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

The problem with dating apps is the commodification of human relationships. The way people use these apps is too superficial. They're looking for the perfect man or woman, so if there's something they don't like or that person has a flaw, they don't take the time to really get to know them on a deep level. There's a lot to choose from! FOMO!
Perfection does not exist in this world and we must really try to connect on a deep level. Unfortunately, some people use these apps for window shopping and shallow relationships.
- On the backend, no company could fulfill their promise if a “special sauce” to successful matching that was especially better than anything anyone else had, so they focused on impulse matching that worked best for short-term satisfaction and hookups. This worked for the dynamic of what people expected, and the reviews and word-of-mouth remained generally high— until we all got burned out on meaningless, futile, superficial relationships.
  So, what comes next?
- I agree with this but would say it's just one of the problems.
  I always have trouble with the idea that in reality these dating apps can't want you to be perfectly successful or else you'd never use them again. There's a real insidiousness there
- 7 of 9 just lookin for perfection baby
- I saw a terrible new dating app that was all about how super incredible you are and how you should only accept true partners who can battle your wits and income level, while it made vague references to coders and crypto.
  It's a website for those antisocial nerds that think themselves superior and anyone that goes on there is always going to be judging every partner as to their closeness to perfect. Anyone on there is a narcissist for sure.
  What a terrible reduction of spouse to that. No wonder no one is having kids and people are lonely. That is how the "elite" view themselves and each other. Our society deserves to be burnt to the ground.

Once you realize their business model incentivizes them to not get you a life partner because then you'd stop using the app, they kinda don't make sense to use.
- I liked what bumble did with the "lifetime premium". It gives them an incentive to actually get you a match.
  Coincidentally... I met my current girlfriend on Bumble after trying a litany of apps over the course of years... Definitely not saying it's a good or easy option though. Part of it is that I'm picky, but I treated it a lot like a job for years to get this relationship.
  
  Met my wife on Bumble and we just had a baby in June
  
  I think the lifetime premium is a joke because you're paying a lot up front instead of monthly or weekly. Yeah, they may get less money, but probably not. As the article says, people tend to stop using them after a month or two regardless of the outcome (that's definitely my experience), so getting like $150 up front for lifetime access is a lot better than someone paying $35/month for two months.
- And having a practical monopoly by Match doesn’t help either.
  
  That pisses me off more than anything.
  I really wish the FTC would go ham on Match Group and break up that monopoly...
  
  Kinda like Luxottica being the reason why most sunglasses cost $175 for $0.10 worth of plastic.
- Back in the day, plenty of fish did an interesting blog post on that very topic. Unfortunately, it vanished when they were brought up by one of the big dating site groups that now dominate.
  They also did some amazing meta data analysis of their users, and discussed it publicly. E.g. including the word "awesome" in your opening message improved multi message response rate by 18% (from memory).
  
  It was actually OkCupid.
  They also did one where they looked at how men and women rate each other on looks, and found that women rate a whopping 80% of men as below average attractiveness.
  This was made back when you could rate profiles out of 5 stars.
  Archived link to that blog post
- Their business model doesn't really require that, as relationships have a natural attrition rate, and new people are constantly entering the market.
- I met my partner on Kijiji. Never been happier, so they can work just fine.
  I admit I'm as surprised as anyone because it was such a slog before talking to her initially.

Here to offer hope and advice to anyone that's given up. I'm a 52-yo American male and have knocked it out the park with dating apps. In the 4-years since my wife left, thank god, I've had 15-20 dates and 5 steady gf's for a bit. Getting married 11/24 if y'all want to come!
Pro tips:
Post a variety of pics. Nothing controversial like guns, dead animals, any other women your age. Or your fucking truck/motorcycle/sportscar. If your Confederate flag bed sheets are really important to filter people, go ahead I guess. If the person you're looking at does not have a wide range of pics, red flag. Women are great at glamour shots. Take the worst pic of the bunch and assume that's what they look like IRL. Worst case, you're pleasantly surprised. (Happened to me many times!)
Don't be too judgmental. All you're aiming for is a first date, see how it goes. What's it cost a man? Dinner for two? Better yet, I dated a woman who said neither party should pay anything on the first date. If you don't click, no one's out anything. Go to a park, thrift storing, antique mall, whatever floats your boat. It costs nothing to walk around, talk and gauge each other's interests and mutual attraction.
Sorry, but this bit can be expensive. Sign up for half-a-dozen sites. If you're fishing, it's best to bait 6 poles vs. one, right? Try the free options of course, see how it goes, but spread yourself around as much as possible. You never know. And that bears repeating. You never know what will happen. More on that shortly.
Keep initial communication short and sweet. Too much gets lost in text, too many misunderstandings. "Hey! Love (something in their post that you're seriously interested in, or why else are you contacting them)! (question about something you want to know about them)? Want to (go to the park, get coffee, go thrift storing, whatever)? And then go on the damned date, and do it ASAP, before something stupid happens like a misunderstood text, other plans/dates cropping up, whatever. Just go. If I have to say, "Don't be an ass and pressure for the date.", you're not ready for a relationship.
How I met my fiancé:
She hit me up on eHarmony. Gods that site sucks. Only date I ever got there. Blew her off because her pics were... not so great. She had nothing interesting to say about herself, barebones bio. 3-months later I'm revisiting and saw her "like". "Yeah, what about this girl again?" She posted more about herself, and more attractive pics and here we are.
About the judgmental thing; If I knew then what I know now, the date would have been a hard NO. She's a city girl (Manilla), never even been in the woods. No shit. Jealous as fuck, and I've spent 30-years saying that's the one thing I won't abide. She was a Christian preschool teacher at private school. Fuck all that nonsense. You get the idea.
But we click so hard it's silly. I feel like I've landed some kind of fantasy girl. And she feels the same! 11/24/23, NW FL, you're all welcome to the wedding.
- To me, it sounds like you've neatly described why people have fallen out of love with dating apps.
- What's it cost a man? Dinner for two?
  If I could afford to pay for a stranger's dinner out I probably wouldn't be single, haha. I buy two takeaways a year as a special treat for myself, mainly for my birthday. That's all I can afford.
  No way am I paying for someone else's food on a date anyway, this isn't the 1940s, women and all other genders are equal to men and they need to put in just as much effort on a date as a guy does.
  You don't get a free lunch because you're a woman, and if you're the sort of sexist woman that demands that sort of thing I wouldn't be interested in you anyway.
  I hope I don't seem overly harsh, I'm just tired of sexism in dating. It's ubiquitous and gross.
  
  women and all other genders are equal to men and they need to put in just as much effort on a date as a guy does.
  You're spending a lot of money and time on your hair, makeup, and outfit right? Probably asking friends for advice and thinking about it all week? Not eating the day of, so you look your best? Wearing expensive cologne and some shoes that make your butt look good?
  You're doing all that right? I know you want to be equal and put in just as much effort, so you must be.
- Congrats man :)
- The cost for the search is generally far more than money. It takes some time, yes, but it also consumes energy and mental health to absorb repeated rejections and expressions of fear. (I understand the fear, to an extent. Some men are genuinely scary, and can make someone very sour to future encounters) It also constantly judges your self worth as a person. Wise people can turn away the misjudgments of young fools, but often only so many times.
  I'd probably consider going back if I could find hard evidence of some level of interest and commitment from anyone on any of those sites. I have never seen it before, and don't expect to. One time I was on a tour in another country, and learned that the women in my group were putting themselves up on dating sites within the area, even though they were being bused around the country on the tour, and had no chance of ever meeting with interested parties. It was purely for the attention-seeking. I've decided my attention is not free, and it's been a powerful move for my mental health - for the better.
- I did all that for like 7 years in NYC and what did I get? About 5 dates, not a single one turned into a second date. I thought I had one in the bag... Then she sent me a long text saying that she didn't want to see me again because I made her "uncomfortable" at the end of the date, even though her body language or verbal language said nothing or the sort.
  I moved back to Southern NJ a few months after that and ended up talking to a cute woman for a week. She was 42 and I was 37,we would send a few long messages back and forth, but I always kept it casual. I knew she was vegan because she had it on her profile. We went to a bar/restaurant and she was like "yeah I can't eat anything here, I'm not hungry anyway." We both got a drink and chatted for another 1.5 hours. Towards the end of the date she said "so you said you're thinking about moving to Miami..." and I responded "yeah, but that's up in the air right now, nothing is trying me to down there, and now that you're in the picture, idk how that would work... " then she said " Oh, I don't think I'm in the picture, we don't have enough in common and I wouldn't date someone that isn't vegan. We had been talking for a week and she never mentioned that once. I just sat there, shocked, and was thinking "why did you agree to this then?" it wasn't because of the free food or drinks (she had one hard seltzer) and she was like "So I guess this is it? I'm gonna head home, I'm tired".
  After being tired of the North East I moved down to Miami about 2 weeks ago! People are definitely a lot more friendly down here and I gotta get out of my NYC habit of leaving everyone alone because no one wants to talk to someone that they don't know.
  
  I did all that for like 7 years in NYC and what did I get? About 5 dates, not a single one turned into a second date. I thought I had one in the bag… Then she sent me a long text saying that she didn’t want to see me again because I made her “uncomfortable” at the end of the date, even though her body language or verbal language said nothing or the sort.
  Gonna be real dude, it's not the apps, in this scenario.
  
  I knew she was vegan because she had it on her profile. We went to a bar/restaurant and she was like "yeah I can't eat anything here, I'm not hungry anyway."
  I kind of feel like that there might have been the problem. There are loads of great vegetarian / vegan restaurants, especially in New York. Like 10 seconds of googling to find one would show that you actually paying attention to what she's saying.
- Congrats, dude. The advice is solid, and you really do sound as though you fell into something good.
- Keep initial communication short and sweet. Too much gets lost in text, too many misunderstandings. "Hey! Love (something in their post that you’re seriously interested in, or why else are you contacting them)! (question about something you want to know about them)? Want to (go to the park, get coffee, go thrift storing, whatever)? And then go on the damned date, and do it ASAP, before something stupid happens like a misunderstood text, other plans/dates cropping up, whatever. Just go.
  This is generally good advice. I would clarify that you shouldn't ask them in in the first message
  You should have at least one volley where you verify they can read and write, and clear any deal breakers you might be bringing to the table (have kids, enm, whatever). After they respond with interest, then you ask them out.

Who would have thought that looking at 5 pictures and a shit bio would lead to you not being able to find a meaningful relationship?
- My buddy met his wife on Hinge during COVID. He's a good looking dude that dresses well. Me? I'm not exactly the most photogenic person and my sense of style is "I work in IT" 😄
  
  Wearing clothes that fit is the most important thing for being good at men’s fashion. A very simple tshirt and jeans can be really affordable and attractive IF they fit.
- OkCupid wasn't like that until Match bought them.

- All these dating apps are owned by the same company and are all kinda scammy. It's very much a pay to play scenario.
  Back when OkCupid first came out and they hadn't figured out how to make you pay for everything, it was awesome. I went on so many dates.
  Fast forward to last year and I'm dating again and try OkCupid and it was a totally different experience. I never would get messages organically. You have to subscribe to the premium package and then you have to pay to get more super likes so that women actually see your account. It's pretty ridiculous.
  So don't use it as a gage to judge yourself. It's just about how much money you spend on the app.
  
  Sounds like I got out at the right time with OkCupid which is where I met my gf back in 2014. I recall when I was divorced further back in 2008 how Lavalife, Plenty of Fish, Match, and Craigslist were the places I felt like a kid in a candy store due to when I was first married, online dating apps weren't a thing yet.
  OkCupid was much better than eHarmony and Tinder had just come out and it wasn't so money driven then. Sounds like it is much more so now.
  I heard about the lawsuit Tinder was in over fake profiles driving users into premium features but I don't think they were alone with that either. It's a shame how some of these services went through change to drive revenue and some are no longer around at all. It was kind of like a golden time to meet people when it was still becoming more acceptable than the cold approach in a club, bar or grocery store for those of us not really into those scenes.
  What I liked about the dating apps then was both parties stated what they were looking for and we both we were there for dating. Cold approaching often meant someone is not on that wave length unlike the dating app. I found people were there for the same thing for the most part. Dating of some form being Casual all the way up to married and have my babies. For me it felt like a short cut over trying to figure that out in real time in public.
  Today with the apps driven towards looks only I have to wonder if it is more a play on stroking one's own ego and dopamine hits from the randomness of collecting matches versus actually meeting people in real life. I could see that a big bump for someone with no real intention of dating unless it was one of the top 5 percent of the users. Overwise it's just another way to keep us from being bored like scrolling through social media...
  
  My buddy has been married for like 2 or 3 years to a really cool, smart, and beautiful woman. He dated her for like a year or two before, and they had known each other before that. When I was hanging out with him one night, the topic of dating and the apps came up, I told him it was all a scam now, they want you to pay for everything. He was like "WTF? They only give you a certain amount of free swipes a day and then you either have to pay more or wait? That's some bullshit bro."
  Of course before you pay they entice you by saying you have like 10 or 15 matches, but you need to pay to see who they are. One you pay that number is cut in half or less, and they're usually not people you'd be attracted to anyway
- You're out there dodging bullets my man. Don't let others define your self worth.
  Sorry I can't help with the dating advice. I'm old as fuck and married forever and the modern dating scene seems weird to me.
  For what it's worth, my son met a lovely girl while travelling. He also met lots of cool people through local online groups in the areas he was traveling to. Not sure if that's useful at all.
- I feel you bro. I lived in Manhattan for 3 years and got maybe 3 dates, a lot were just conversations on the app that went nowhere. I was like how the hell can I not find someone in a city of 8 million people (NYC in general)?! My buddy met his wife on Hinge during COVID. All it showed me was transgender people and "bottom of the barrel" people where I was like "you can't seriously think that this is a good picture of you". We lived about 4 miles apart.
  I think the biggest kick in the balls was when my ex and I broke up. I went on bumble and literally 3 profiles in it recommended her to me!
  I've had friends, professionals, and strangers on Reddit review my profiles, my therapist (who was around my age) looked over my profiles too. Everyone said there wasn't really anything bad that stood out to them. If they did have any suggestions they usually conflicted what someone else had told me.
  It's been 8 long, lonely, depressing years. I've gone to social events via meetup and most of them were either dudes outnumbering women like 4:1 of it was a big mixer, or if it was something small it would be like 5 or 6 people just standing around at a bar or something being awkward. I started going to board and cars game nights three times a week, one of them had a fair amount of attractive women, but they always had their guard up because all the lonely dudes there would have the same idea. I became friendly with two of the cute regulars early on, I played it cool for a while. When we were waiting to order drinks at the bar one of them said "ugh, all these guys won't stop hitting on me, I just want to play games." and I was thinking "well... Shit..."
  I finally got so fed up with everyone being so closed off up there (and other reasons) that I just moved 1300 miles away to Miami where everyone is a lot friendlier. I've only been here for 1.5 weeks and it definitely isn't as easy to find social events to meet women and make friends like there was in NYC. They largely all sucked, but at least the opportunity was there. People are at least more willing to talk to strangers here though!
- Hobbies if you have time or money? And not hobbies for the sake of trying to find someone romantically, but something you genuinely enjoy. Local game stores can be a good way to find out about other adjacent events (if they are big enough) or trivia nights at bars, etc.
  
  The problem is that a lot of my hobbies are male centric.

When the apps suffer turbo enshittification, everybody tires of it fast. Tinder is little more than an ad front for Instagram, over half of every profile's bio (which is hard to see on purpose, because of how Tinder works) is just @whoever . Tinder may also show a profile you already "Nope"d a second time, same with a profile you give a "Yeah", effectively wasting a like.
Then there's the heavy push for users, mainly men, to pay for premium. But wait, there's premium Gold and premium Platinum! And also stuff you have to buy separately!
Tinder was good back in 2015. It became absolute shit with time. That the majority of other dating apps literally abandoned what set them apart (like OkCupid, which had comprehensive profiles to be filled and ditched it all for the same like/dislike schtick) doesn't make people trust in them either. "Same shit, less people".
Not to mention fake profiles and bots, because of course the apps will pretend they have more users than they actually have. How else will desperate men pay for platinum premium?
- Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but OKC went down the tubes because it was bought by the same company that owns tinder (match I believe?). They actually own many of the dating apps at this point.
  
  Match Group. Pretty much an evil conglomerate of dating apps.

The apps served a purpose. They raised the available pool of possible dates from "who's in this bar with me right now" to "everyone in a 10 mile radius" or whatever, and everyone is there for the same reason, mostly.
But it also doesn't have to be all or nothing. It shouldn't be. Use an app you like and also go to in-person dating events. Just use apps if that's your speed. Fuck the apps and go out there and meet people at the local cafe, or board game night, or beer league softball, or whatever. It can augment the old ways. It doesn't have to replace the old ways.
- From "who's in this bar with me right now" to "everyone in the entire world" but mostly Russian spam bots, Only Fans, and 'Influencers' 🤮
  FYFY
  
  You forgot 'South East Asian and African women GPS spoofing their way to matching with Western men with the aim of getting a spousal visa in mind.'
  That's what 65% of my matches on dating apps are. The other 35% are fake accounts using photos stolen from a model's Instagram or Weibo. Unfortunately the mobile nature of modern dating apps makes it far more difficult to run a reverse image search and weed out those fakes. But generally if I match with someone hot enough to look like a model, I'm automatically suspicious.
  This isn't me having a preference. I just don't want a long distance relationship with somebody who lives 5000+ miles away. Been there, done that.
  I used to date a Japanese lady who came to the UK on a student visa to do a foreign exchange year. Our relationship fell apart the moment we finally closed the gap.
  Also, I've known ladies who have married foreign spouses and the ordeal they've been put through by the Home Office to bring their husbands to the UK. I don't want to have to surrender years of private chat logs to the government and be interrogated for hours because of their crackdown upon mail order brides.

Dativerse when? Seems like this is ripe for disruption by a free solution
- There's this pleroma instance and this github project.
- I've thought about it before. The thing is with all the images getting loaded so much it would get expensive quick.
  
  I think the bots and scammers would pose a much bigger problem
  
  Yet Lemmy exists right now with videos and everything
- Yes, why can't Lemmy just work for that?
  Just create a "City Nama, M4W/M4M/W4W/W4M.MM4W...etc"
  That would work no?
  
  No, because newer or more upvoted is not better. The way Lemmy is set up for news makes it bad for leaving a page up for your profile and getting people to look at it over time
  
  There's no women on Lemmy tho.
  
  It turns Into hookups and sexually explicit pics if reddit was anything to go by. But if it was for relationships not just hook ups, I'd like it.

The dating apps would still be useful if they haven't broken themselves in order to make short-term profit.
If they hadn't all sold out to the same company who then ruined each one of their purchases that would also help as then there would still be some competition in the market. But sadly it's now become monolithic and completely pointless

I found my girlfriend just before COVID popped off, but I would argue that dating apps are insufferable now due to how polarizing the world is.
Just having basic conversations with people online, including Lemmy, is so tiring. Like how I was called names for saying Windows just works, and then as I was being attacked for it, I was literally typing the comment from a Linux distro that currently wont allow Steam to download at higher than ~120Mbps, despite my internet being 1900Mbps. Then the guy continued to go off, calling me names, telling me that I am such a moron, all because I showed a live example of how Linux wasn't "just working"?
The internet is so exhausting and toxic these days.
- The Internet is just trolls (whether paid shills or people doing it for fun). Sometimes you think that some of these people just might be higher up the spectrum. You'd be right for one out of five of them, the other four are also just trolls.

I gave up on online dating last year and I won't be back. If that means I'll end up dying alone, I'm honestly more comfortable with that idea than suffering though anymore of the bullshit that's Tinder/Bumble/Hinge/etc. It's become such a miserable experience for both sides (men and women).
As someone who had used online dating on and off for 10+ years, I can tell you one of the big problems - money and greed. I know it's always easy to just "blame capitalism", but I've seen first-hand the paradigm shift from an actual useful service (i.e. a way to meet people that you would otherwise not meet) to the blatant greed it's become. The dating apps are so obviously profiteering off people's loneliness it's fucking disgusting. Back before Match bought everyone up, these services used to actually be okay for what they were.
- Best to try meet people in the real world. It's good for the mental state (especially nature and bodies of water), increases chances of meeting somebody, etc.

I did online dating for many years. I used match, eharmony, tinder, pof, okcupid.
I fully understand the 'soul destroying' comment. For me it was a lot of work for little return. I started off being selective. Messaging one person at a time so I didn't end up getting two responses and having to put someone off or turn one of them down. That was naive it turned out as I got very few replies. So I started messaging multiple people at once. I always tried to personalise things but my effort varied with how optimistic I was feeling about online dating.
Ultimately I think I got responses about 10% of the time. From them, 10% turned into a date, from those maybe 50% would get to a second date.
So overall it every hundred messages I'd write , 1 would end up in a date. I went on quite a lot of dates over the years, but I had to devote so much time to getting them it was, soul destroying.
I never thought i was unattractive, but online dating made me question if I really was. I never thought I was an ass, but online dating made me question if I really was. I would sometimes have very long conversations before meeting to find there was no chemistry in person. Sometimes I would like them when we meet and they would ghost me. Sometimes they liked me and I didn't like them, but I always tried to be honourable and tell them, not ghost them since I didn't like it happening to me.
I am male in case my experience doesn't make it obvious. I often spoke to some of the women I got on better with about how online dating was for them and their experience was pretty awful for different reasons. Generally they were bombarded by messages and a good number of them were obscene. Guys trying to hook up rather than date. To manage their inbox was a real challenge and they probably missed out on good matches because of the noise.
My overall impression of the whole thing is that it generally sucks regardless of whether you are the one doing most of the messaging or whether you are receiving messages. I also think it makes it more like shopping than dating, dehumanising people. Do I want the 8K 42 inch TV or the 4K inch TV? Actually, can I even afford it?
All that said in the end it worked for me. Over 6 years since I last logged in and I think it was a bit of an addiction, or perhaps desperation born of loneliness.i also have a daughter now and there were times I thought that was never going to happen.
So for me online dating was years of frustration, difficulty and upset, but in the end I'm glad I did it but it took a long time.
- It's very superficial and any of the girls who are remotely attractive get tons of messages, plus they have to be on edge for anything out of the ordinary.
  The one thing I'll conceed to Pim Tool about online dating is that it can easily funnel all women to the top value men. That said, the most desirable men are going to exclude the unattractive women. Based on observing other people dating online, it seems like younger girls who are unattractive are aware that they can get older dudes who are probably desperate.

Most dating apps are looking to make a profit first and provide a good service second. This is terrible, but we live in a capitalist hellscape so it's not surprising.
HOWEVER. A lot of people are really bad at using dating apps. This is kind of a peeve of mine and I've been thinking of writing a book (or at least a blog post) about how to do better.
The premise is "throw the ball back". So many people match and then just drop the ball. Their profile says they love NK jemisen so you write "she's great! Did you read her new book 'the city we became '? It's a total love letter to New York". A fine message. And they write back "No". End of message.
My dude that's not how this game works. They've thrown you the ball with their message. You've caught it. Now throw it back by asking a question of your own.
If you're not interested or don't have the energy to be present, don't say anything. If you're not interested, just unmatch. If you don't have the energy, come back when you do. If you never have the energy, delete the app you're not ready.
And to all the people who just message with "hey": please do better. You look incompetent when you do that.
That's true of like all text messages, come to think of it. Some of you assholes probably message me at work on slack with "hey" instead of starting with the important part.
Also don't be a fucking pen pal. If they matched and responded to your initial topic well, just ask them out. That's what you're both here for.
I'm an extremely average guy who doesn't date men. If I can do this so can all of you.
- When people find a partner, the dating service stops making money from them.
  I agree. My sister and I both found our partners through online dating. I never found a decent partner until I completely changed by strategy, so yes, a lot of people are bad at it. Conversely to don't say "hey," don't send massive walls of text with your entire biography either.
  There are some people that online dating works better for. My sister is a trans lesbian in a conservative state and is only attracted to cis women. It's not going to be easy for her to just go out and date.
  If you're a lesbian, stay away from any services that allow searching for "friends." My sister was very upfront about being a lesbian with a penis and she still got tons of messages from creepy dudes
  
  When people find a partner, the dating service stops making money from them.
  Weirdly, most of the dating apps don't really support ethical-non-monogamy. You'd think that'd be an easy source of repeat money. But ENM is a whole other tangent. People get mad about it.
  Conversely to don’t say “hey,” don’t send massive walls of text with your entire biography either.
  This is good advice, too! I've encountered too-much text far less often than not-enough, so I didn't think to include it. Typically if I find myself wanting to write more than a couple sentences at once, I turn that into "I'd love to talk more about this on a date".
  The last woman who sent me far-too-much text also sent me a completely generic opener. I think it was "What's the last piece of art that moved you?" This probably seemed smart and deep to her, but in my opinion it's not a good opener. It's generic. She could have sent that to anyone. Nothing on my profile indicates I have a particular relationship with art. Do not send a first message that could have gone to anyone. What you send should be particular to them.
- Meme representation of what happened:

Dating apps are deeply, deeply enshitified because the economic incentive for them is the exact opposite of what monogamous users want. Specifically, the apps want you to keep subscribing, plus buy the super platinum plus extra added packs, but never really find someone and date them, because then you stop paying. Old school pre-sellout OKCupid had a great analysis of this in their blog, which was taken down the day they sold out.
This is why the few sites/apps that cater to non-monogamous or event based communities are still reasonably decent, e.g FetLife, Bloom and Feeld, though Feeld is partially down the enshitification pathway.
I'd be really interested in seeing what a fediverse dating app would be like, something that didn't have the financial incentive to enshitify, and maybe had a match/search system like old-school OKC.
EDIT: missing word.

This has definitely been my experience. 8 years after my last relationship and I'm still single. I'm an average looking guy, I put up nice pictures, I filled out the profile, I spent time crafting a good opening message, etc... I had maybe 30-50 conversations, most of which quickly died out, some just wanted to keep talking for weeks before we met, at the end I think I ended up with less than ten actual dates, none of them went to a second date.
My first therapist even suggested an experiment (edit: this was actually my idea,but he supported it): replace my profile pictures with those of a male model and see if I get tons of messages or it stays the same. I ended up getting about 3 or 4 more messages total then usual, none of them went anywhere either.
- What was your therapist's theory they were trying to test, that you might be ugly? Seems a very odd thing to ask you to do.
  
  I'm guessing they knew that it likely wasn't a problem with being ugly, so the therapist did this 'experiment' as a way of demonstrating that. Seems pretty solid to me, actually.
  
  It was my idea but he supported it, pretty much testing to see if my pictures were the issue or not.
  Some people say to never use selfie shots, others say it's fine. Some say to have only pictures of you with no one else, others say it's fine. It's difficult to figure out what actually "works".
- This is the interesting thing about looking hot. It brings its own host of problems; serious problems they aren’t really acknowledged by society at large because of apparent privilege.
  
  I couldn't really find scientific research to back this claim up. Can you elaborate and back your claims up?
- You had 30-50 matches over eight years? Where do you live, bumblefuck?
  Also the apps aren't for conversations. They are for meeting people. If you are trying to have a lengthy conversation on Tinder, you're putting screws in with a hammer.
  
  Nope! Manhattan, the polar opposite of Bumblefuck! The problem there is the sheer amount of people, even average or below average women will get bombarded with 10s or 100s of matches a day and just as many messages, so you just get lost in the crowd if you're not a perfect 10. Also there's a lot of dudes in the city that are just creepy as fuck. I'm obviously not good with women, but these guys make me look like Casanova. Women almost always have their guard up because of that. I just moved to Miami 2 weeks ago and it's a breath of fresh air (both literally and figuratively haha) to have strangers be friendly and want to talk to you.
  I was never trying to have in depth conversations with these women, I wanted to jump from the match right to the date. They're the ones that wanted to wait days or weeks until a date happened.

Dating websites were useless, turning them into phone applications just made them even less engaging then they already were.
An extremely tiny percentage of dating website users get anything positive from it. You might as well play a lottery instead.
- I'm married now but was pretty successful in meeting people through dating apps when I was single for a couple of years. Each and every person I met ended up being a complete shit show, by far the worst dates and one worst relationship of my life. The relationship was with someone who turned out to be an abusive narcissist. Fun.
  By contrast, the relationships and dates that came from meeting people in person were the best, I think because they originated from spontaneous mutual interest, plus I could much more easily weed out the creeps.
- I wouldn't say that. I know several people in long term relationships that met on Tinder.
- I just don't see this. I've had lots of success and I'm not a typically attention-grabbing person on a dating app (my first line is about how I'm married).
  I have numerous friends who met their long-term partners on dating apps.

I really loved OkCupid back before they sold out. They would share a lot of interesting data on their blog posts, and seemed genuinely interested in making successful matchups based on how your profile was presented to others. It was fun to be on there and didn't feel like you were just being presented for "dateable" you were if you didn't want to be.
I also met my wife on OkCupid, but that was just before the site really took a nosedive. Pretty annoyed they deleted my account without warning, so the first message she ever sent me is gone forever.
- My wife and I also met on OKCupid, probably around the same time as you -- Tinder-like features were starting to appear, but the core of the experience was still about reading other users' personal essays and comparing compatibility quiz responses. Of all the services I tried, OKCupid (in that particular incarnation, at least) seemed like the only one that was genuinely aimed at fostering deep personal connections. I haven't been on any of the apps in almost a decade now, but it really seems like the shallow, gamified Tinder model of "swipe right if they look hot" ate up the marketplace, to the detriment of everyone.
  
  Yeah that's literally all it is now, a few apps are like "there's no swiping here" but then the mechanic they came up with is worse.
- If you want to save stuff like that, it's good to save it because sites disappear. There are also a lot of weird "privacy" obsessive people who have a bizarre fixation of wanting accounts to be "deleted" if they don't sign in for a certain amount of time, and some sites are starting to give in to them.
  Check for emails in both of your accounts and you might be able to find the text of it there.

Coming from somebody in their early thirties who has had nothing but atrocious luck with women in general, I've mentally checked out of dating.
Every dating app is now a carbon-copy of Tinder where you can't pull a lady unless you look like a fucking Chippendale, are above 5'11" tall, have your own property and are sufficiently wealthy. It also doesn't help that Match Group hold a virtual monopoly over the market, with Bumble as their only credible competition. They literally profiteer from making the experience as miserable as possible so they can sucker you into paying a £40/month subscription.
Match also put the bare minimum into moderating and policing their apps. The sheer volume of love scammers, fake users and spammers shilling OnlyFans pages is massive, and it feels like they really couldn't give a shit about enforcing their own rules.
Online dating really is that soul-destroying, and the longer I spend trying to use any app, the less it surprises me that the incel, MGTOW and red pill communities are growing, and that people like Andrew Tate and Sneako have such a huge following despite being such garbage human beings.
At the same time I wish there was a better alternative.

It used to be socially acceptable to ask a stranger for their phone number. Some would agree, some wouldn’t and I’d thank them for their time.
I tried this in 2019 at a restaurant and got a look like, “wtf is wrong with you?”
I did well on dating apps when the format was like email because I could showcase my personality, which doesn’t come through easily in a text message format (never been good at small talk with strangers; writing letter let me really express myself). Luckily, I’ve found my partner, though I was worried it’d never happen.
Modern dating apps also suck for dating if you have average looks.
- I once went on a (second) Tinder date in Wolverhampton.
  Some random stranger genuinely approached my date's uni friend and asked her for her Snapchat. She gave it to him.
  Less than 15 mins later when we're in the supermarket, she gets an unsolicited dick pic from him.
  
  Nudes were what snapchat was made for. That was one of the only reasons anyone I knew got it back when it came out. Half those users were under 18. I'm sure it has changed a lot but likely leaves a imprint that holds over time.
- It used to be socially acceptable to ask a stranger for their phone number. Some would agree, some wouldn’t and I’d thank them for their time.
  I tried this in 2019 at a restaurant and got a look like, “wtf is wrong with you?”
  Maybe at a bar, but I've never heard of that in a restaurant. It also depends on the context, too.
- "I'll give you my Insta, you can hit me up on there"
- That's because someone can easily track your address via a phone number. This is why I have a burner VoIP number to give out until I trust people.

I guess we’re ignoring the subscriptions and bot accounts. The primary reason I never paid for any of it nor spent longer than a month on any of them.
- I've paid for bumble, hinge and tinder multiple times over the past 7 years, all it got me was less money in my bank account.

I used dating apps for 10 years. Got maybe a dozen replies and 1 date. So I'm looking at like a .00001% success rate. It's heartbreaking how unattractive that makes me feel.
- It's not you, it's the apps. They're set up that way to get you to pay for them.
  
  That's a big nope from me.
- Well, if your goal was to get at least one date, then I'd say the success rate was 100%!
  
  I would not call the date a success lol. I tried to plan to go somewhere but the girl knew a mutual friend so she said she felt more comfortable coming over my apartment. She was adamant about being pizza (which was awful), and when she walked in she cracked a joke about how easily she could get raped. 0/10. Did not see her again.

This is the best summary I could come up with:
(tldr: 7 sentences skipped)
“I’m always in a state of flux.” Lacey’s approach might not suit everyone looking for love, but she is one of a growing number of people rejecting swiping on a screen and taking their dating lives offline.
(tldr: 26 sentences skipped)
Many say the apps feel like work and there is a genuine sense of burnout as people struggle to commit to what is essentially hours of admin a week alongside their day jobs and other responsibilities.
(tldr: 13 sentences skipped)
“You really have to set some standards – people can be so keen to help that they tend to overestimate how good-looking or interesting their mates are, or they try to suggest the only single person they know, no matter how unsuitable – but it has worked quite well.
(tldr: 6 sentences skipped)
The benefit of meeting someone vouched for is also driving Clare, 38, from Bath, to explore her options, after having signed up to numerous dating apps over the years, only to quit after a few months each time.
(tldr: 7 sentences skipped)
She has done slow dating at Shambala festival, with an emphasis on doing exercises that could help to make emotional connections, including questions like, “What are you most proud of in your life?” and “What’s the biggest challenge you’ve overcome?”
(tldr: 12 sentences skipped)
“You have the opportunity to meet heaps of other cute, single people in real life with no stuffy or awkward first-date vibes because if you don’t click with someone, you can just excuse yourself and chat with someone else,” she says.
(tldr: 27 sentences skipped)
The original article contains 2,349 words, the summary contains 269 words. Saved 89%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

This lines up with the experience of single friends I've seen. I wonder how much of it though is that those who are left on the dating market are on there for a reason?
Namely they select for avoidant types who when trouble arises are more likely to embrace singledom
- I'm anxious attachment style, but latterly maybe do tend towards fully avoidant because I can't face anymore pain. Not a great position to be in at 35.

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

The discussion of this same article on Hacker News is shockingly redpilly.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38055947

TBH app based dating has entirely ended the possibility of dating for me. It’s just not worth the effort and constant rejection. Add on being lower than normal attractiveness, and 5’5” to boot, it just isn’t something that makes it worthwhile anymore.
I’m no catch myself, and would need to do a lot of working on myself first if I wanted to date, but it’s not something that seems worth the effort now. It’s been so commodified that I just don’t have the will or want to put in the work.
- My advice to people here is usually all the same: stop worrying about it. Do stuff that you enjoy. I don't even want to say work on yourself, because it implies that you are actually doing that in order to find somebody. Don't even do that. Just do what you want to do.
  Find meetup groups you want to do for you, not for the possibility of meeting people. Find ways to have fun. Work out because you want to be stronger and healthier. Sign up for community college classes on topics you find interesting.
  If you do meet someone interesting in the process, cool! But don't let that be your focus.
  And yeah dating apps all suck for many, many reasons.
  
  That seems like super generic advice. Why would you give it to anyone? Are you more qualified somehow than the people you give it to?

Pim Tool likes to rant about online dating, but the reality is that there are dudes that can only date this way.
The thing that concerns me though is that eventually more people are going to identify as "awkward" and will refuse to go on dates with anyone they meed IRL and feel like everyone should only contact them online. We already see this with irrational fears of talking on the phone where millennials and zoomers insist on communicating exclusively through texts.

"Fell out of love"
Quite a shame how the partner who had a spouse that beat the shit out of them and stole their wallet every day FELL OUT OF LOVE with that spouse...
- Okay but they're talking about dating apps here.
  
  Woosh

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

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