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/Ragegasm Sep 11 '26 edited Sep 11 '26

Tends to happen when your whole strategy is loot boxing loneliness through a swiping algorithm. I refused to play anymore after that realization. OkCupid circa 2013 was how online dating should have worked.

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u/YoohooCthulhu Sep 11 '26

Basically all my relationships from the late 2000s through 2016 were women I met on OkCupid. It was annoying like any dating site but it was a great way to meet people in my tech-forward city.

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u/dagbrown Sep 11 '26

OKCupid's enshittification took off like a rocket once they were acquired by Match Group.

Match Group's whole business model is failing to match anyone with anyone else, because if they make a successful match, they stop paying for their subscriptions. OKCupid was originally designed to match people as well as possible as quickly as possible, so of course Match Group put a stop to that as soon as possible.

Match Group also owns Tinder, Hinge, Plenty of Fish, The League, Meetic, Azar and assorted others. The ineffectiveness of dating sites is approximately 0% to do with online-dating fatigue and 100% to do with Match Group's greed.

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u/osiris0413 Sep 11 '26

I last used OkCupid in the pre-smartphone era but I feel like anyone who starts with Tinder wouldn't believe what it was like. Nobody paywalled, and the quizzes meaningfully improved your matches and you could check out someone's profile without having to immediately "yes/no" them. And the act of messaging itself meant you had to show meaningful interest to make a connection, I think that little hit of validation on a "match" vs the choice to message someone when it may not be returned changes the calculus of that action in a meaningful way for both parties. I like that the author called that out in the article.