r/technology • u/thinkB4WeSpeak • Sep 11 '26

Society Dating Apps Are Dying

https://time.com/article/2026/09/09/dating-apps-are-dying/
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u/DangerousTurmeric Sep 11 '26

From my experience, the apps stopped letting you filter people and started influencing who you are seen by so you get heaps of noise if you're a woman and absolutely no matches if you're a man. The aim was to make men pay for a better service. Instead many men got annoyed by this and just started swiping yes to everyone, which meant that "matches" are now not actually matches. Many women got burned out and started taking time outs and quitting because it's just too much and too unpredictable, so matches fizzled out. Lots of men interpreted this as women being too picky or lazy, so they stopped making an effort. And, gradually, everyone active online has encountered some form of bad behaviour multiple times and is tired of it. Now everyone hates the apps, is hypersensitive, and makes zero effort, except for the tiny proportion of newly single people (who may or may not be ready for a relationship) and the people with personality issues who are happy to tolerate the apps if it means they get validation. And that's before you even get into the widening progressive/conservative divide between women and men, and other normal incompatibilities. It's a total mess.

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u/SoggyWaffles427 Sep 11 '26

My one friend deciding to change his preferences to both men and woman, then farmed higher elo from getting swiped on by dudes and that led him to get better matches with girls

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u/Lou_Peachum_2 Sep 11 '26

That.. is genius lol

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u/smokeyleo13 Sep 11 '26

Ruins the app for gay men tho, so i know a lot whove stopped using it for that reason. Whats the point if 3/4 of the dudes ur seeing are just straight looking to up their ratio, we have better apps youre not on anyway

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u/eat_my_ass_n_balls Sep 11 '26

But there ARE a lot of conservative men on those apps too

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u/WhenSharksCollide Sep 11 '26

You see they crashed grindr again this week? Pretty sure this is like the fourth year in a row...

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u/[deleted] Sep 11 '26 edited Sep 11 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Bazoobs1 Sep 11 '26

I get where you’re coming from but I’d be blaming the apps not the people using them in their most effective manner

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u/deepeast_oakland Sep 11 '26

Oh man, i can’t believe I get to say this with a straight face.

Hate the game, not the player.

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u/llcooljim02 Sep 11 '26

STRAIGHT face 🤣

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u/anticipat3 Sep 11 '26

Modern problems require modern solutions!

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u/tommypatties Sep 11 '26

When I was dating I did this and it worked. Lots of dudes swiping yes and then me swiping no on them made me look like a better match so I showed up earlier on more womens' stacks. I also got to see what other dudes were putting on their profiles to help me hone my own.

I did get 'caught' once though. A girl I went out with a couple times messaged me,

her - "hey my gay friend saw your profile as he was swiping, are you bi?"

me - "haha no, I just set my profile to both men and women to boost my 'score' and show up on more womens' stacks."

her - crickets forever

oh well.

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u/SaxRohmer Sep 11 '26

the algo punishes you for being excessively picky so rejecting a bunch of dudes isn’t really going to help your score

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u/Key-Rough-8346 Sep 11 '26

Should've just stuck with the lie. She also probably interpreted that as you just wanting more matches to sleep around, because she likely doesn't realize what dating apps are like on the male end, so she assumes you're a player without realizing that most men's profiles don't even get seen.

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u/tommypatties Sep 11 '26

haha you think lying about my sexuality at the start of a relationship is better than admitting to gaming an algorithm?

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u/scagatha Sep 11 '26

In this case I would hate the game, not the player. As a woman I think it's clever and appreciate the ingenuity. "Now that guy, he's a problem solver and a go-getter!" 😉

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u/goat_penis_souffle Sep 11 '26

Elo? Wouldn’t that attract an eeeeeevil woooooman?

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u/mikeyd85 Sep 11 '26

Nah, you just end up fooling around with Magnus Carlsen.

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u/Levitlame Sep 11 '26

Something something checkmate

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u/-Supposably- Sep 11 '26

BYOButtplugs

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u/soulseaker Sep 11 '26

Magnus actually hates it if you bring your own butt plug.

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u/KhausTO Sep 11 '26

Well at least you know they are down with using toys 😂

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u/Jaxyl Sep 11 '26

TBF if Magnus Carlson swiped right on me I'd go on that date if only for the story.

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u/MaddMan420 Sep 11 '26

Don't bring me down

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u/excreto2000 Sep 11 '26

Yes but also sweet-talkin’ women

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u/ditka Sep 11 '26

Hey you with the pretty face, welcome to the human race

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u/Fyrspray Sep 12 '26

This is a severely underrated comment.

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u/obeytheturtles Sep 11 '26

You can also set your location to countries where the apps are used by sex workers and get reliable matches that way.

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u/SamSibbens Sep 11 '26

Two questions:
1. What countries would these be
2. ...How do you know that?

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u/radenthefridge Sep 11 '26

How beautifully dystopian.

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u/JRDruchii Sep 11 '26

A modern solution to a modern problem, well done!

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u/OuterWildsVentures Sep 11 '26

they even have fucking skill based matchmaking on Tinder jesus christ

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u/T0XiC1TIES Sep 11 '26

dying at "higher elo" bwahahahha

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u/ExtentAggravating733 Sep 11 '26

Elo is affected by both their swipes and your swipes. Left-swiping increases your elo since it means you're more selective and likely to be a "good match". So, left-swiping on all the dudes probably helped also.

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u/Shootemout Sep 11 '26

I actually did this because okcupid and other platforms would assume you were a bot if you constantly said yes to a lot of people in a short time span. Admittedly, I do like femboys/tomgirls so I just took it as an opportunity to look for both. Because I was swiping "no" on a lot of profiles it felt like it was boosting me. Could've been entirely subjective but I felt like it helped a lot. Plus it also really helped me at a time when my self respect was at an all time low, seeing all these men swipe right on me boosted my confidence a lot lol. It kinda reinforced that it wasn't necessarily me that was the reason I couldn't find a proper 'match'. I was matching with people right but like, they just were not it yknow

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u/eukomos Sep 11 '26

Probably a good way to farm some blowjobs while waiting for an interested girl to show up, too. Genius!

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u/ComprehensiveStuff72 Sep 11 '26

New strategy unlocked

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u/FunLet6970 Sep 11 '26

Desperate times, desperate measures /s

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u/geek180 Sep 11 '26

I wish I could go back in time to try this.

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u/TheParmesan Sep 11 '26

Fuck I never thought of that. I was lucky enough that I had a strong profile and still did well, but that boost would have been helpful.

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u/Oil_Shock_2026 Sep 11 '26

Whatever works. — Larry David

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u/WuhanWTF Sep 14 '26

SBMM in real life is crazy.

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u/benskinic Sep 11 '26

it sounds very deliberately engineered to extract profits short term w little regard to the long term. betting whatever leadership implemented that BS is long gone, or this was a PE groups doing. sounds like hell and idiocracy whatever the cause!

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u/acronym_dictionary Sep 12 '26

Professional Engineer

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u/TheGalator Sep 11 '26

Yeah dating apps would be fucked even if dating for younger people wasn't fucked in general. But it is. So they are borderline unusable unless you are a white guy in Asia or a very shallow pretty woman

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u/Exact-Enthusiasm-803 Sep 11 '26

*Tall handsome white guy

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u/NocturnisVacuus Sep 11 '26

coward, anyone can be a tall handsome dude on the internet

/s

....and that I suspect is part of the trust-issue problem.

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u/Twelve2375 Sep 11 '26

The height thing could be easily solved if the dating sites would pay a photographer (could just be a guy with a phone, doesn’t have to be a pro) and everyone in the area has to go to the same 7/11 and get their profile picture taken at the same spot with the ruler on the doorframe. Boom. Solved.

That one’s free but I have additional great ideas for sale to fix dating for a nominal fee.

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u/mscomies Sep 11 '26

Put a scale under the ruler with the display next to the subject. If height is a filterable category, weight should be too.

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u/MrPuddington2 Sep 11 '26

I always say I identify as tall. Nothing you can do about it.

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u/BannedSvenhoek86 Sep 11 '26 edited Sep 11 '26

Ehhh.

Most guys considered short in America are tall in Asia. Really it should say Blonde White Guy. Because holy shit do people over there love blonde hair white guys. Obviously you can't be an overweight troll with a bowl cut, but a very average blonde guy in America gets a lot more attention than they are used to in some places and that's not entirely hyperbole. It's strange being asked to take pictures with random people because they're infatuated with your hair or teen girls visibly pointing at you randomly and giggling and running away when you look over at them.

That last part definitely brought out some suppressed middle school trauma lmao.

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u/nicacio Sep 11 '26

I think you need to update your ideas about Asian height. High school kids tower over their parents in developed Asia.

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u/BannedSvenhoek86 Sep 11 '26

I mean, sure some do, but when I was there like 3 years ago I was a full head taller than like 80% of the people there and I'm under 6'. In Ho Chi Minh people were taller, sure, but anywhere outside a major tourist hub I was definitely taller than most by a good bit.

It's changing, it hasn't changed completely though.

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u/Comfortable-Bread249 Sep 11 '26

Rich tall handsome white guy with “masculine energy”

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u/HabitualChiller Sep 12 '26

Nah. In my experience, most White guys who are at least 5'10 and average-looking clean up here. Asian women really like light-skinned men with "unique" features like light hair and green or blue eyes. It's a break from the monotony of the Asian phenotype of black hair and dark brown eyes, and White people have a reputation for being financially stable from years of colonialism and Western propaganda.

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u/b0w3n Sep 11 '26

I'm curious if there'd be a market for a reasonable dating app that lets you filter to your hearts content and just charges a reasonable fee around like $1 a month.

Problem is these things cost money to run and when you don't charge the person you're doing the whole Venture Capital/Advertisement loop where you end up having to do the dumb shit like driving engagement and getting people to come back. Like all in all this is not a complex piece of software to make.

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u/TheGalator Sep 11 '26

It could. But it would need to make it so you only see pictures once you matched

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u/Pls_PmTitsOrFDAU_Thx Sep 11 '26

For younger people? I'm 30 and have never had a gf. Now that feel ready to try for a relationship all the apps are shit and the economy is in the trash

Maybe I just don't try lol

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u/Arnas_Z Sep 11 '26

Hmmm, maybe I should take a trip to Asia.

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u/DmtDtf Sep 11 '26

I have no idea how I got so lucky finding my girl last year. She is waaay easily the most incredible person I have been with in my entire life. Went through SO much trash, which I dubbed "The Summer Trash", people who had no desire to make any effort, had way too high of standards, and were extremely difficult to communicate with. My girl wanted to see me immediately, I saw her every day after our 1st date, moved in 2 months after that. Her daughter is amazing and I'm planning on proposing in the spring.

But holy fuck did I have to weed through so much trash to get there.

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u/classicrockchick Sep 11 '26

saw her every day after our 1st date, moved in 2 months after that.

what are you, a lesbian?

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u/ManagementFinal3345 Sep 11 '26

A hobosexual most likely. Lived with his mom and she had her own place. If you can uproot your life in 2 months to move in with a stranger off the internet you didn't have anything going for yourself in the first place. No lease and definitely no mortgage. These are red flags. Lmao. I'd recoil in disgust if a dude tried to move himself into the house i own after 8 weeks.

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u/hfxRos Sep 11 '26

I met my wife 14 years ago and we moved in together after 3 months.

She had just finished university and was living with her parents while trying to get her feet under her. I was living with 3 roommates that I hated because it was the only way for me to afford rent at the time.

We both wanted out of those situations, and saw an opportunity. We had a lot of conversations at the time about how we would handle it not working because, honestly, we knew each other for 3 months and we both understood this probably wasn't an amazing idea. But then it just worked out and we've been happy since.

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u/FriendlyDespot Sep 11 '26

Speaking of red flags, seeing a random stranger sharing a life story about something that makes them very happy and choosing to interject with pointless mean-spirited speculation just to tear them down for no good reason is the reddest of reds.

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u/HFentonMudd Sep 11 '26

Yeah, someone has an ax to grind

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u/lolsai Sep 11 '26

i love how you're assuming the conversation went like

"hey, so i should move in with you now!"

lmfao

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u/-Supposably- Sep 11 '26

“I can’t believe we’ve already been on 10 dates!”

“I know! So which room is mine?”

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u/LizardSlayer Sep 11 '26

I met my wife in October, proposed in December, married the following march. We've been married 24 years now.

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u/default-username Sep 11 '26 edited Sep 11 '26

This is brutal haha

Honestly, sounds pretty similar to any very-early-20s type relationship so I wouldn't go as far as you on some of those assumptions, but it also does sound remarkably like the "white knight" who swooped in to my now-ex-wife's life. So there's that possibility too.

My guess is that he was this woman's first date on the app.

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u/mr_trick Sep 11 '26

He sounds like a real catch, calling other women "trash with high standards" lol. I hope she properly vetted him before introducing him into her daughter's life, but moving him in after 2 months doesn't seem to indicate that.

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u/Notmyrealname5282 Sep 11 '26

Username is DMT-dtf come on now this writes itself

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u/jollyreaper2112 Sep 11 '26

If there's was an Olympics track and field event for leaping to assumptions, you'd be usain bolt.

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u/thedownvotemagnet Sep 11 '26

you'd be usain bolt Mike Powell

I was curious, so I looked up who the Usain of long jumping is. Apparently Mike Powell has held the record for longest jump for the last 35ish years.

Not an "uhm, acksually", if you'd said Mike nobody would know who that was, but just in case anyone else was curious like I was.

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u/zasabi7 Sep 11 '26

There are so many assumptions here, it’s hilarious. You know you can break a lease, right?

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u/superxpro12 Sep 11 '26

Impossible... There are only bad people in the world looking to take advantage of others!

/s

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u/atonyatlaw Sep 11 '26

Or just be month to month.

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u/pslickhead Sep 11 '26

...or at the end of your lease.

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u/challenge_king Sep 11 '26

No, it can't be fortunate timing! The guy has to have something wrong with him! /s

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u/DengistGambit Sep 11 '26

God, you’re insufferable.

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u/Wolf_Mans_Got_Nards Sep 11 '26 edited Sep 11 '26

Honestly, I'm judging her way more. Who the hell moves a man they barely know into their home with a child? That is really poor parenting.

Edit: spelling typo.

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u/MrJasmine Sep 11 '26

You people really make up whatever new word makes you feel special huh

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u/chuckart9 Sep 11 '26

Especially when you have a kid

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u/PeteCampbellisaG Sep 11 '26

I love how a bunch of the replies your comment are acting like this situation sounds perfectly regular so long as the terms of his lease are met.

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u/tarants Sep 11 '26

Is this a r/relationshipadvice (might have the sub name wrong) meme or something? Some strong projection going on

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u/ConcernedKitty Sep 11 '26

Hence the complaining about people having “high standards”.

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u/sleepydon Sep 11 '26

I doubt she owns anything and dude is probably 21 or something like that lol. This sounds exactly like a young guy that used to work for me.

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u/OuterWildsVentures Sep 11 '26

This comment is a massive red flag lmao

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u/Ricky-Spanish- Sep 11 '26

Maybe his lease expired at the end of those 2 months and things were going really good… idk why people are so negative and assume the absolute worst about everyone else

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u/Ancient-Bat8274 Sep 11 '26

What does a lesbian bring on a second date? A U-Haul

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u/godtogblandet Sep 11 '26

A lot of people that got into a relationship through online dating feel this way when people that are trying to online date right now describe the experience. If you found the love of your life on a dating app, consider yourself on the last chopper out of Saigon.

These days the apps aren't even made to create couples anymore. They are made so you keep using the app. People that actually find a match uninstall the app. So there's no incentive to provide a good service.

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u/Meunderwears Sep 11 '26

Yeah, I met my wife on Match after dating for a couple years using OkCupid and POF. You actually had to put in effort back then, creating a good profile with interesting answers to questions. Now it's just running by the store window and only stopping for the most flashy item.

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u/GreasyPeter Sep 11 '26

Did she freshly download the apps? Usually when a women has just downloaded the apps they aren't burned out enough yet and still respond to messages. If you can grab their attention in that window you're golden.

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u/zeez1011 Sep 11 '26

You moved in with a girl 2 months after you first went out with her? That's wild.

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u/MyMonte87 Sep 11 '26

my girl came over after partying all night on our second date, she realized my place was cooler than hers...12 years later, she never left. Now there are 2 kids running around.

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u/Olobnion Sep 11 '26

Now there are 2 kids running around.

Oh no! Did you forget to childproof your home? They can get in through really tiny cracks.

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u/oatknight Sep 11 '26

The cracks naturally stretch and widen to allow this! Nature is amazing

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u/Excuse Sep 11 '26

He needs to fix those ASAP or else he may have some house hippos move in as well.

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u/hamfinity Sep 11 '26

Are you sure she's not a cat?

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u/Tvayumat Sep 11 '26

My girl likes to party all the time, party all the time, party all the time.

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u/Gasparde Sep 11 '26

Sorry to tell you this, but apparently your wife of 12 years has been a red flag all along. Get a lawyer asap.

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u/theotherguyatwork Sep 11 '26

This is the best. Hang out once and just never stop. Happened with my wife too!

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u/Sasquatchjc45 Sep 11 '26

Lmao my buddy let his 1st gf move in after 2 weeks. He's planning on proposing before their 1st year anniversary...

His first gf ever.. and she's an alcoholic welfare abuser who's already made him move out of his OG apartment to 3 other places basically because he has to support her ass😮‍💨 and he sees no red flags.

She must give really good head. Let this be a lesson you can be the biggest loser on the planet and still get a partner if you give good head, never lose hope✌️

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u/pollomimano Sep 11 '26 edited Sep 11 '26

AND she has a daughter. If the daughter is a child then I question how much vetting was done by the mom before she allowed a random man into their home.

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u/PTV420 Sep 11 '26

I've been dating and seeing someone regularly that I met off Facebook dating for nearly two years and while we're in love we have our own places and our own kids lol

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u/Zooshooter Sep 11 '26

If you're both adults, know what you want, and are honest with each other there's no reason it can't work out exactly like this.

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u/Lurkeyturkey113 Sep 11 '26

If it were just them sure. But she had a young child and is objectively a bad parent for doing this in only 2 months.

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u/Helllo-Kittyy Sep 11 '26

And she was hanging out with him every day after the first date. How soon did this dude meet her kid:/

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u/DmtDtf Sep 11 '26

If I was 20, I would be way more hesitant. But I'm 40 and I was married (sadly ended with my wife dying), we spoke in depth about what we both want, I want to be a Dad, everything just fell into place. There is no universal playbook to life, so just go for it. If it doesn't work out, dust off and try again.

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u/Lurkeyturkey113 Sep 11 '26

This isn’t about you and wanting to be a parent. This is that she’s an objectively bad mother for being so irresponsible and moving in with a strange man she only knew for 2 months.

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u/unrealisticspec Sep 11 '26

And she has a kid so even more so

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u/riotous_jocundity Sep 11 '26

Not just a girl--a woman with a young daughter. Extremely irresponsible and kind of fucked up on her part.

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u/JayGatsby1881 Sep 12 '26

I know people that became engaged after a week. That was not in the modern era though lol.

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u/Helllo-Kittyy Sep 11 '26

I mean, good luck to yall. But that is incredibly fast, especially because she has a kid.

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u/demoNstomp Sep 11 '26

Seems like most people who found their Wife / true match has a similar story.

Mine was similar. Saw my Wife during lockdown once and asked to see her immediately the next evening.

Now we havent been apart from each other a single day for nearly 6 years

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u/TooTallThomas Sep 11 '26

Same story as me except it was two years of bullshit before I met my fiancé

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u/Kil0Cowboy Sep 11 '26

This sounds like the beginning of every Netflix true crime doc I have watched recently

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u/JayGatsby1881 Sep 12 '26

Maybe they were all trash, but someone's trash is somebody else's treasure. Maybe they'll also find somebody one day and you guys were all just incompatible?

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u/KorbenDallasTexas Sep 11 '26

Adding to this: Tinder’s “fix” to get more men to stop swiping right on everything was to throw in millions of fake bot accounts so that they waste their limited amount of Likes and have to pay for the service to get more. I’ve never seen such a horribly sexist app to exist that has ruined dating in the modern age.

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u/platysoup Sep 11 '26

Instead many men got annoyed by this and just started swiping yes to everyone

No point reading the profile or even looking at the picture when 99% of them aren't even gonna match. Makes more sense to just Yes everyone and then filter through chat.

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u/kitanokikori Sep 11 '26 edited Sep 11 '26

Yep, it's a vicious cycle problem - women are deluged by more and more poorly suited matches, so they stop providing signal on who they actually like, men get zero matches so there's no incentive to be choosy on who they say yes to, the problem loops

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u/[deleted] Sep 11 '26

[deleted]

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u/platysoup Sep 11 '26

I was doing this pre-covid though. It worked out pretty okay.

Post-covid I just gave up cause it's a fuckin rigged game.

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u/ThePlaystation0 Sep 11 '26

They had this reduced visibility thing before covid. I was hearing about it back in 2016

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u/Xytak Sep 11 '26

Yeah, I remember those COVID era Match ads. This poor guy was forced to cook eggs while a young woman judges him through the camera. At the end, he sheepishly declares “it’s eggs!”

Never did find out if those eggs measured up or not. Some say he’s still cooking till this day. Waiting, wandering, hoping, that the next eggs might be the way home.

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u/SpenzDee Sep 11 '26

Not if you pay.

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u/DangerousTurmeric Sep 11 '26

Yeah but this is why women never message first now. And it's also why I left the apps. Having to sift through heaps of men who clearly were too lazy to read my profile is just not admin I'm willing to do.

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u/Jamsster Sep 11 '26

Yeah, that would get annoying really fast. Sucks that the people designing apps to foster relationships alot of times just want to foster the relationship to their app

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u/dcdem1163 Sep 11 '26

Or we’re never in a relationship and don’t know wtf they’re doing.

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u/Thrasy3 Sep 11 '26

That’s the whole point though…

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u/MikeArrow Sep 11 '26

I started out reading every profile, swiping with intention. After weeks of getting zero matches my willingness to swipe 'properly' quickly dropped. I stopped using apps altogether soon after but by the end I was really just making a split second judgement call to swipe yes or no.

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u/Xytak Sep 11 '26

I’ve personally never been on a dating app but from what I understand, the problem guys face is roughly analogous to the problem job seekers face. You need to apply to thousands of places to even have a shot at an interview. At first you carefully read every description, you hand craft your cover letter… then nothing. By week two you’re hitting “auto apply, auto apply, auto apply…”

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u/DaBiChef Sep 11 '26

To add on, I have a number of women friends who give me full on "deer in headlights" looks when I suggest only swiping on guys who list their stances on her dealbreakers... but instead they choose to swipe on these guys who clearly aren't looking for what she is, then complains "It's so hard to find decent guys!" "No one wants to work anymore!"

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u/Avedas Sep 11 '26

Women rarely ever messaged first in the first place, even like 15 years ago before all of the algorithm nonsense lol

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u/seriouslees Sep 11 '26

sift through heaps of men who clearly were too lazy to read my profile

That's fucking hilarious. You should try this experiment: make a profile of a man seeking women. Now browse for a day. Compare and contrast your previous number of men "too lazy to read" with your new sample of women too lazy to write a profile.

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u/DeadMoneyDrew Sep 11 '26

Had that issue back when I was a regular user of the apps. A picture would catch my attention, I'd open up the profile and find bland writing that gave me nothing to work with.

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u/Geno0wl Sep 11 '26

find bland writing that gave me nothing to work with.

Spontaneous girl who likes to travel, hike, and watch the Office!

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u/DeadMoneyDrew Sep 11 '26

Also likes walking on the beach. And her friend told her to try this site so why not?

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u/DangerousTurmeric Sep 11 '26

I'm bisexual and I used online dating to meet women too and I can tell you that around half of people, overall, are too lazy to write a profile.

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u/Polantaris Sep 11 '26

And even if you do write a profile, most people don't read it. It's really fun getting asked basic questions that my profile covered in the first sentence, and it was never in a way that implied they were following up on that line in my profile.

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u/Comfortable-Bread249 Sep 11 '26

It’s the same problem in reverse for men, though. Women who are too lazy to create a legit profile, swipe, or respond with anything beyond an emoji.

I’m done pulling teeth trying to generate even a modicum of engagement. Low effort all around.

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u/yokuyuki Sep 11 '26

I know friends who put keywords to mention in their profile and if it isn't included in the message, they just ignore it.

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u/Grey_0ne Sep 11 '26

Damn... Yeah... I remember seeing the early vestiges of that atmosphere back when I was active. And I remember both myself and literally every woman I dated having to deal with some profound personality disorders before/if we found any success. Crazy to think that not only are the personalities worse, but the apps actively exasperate the issues.

I'm now old enough to tell stories about how "back in my day" dating apps were platforms that merely showed you the single people in your area and left the rest up to you. People actually complained about that back then...

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u/yellow_pterodactyl Sep 11 '26

This is a really great breakdown.

I met more people on the apps in the earlier days but it was post Covid I think that it just degraded. Kept recommending me people who I was like ‘wait. I already said no to this guy because he doesn’t want kids, why did you recommend him to me again???’

2

u/licoricenipple Sep 11 '26

A lot of bi women either set themselves to lesbian mode or use lesbian dating apps because 99% of matches with men are them swiping yes on absolutely everyone to play a numbers game.

But lots of men have figured this out and now set their profile to female and join lesbian dating apps and swipe yes on you anyway knowing some percentage of women there are bi and still playing that numbers game.

Exhausting. Even on a lesbian app you can see >50% totally indiscriminate men copy-pasting their opening line to you.

2

u/Own-Brain9658 Sep 11 '26

I've never read one comment that has summed up such a large swathe of my life so well. Bravo. I have no award to give, so I humbly offer this emoji 🏆

4

u/PacoTaco321 Sep 11 '26

The aim was to make men pay for a better service.

Which I would be fine with, but what they charge is absolutely ridiculous. $19/week for Tinder Gold when I would never pay that amount for a month even.

1

u/redundanthero Sep 11 '26

This is very succinct summary!

1

u/hdycta-weddingcake Sep 11 '26

Thank you for this thoughtful comment

1

u/not-improv Sep 11 '26

Excellent summarization!!

1

u/TheDopeMan_ Sep 11 '26

That and the scams and fake profiles got out of control.

1

u/aerost0rm Sep 11 '26

It doesn’t help that they are mainly under the march umbrella now. Match has pushed all the apps to the same structure, as a few had different procedures, like bumble and women message first.

1

u/sump_daddy Sep 11 '26

Its almost as if something so personal as finding a long term partner you are compatible with and can also trust, shouldn't be a game of 'tap the screen'

1

u/Foxs-In-A-Trenchcoat Sep 11 '26

You forgot the like 20-30% of men on there who are in a relationship already just looking for some side pussy.

1

u/AtmosphereUnited3011 Sep 11 '26

Best description of dating app enshitification

1

u/Hot-Comfort8839 Sep 11 '26

The game is reinventing itself.

1

u/DrDerpberg Sep 11 '26

Yikes.

I Tinder'd over a friend's shoulder in maybe 2015ish and it seemed like fun for a bit until I'd already seen the same frustrating loop 10 times, if it's gotten worse I can't imagine anybody actually meeting anyone on it.

I wonder how much of young people's fucked up views on gender and dating is because of enshittified algorithms making them frustrated with each other.

1

u/09rw Sep 11 '26

I’m not trying to toot my own horn here, just to offer a different perspective. I’m a decently attractive dude: tall, fit, full head of hair, colored eyes.

I’ve only ever tried hinge and I’ve never used anything but the free version of the app between relationships and there never is a shortage of likes/matches.

For me, it’s definitely great to meet women and for me, it works largely as I would expect such an app to work/I can filter women based on what I am looking for.

1

u/CalmTell3090 Sep 11 '26

Well said. Absolutely agree

1

u/B-Train_ATL Sep 11 '26

I am so not paying $30+ per month for all that stuff. It shows about zero proof of working on the free side, so it’s not ever a good advertisement for paying that much.

1

u/augustrem Sep 11 '26

And guys actually defend this strategy of swiping right on everyone. Jesus, so stupid.

1

u/FlipZip69 Sep 11 '26

I am now scared...

This seems pretty accurate though. Can almost apply it offline as well for much of it.

1

u/Effective-Couple-291 Sep 11 '26

This is a frighteningly accurate description.

1

u/Thefrayedends Sep 11 '26

It's so gross, finding a good quality match takes you off the app, getting off the app hurts MAU, so instead the give you low quality matchups so you meet people, talk to people, maybe hook up, but unlikely to find a real partner.

If only the whole damned world was not chasing quarterly profits we could actually match people really well and just accept a 1-6 month user base, instead they try to get you addicted to the ecosystem for years, it's stupid.

1

u/No_Emotion1084 Sep 11 '26

So how do I meet someone now? I am lost. Irl it's not working because I'm socially slow

1

u/JustMyThoughts2525 Sep 11 '26

Yeah my strategy when single was to sign up for bumble premium and just swipe right on every profile without looking. Then over then next week I would review women’s profiles as they matched with me. The ones I liked, I would message back and would ignore the matches I found unattractive.

1

u/lemon_tea Sep 11 '26

They turned dating apps into the club.

1

u/_Big_Bad_Tiddy Sep 11 '26

You are absolutely right! As a woman who is maybe a 7/10, and was only swiping right on the attractive men, I was flooded with 40+ DMs of people trying to meet up. It was very overwhelming. Trying to have small talk with 40 people at once was exhausting and anxiety inducing. In fact, some of them even had the same names and I decided to just unmatch them. After having a solid conversation with several of them, it got to be too much and I just deleted the apps... for a while. I did add them back months later but by then I had a strategy. And that is how I met my now fiancé.

1

u/Thefuzy Sep 11 '26

Can confirm as a man… it was may more efficient to just swipe yes to absolutely everyone without looking at any of them and then only after they had matched bother looking at them.

1

u/Redrose03 Sep 11 '26

You should write a dissertation on that.

1

u/PxcKerz Sep 11 '26

I’m a man and I’ve had numerous hookups initiated by the women I would go on a date with so a lot of it too is that. But yeah a majority of the time, I would get no replies.

although I will say that I’ve had a surprisingly good amount of luck with finding the right girls looking to marry and stuff so ymmv. That said, I dealt w a lot of toxicity, ghosting, 1 girl lied to get out of a date and that 1 actually hurt. So fuck tinder regardless. It’ll destroy your mental health

1

u/rikitikifemi Sep 11 '26

That was a very accurate meta-analysis. Interesting how you captured the short and long of it all.

1

u/nlewis4 Sep 11 '26 edited Sep 11 '26

I have a friend who is fairly attractive and she has TEN THOUSAND LIKES on Tinder. The fact that the number can even go that high is mindblowing

1

u/Comfortable-Bread249 Sep 11 '26

Wow. Accurate and brutal assessment.

1

u/Comfortable_Job44 Sep 11 '26

This is a perfect description. There are the chronic online daters that know exactly how to get people on horrific dates and the newly single people getting terrorized by them… and they end up with terrible opinions of the opposite gender

1

u/colinstalter Sep 11 '26

Ah, capitalism. Destroying your own product's value in pursuit of short term dollars services revenue.

1

u/FTFaffer Sep 11 '26

Interesting. The enshittification just doesn’t end.

1

u/BattleHall Sep 11 '26

What's funny is that it seems like there's huge market opportunity there. Like the upfront and ongoing costs of creating a dating app are relatively trivial. All you have to do is commit to an even playing field and not try to maximally wring as much money as possible from desperate people, and you should still be able to have a profitable business just on basic ad revenue.

1

u/Stock-Soil-8720 Sep 11 '26

Such an accurate read of the last 10 years.

1

u/NotRoryWilliams Sep 11 '26

There is so much crapped stacked onto this as well and the underlying problem is that there's no economic incentive for anyone to make it better. And in fact the behavioral microeconomics of the platform "naturally" push everyone toward worse behaviors, while the companies do absolutely nothing to correct for it.

Given even a small mismatch in numbers between sexes - and in general, dating platforms usually have more men than women - artifacts of the math will tend to skew things to wild extremes. If a platform is 55% male, that is enough of an imbalance for most women to be overwhelmed with "low quality options" while most men are struggling to get noticed.

As soon as this starts to be the case, rational coping strategies make it worse.

When a woman (or attractive man) notices that every right swipe is a match, the rational response is to become more selective before swiping. But, by what criteria? Men on dating apps are often largely indistinguishable and even a well-written profile - which most are not - gives little real information. Are there any simple, objective metrics that a woman can use to simply reduce the number of candidates to sort through? This is how we get the "I won't even bother talking to guys under 6 feet" because it is, mathematically, a really simple way to reduce the sorting labor by 90% right off the bat. So they do that. And then they are still overwhelmed with options so they still only swipe right 10% of the time by the available info, which really comes down to how good looking he is.

This leads to a reality in which men who are below the 90th percentile for looks and/or height are generally just ignored, which they respond to by paying less attention while swiping since it's mostly a waste of time. This worsens the bad experience but also leads to when they do get a date, it's with a woman they don't find attractive who is fairly likely to still have an entitled and picky attitude because it appears she has unlimited choices.

What about those men who are in the top 10% and therefore do get a lot of matches? Well, just like the women for whom every swipe is a match, they also have this "too much effort to sort" problem, but they can deal with it differently. These men have the opportunity to go on dates regularly with women who are "below them" in terms of whatever metrics are really important to them, and these women are to these men entirely interchangeable and disposable. So while most men are trying hard and getting nowhere, a small subset become fuckbois who treat women badly, and despite that the women on apps keep pursuing those guys because that's the rational way to navigate a situation like that. They then have repeated bad experiences with guys who have unlimited options and act accordingly, and go on social media to vent about how men are pigs who only want one thing and won't put effort in.

1

u/Wet_Coaster Sep 11 '26

I also noticed that I would mostly only get matches that nested me after my account lapsed. Extrapolating this to my own experience of not getting replies every even when I put effort into messaging, I realized that my poor response rate was because we were all being used to goose re-subscriptions on lapsed accounts.

1

u/zaxo666 Sep 11 '26

Don't forget the scammers. Women are absolutely inundated with scammers. That's a huge burnout factor.

1

u/Alca_Pwnd Sep 11 '26

It's almost like greed contributes to the enshittification of everything it touches.

1

u/RD_in_Berlin Sep 11 '26

Bravo! Brilliantly said.

1

u/Gyerfry Sep 11 '26

Part of the problem is that men are genuinely overrepresented on these apps, it's not just a matter of them influencing men. The rest of this is true though.

1

u/grio Sep 11 '26

Overly simplistic and hyperbolic.

The nuance is that women are significantly more picky and demanding. Their expectations obviously are not being met because they are unreasonable, so they eventually burn out and quit.

Men who feel they are being exploited after trying and failing multiple times quit using these apps in significant numbers as well over time. Nobody wants to bash their head against the wall without result.

The minority that gets attention and stays is not enough to keep the apps profitable longterm.

1

u/Theseus_The_King Sep 11 '26

I was last meaningfully single in 2023 so I have no direct experience beyond that. I used Hinge in 2020 free and filtering was good enough I got a relationship out of it. In 2023 all your best matches were in rose jail and even when paying filters barely worked, and I met my most recent ex before my current partner irl and I also met current partner irl. I’m seeing my friend’s experience on Hinge and Bumble and I didn’t think it could get even more downhill than 2023 and it somehow did.

All the apps have melded into indistinct pay to play tinder clone swipeslop it seems. There’s no variety, no identity, even Bumble gave up its women message first calling card and Hinge no longer focuses on serious relationships. There are no old school full profile apps like old OKC. And we’ve made flirting irl feel illegal. No wonder there’s a loneliness epidemic, where are you supposed to find someone? Order off Amazon?

1

u/Well_Watered Sep 12 '26

I feel like this was a brilliant explanation that balances the perspectives of both sides.

1

u/tropical_dreams_ Sep 12 '26

Never seen this more accurately described in every aspect and detail summarizing my experience so well. FML

1

u/AltairaMorbius2200CE Sep 12 '26

I wonder how intentionally this happened.

Like, did they enshittify because they were just trying to get men to pay?

Or did they realize that actually making matches happen was bad for business, so they were purposely trying to make it harder to find a match?

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