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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712

u/Grey_0ne Sep 11 '26

All my dating history was online. I met my wife on POF... Since I haven't been in the game since 2012, I'm not really sure what changed on an actual practical level.

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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/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.

6

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/JayGatsby1881 Sep 12 '26

*Rich and 12 inch cock