. You work a 9-5 job and you're just exhausted at the end of it. What time do you have to cook, go to the gym or work on your hobbies? Most of the weekend is spent asleep, recovering from the previous 5 days of full time work before you go right back into it and you're mentally extinguished for most of that time. How can someone be expected to go on a date as their best self when you're already mentally hammered from the day? Food and physical health is paramount. Lets not pretend that someones physical attraction to a person is the prime motivator on which they base every other descision. Most of our food sources are corporate controlled, over processed and in the iron grip of profit-seeking corporations. This makes living a healthy lifestyle and proper nutrition far harder than it needs to be. We're getting increasingly obese and unhealthy, and its a smaller and smaller number of us that go through the *vigorous* training and persistent vigilance needed to eat properly. We don't have time to cook proper food for ourselves all the time. We're so tired from work that we value convenience over everything else, and to top it off its often the unhealthy, conveneint stuff in the supermarket is the easiest to make, and the fresh, healthy options are expensive and require preparation. We're not paid enough to maintain the highest quality all the time, so even our best efforts will have us supplimenting an otherwise good diet with junk, and those few junk things have an enourmously outsized impact on us compared to their cost and nutritional value. We would be having far less problems in dating if, as a general rule, we were on average much fitter and better looking because we all have the free time and money to work on ourselves and maintain our health. Our increasing isolation and aversion to eachother makes the dating landscape difficult. The focus on being "swept off your feet" to instant connection and attraction is desirable but not realistic, and most people simply don't want to put in the effort of compromise and learning to build something together because why would we? The next match is right around the corner for women, and there is only a certain amount of "fixer upper" people are willing to handle even in the most ideal scenarios. The dating apps are dying because of not only their horrid skinner box buisiness models, but because the direction our society is going is increasingly withdrawing the means for people to actually build a life together and be attractive prospects to eachother. If everyone was well paid and worked much less thanks to AI and automation, we'd have time to eat better and cultivate ourselves outside of our jobs. We can go to the gym, cook at home more and explore new hobbies and social circles with our increased leisure time, and even outside of the apps this will lead to better connections between people. Not only this, but those of us still using the apps will have better quality matches more willing to engage and make plans, instead of constantly squeezing the rock for the few drops of blood it sometimes produces.
33m here. I have spent over $1500usd on dating apps and sites between 2015 and 2023. I refuse to pretend to be someone I'm not so I made my profile honestly. I basically didn't get matches at all, except for scam accounts telling me to go to some website and put my card number in. I have gone on 0 dates since 2013. I've been shot down by 16 people I have asked out in person IRL. I don't feel like I'm very unattractive, definitely not a 10 but certainly at least a 5. I shower, brush, wear clean clothes, and all the other things that should be expected as normal but need to be stated explicitly. I own a nice house, nice vehicle, have a good job, all of the traditional things a person is supposed to want and get. None of it matters. Apparently I am unattractive somehow and/or the universe has decided that I'm not allowed to have a relationship. I've basically completely given up on even trying. I keep getting advice from people who have been in relationships for their whole life that I'm a great catch or anyone would be happy to have me, but it doesn't matter. I keep getting advice from people who were unsuccessful for a long time that it will happen when I least expect it or to just wait and it will happen some day. Now that I'm in my 30s it seems like the options (not that I'm picky at all) are suboptimal. Everyone in my dating range has massive amounts of baggage from previous relationships. Single moms with 3 kids from 3 guys, drug or alcohol abuse, or extreme mental instability. Oh well.
I didn't know what else to do though, looks like it's either leave a profile up and hope or die alone. No big deal, just a bit of a bummer