So, why is this the case? The ultimate goal of online dating apps should be to function as a conduit in creating committed relationships, right? Wrong. The realm of online dating has become a multi-billion dollar industry — an industry that profits primarily off of user addiction, especially by keeping its users single. The way that the industry accomplishes this is twofold, relying on qualities of gamification and what psychologist Barry Schwartz refers to as the “paradox of choice.”
The presence of the choice paradox in online dating is perhaps best understood through the analogy of online shopping. Studies have shown that as shoppers are exposed to more options for potential purchases, they are paradoxically less likely to be satisfied with their ultimate decision. As our brains become inundated with a variety of choices, we often experience choice paralysis: An anxiety-induced state that prevents us from making a resounding decision.
On Tinder, the user’s experience of choice overload has become a frequent occurrence. In the emergence of what some are calling “serial swipers,” many users can be seen displaying strong hesitations to commit to a singular option due to fears of missing out on a potentially better one.
The infiltration of the choice paradox into the realm of relationships is especially dangerous. Unlike the case of online shopping, users aren’t choosing between products, they’re choosing between people. The resulting world of online dating has become a breeding ground for objectification, sexual harassment and insecurity, as choices are increasingly influenced by abundance and appearances rather than genuine compatibility.
The instant gratification offered by each ‘match’ causes the idea of exclusivity to appear unsettling, with many individuals remaining addicted to these apps even in committed relationships. Specifically, 30% of Tinder users are married, and another 12% are in relationships. Because of this, the online dating world has become a hotbed for cheating and noncommittal sex. Users find themselves immersed in an endless, twisted game, where matches and hookups function as points to keep score.
I have a friend, guy in his early 20s, kind of a nerd but overall a good guy, who gave himself a slight makeover and put himself out there on the dating apps. In six months, the only contact he's gotten is scams, and it is definitely a blow to his self esteem.
According to Pew it's 12% of people meet a serious partner/future spouse online
the apps are such shit. probably two thirds of the profiles I see are just women trying to get followers for their instagram. then there's the snapchat in bio scammers, the sex workers with a location 1000 miles away. Plus the godawful gender ratio and it's just a horrible demoralizing experience
I still do it though, I have one (1) semi-regular FWB I met on an app so I guess it's worth it? :/
I still do it though, I have one (1) semi-regular FWB I met on an app so I guess it’s worth it? :/
beats my 0 FWBs so yes it's worth it
So that settles the question for me lol
Why fucking bother with the apps? Pessimists stay winning (we will still complain tho)
I made a new account in 2022, did 1 or 2 dates a month for a bit. Although I have not been trying as hard, I haven't been on a date with a new person since November. I think the new user boost (and paid boosts) are much more powerful than they used to be, which means established accounts get less visibility.
Long-standing paid accounts and users who hadn't recently paid were relegated to the same bucket generally, but I think OKCupid (at that time at least) let users message each other for free so if that's still true it's probably a much better alternative to Tinder which never let you do that as I recall. (edit: actually I wouldn't be shocked if they just hide messages from certain users to other users entirely, as I recall they were literally showing unpaid user profiles to people on the other side of the planet or fabricating likes entirely to get people to pay for it, to the point someone might have "30 likes" within a day of their payment lapsing, renew, and only see one or zero)
I would assume whatever Tinder did is what OKCupid did while I knew someone who worked there since Match owned both by that time. New accounts and newly paid accounts were the only way for men's profiles to be shown to the top 50% of profiles (based on swipes no generated by spam swipers or something to that effect).
IIRC, tinder has never let you message people before matching but once you do there's no restrictions. I've used Google Play credits on a few apps and they're definitely doing what you describe with fake likes. In particular, Tinder shows "18 people liked you" but that number does not go down when I swipe left on someone who liked me (and it plays the "you missed a match" microtransaction thing).
New accounts and newly paid accounts were the only way for men’s profiles to be shown to the top 50% of profiles
holy shit lol
Tinder shows "18 people liked you"
They love to fluff it up by saying "Hey look, 18 people liked you! We know you didn't like any of them, but they liked you so that counts!"
I was on Tinder once and it was awful. Not really for my self esteem, but I was completely addicted to it. Had it gone longer than two months it probably would have done a dent in my self esteem though. I've been wondering if I should set up on Hinge or something like that and I'm worried it will go the same way.
Hinge
Apparently it's owned by Match as well, but I would assume it works marginally better than Tinder. Tinder seems to be the cash cow roulette/online shopping experience that's not intended to generate any matches other than by accident. The other "brands" are just slightly less shitty variants of that. There might be some genuine attempts at matchmaking services (OKCupid pre-Match acquisition) but without the large user base they probably just won't be very effective.
Yeah a friend who uses dating apps quite successfully (over six foot muscular dude in med school) said Hinge was the most personal of the dating apps he used which is why I've been considering it. As kind of the opposite of a six foot muscular doctor-in-training, I probably won't have much luck on Tinder. Not gonna hold my breath for Hinge either but maybe this summer if I can work off the dad bod a little I'll try it.
Women on those dating apps don't bother with the bottom 90% of men. They cluster very heavily towards the top 5-10%, and any man below this threshold will get very little interest. If you're below average then don't even bother, for you dating apps are a total waste of everyone's time.
That has certainly been my average-looking-and-short friend's experience.
That's true, but the good news is even just basic things like clearly being hygenic and clean already puts you above a very good number of men on the site. Any sort of politeness? Boom, another jump right there. A good picture with good angle? Nice, a big leap there too.
You're still likely going to have trouble with the app anyway, but it won't be as bad as the troubles most people have. At the end of the day though, dating apps still suck. Encourage such weird ass pettiness based off first impressions and looks.
This is why I have not even tried. I'm happy enough being single
absolutely not happy but the process of trying to change that is guaranteed emotional self-harm. Might as well buy lotto scratch-offs.
Why doesn’t he try to meet people outside of dating apps then. No one is forced to use dating apps
uhhh years of that not working either almost certainly.
why do people suggest things that people definitely already tried?
Wake up baby.
Time to repost the survey of E and W Germany showing the quality of women's sex lives was significantly better in E Germany.
Well Fidel Castro might have visited east germany a couple of times
Yeah they were influenced by better fuckin', IDK what to tell you
:capitalist-woke: it’s also so gross that capital makes sure there is a dating platform for everyone to feel unfulfilled. It so bonkers to me how they micro-target each social group/subculture/gender/sexuality and still manage to universally fail each group. :capitalist-laugh:
I don't think I'm unattractive (tall, white, young, average physically active dude w/ no muscles bc I dislike the gym) but I very rarely get likes on the apps anymore
Partially my own fault but I haven't dated anyone in 6 months bc at least 95% of conversations are like 1-2 messages then radio silence. Most bios contain no information about things that are important to me like hobbies, and I'm uncomfortable with flirting 🤷♂️
I think hinge is the best one but all of them suck
30% of users being married is absolutely wild to me lmao
Legit, if you have basic hygiene, plain shirts and pants, an OK picture, and aren’t an absolute psychopath, you ARE in the top 5% of men.
cool, I have all of this except understanding how to take a good picture.
maybe you could ask a friend who's good at social media to snap a few pictures of you?
I haven't had a friend IRL for like 14 years :deeper-sadness:
literally nobody to snap a picture of me or even hang out with...
oh no, it's fine. I just don't even know where to begin fixing myself. lol
You're not disproving my point, you know.
Heck, I only said 80%, you've upped that to 95%.
:yea:
It's going to be difficult for any man to be in the top 5% no matter what. That's how percentages work.
as soon as men stop sending casual threats of violence to women that scale would be re-evaluated. dont be so fucking stupid.
The top 5% will always be the top 5%. The bottom 95% will always be there. You can't suddenly put 50% of men into the top 5%. You can re-evaluate all you want and percentages don't change.
Don't call me fucking stupid. What we have here is innumeracy.
We are posting in a forum that is very inclusive but kinda selects for people in the top 5% of geographic and historical literacy. Less than 1% of people can really be said to be like us. We're used to this idea.
Possible for virtually all the children to be above average if there's one child that catastrophically sucks
If you wear just a basic tshirt and pants that are clean thats fine. Be sure they fit you right and youre all good.
And it gets worse if you’re not white. Yeah, it’s just “preferences” that people (not just women) find non-white people less attractive on average. Nothing to do with white supremacy at all.
Women rate 80% of men as below average.
have you met 80% of men?
No.
But I'm certain 80% of men aren't below average. 50% of men are below average.
yeah as a fellow reasonably attractive young white guy, I get next to no likes outside of the first like 24 hours where the app shows your profile to everybody to try to get you hooked.
if you don't pay, you're gonna get nothing from the app, no matter what you look like, bc they just won't show your profile to anybody. insidious and evil, but thankfully we live in the best of all possible worlds, so we know that there's no way these apps could be better
Death to America
i hate flirting too. and had the same frustrations with no one putting their interests in their bio (or even having a bio). i find it helped to start with a genuine, specific compliment abt one of their pictures (obv not a creepy one, and dont make it solely abt their attractiveness) and then start asking abt their interests (what do you do for fun?/whats ur ideal day off?) and talk abt those. hinge is kinda cringe imo, most ppl i saw there were conservative, orange, white women. i met my gf on bumble and next month we celebrate our 1 year!!
30% seems so high lol. I see people I know from real life on dating apps like once a week... Are they not getting caught?
They're a symptom of the unlivable society we live in. It's difficult for atomized individuals to find friends, to say nothing of a life partner.
And as usual, the crutch is to use technology to do matchmaking for you (not unlike how a human matchmaker might have done that in an atomized rural society). But a capitalist society can't even get *that * right, because of course it's also gotta a be an extractive scammy skinner box.
Found the communist bf of my dreams via a search feature on a dating app :shrug-outta-hecks:
Searching "communist" getting mad at the results and checking if the app has a way to filter out revisionists.
It should be part of the questions they ask you before the algorithm sorts everyone, oh are you religious, do you want kids, do you support the 1956 USSR intervention into Hungary, do you like to try new things or stick with a routine, how do you feel about building bunkers...
Captcha where it's a picture of various historic communists and says "Select all squares containing revisionists"
There are dating apps with search?
I've never considered using one but now I'm intrigued, which one is this?
It's fucking wild how you can tell someone this is the case, prove it to them, and they believe you. And then they go back to the same old habits.
Not even necessarily an addiction, just a habit. Get bored, pick up the phone and let the ol' muscle memory pick an app.
the easy method by Allen Carr is abt nicotine addiction but can be used for any addiction. personally, ive suffered from porn addiction in the past and used easypeasymethod.org which is the easy method adapted for porn addiction, someone might have also made an adaptation to address dating apps
I still sometimes feel like I could find a better match and I've been in a relationship for the past 6 months with a loving, healthy, partner.
I don't know if that feeling is due to their lack of political awareness, or if it's because I've spent endless hours over the last decade swiping on an apps like Tinder, Bumble, and Hinge. This post does oddly hits close to home though.
grass always seems greener on the other side. viewing a relationship as something you have to optimize for maximum value takes the meaning out of it. if they arent politically aware enough for you, help them gain class consciousness. if you love them, they make you happy, and you have a healthy relationship then there isnt a problem! the dating apps want you to think theres a problem. you might feel boredom but literally everyone feels that sometimes, you just gotta do something to make things more exciting! take an art class together, find a new place to enjoy nature with them. there are plenty of valid reasons to break up with someone but thinking you can get a "better" partner is dangerous thinking. not ur fault, dating apps are designed to make us think this
I recognize that for sure. It's tough to talk politics with someone who is a generally happy, but mildly unaware, person without coming off like a buzzkill. That's the only hold up for me.
It's like "Hey! You should listen to this really good podcast about how the US has been murdering people all of the world for the last 300 years."
Her: .....mmm....ok maybe
yeah i feel ya. its ridiculously hard to cut through the propaganda. just think of all the stuff you had to unlearn to get to where you are. its not something you do all at once. just try to incorporate radicalizing information in ur conversations and if she expresses interest you can expand on it. the other day my gf said something abt how stealing from corporations is ok but not small businesses and i went into how some small business owners are just as tyrannical as corporate management and how they steal the labor of their workers regardless of the size of their business
Not to get too off track, but I feel like we're having a conversation and I just smoked a bowl:
Get this, she's a small business owner. Right now she contracts some of her invoicing work out to the Phillipines. She's looking to grow her business this year to allow her to have more money/time to travel and that should also allow her focus more on the creative side of her business. What I'm hoping is that I can use this as an opportunity to educate her on what she is actually doing, which is the engaging in the exploitation of the global working class.
Maybe from there, I can try to radicalize her a bit.
oh damn. i kinda assumed she was a prole. but that means educating her is gonna be a lot more of an uphill battle bc imperialism directly benefits her material position. still not impossible, she might just need some reminding that labor in the Philippines is so cheap bc of years of devastation and expropriation by western firms and militaries. also that the ppl she hires are actual ppl who are just trying to survive in a colonized country
idk tho, it sounds like a tough situation, hope it goes well!
The main thought I had would be to have her write down how much she thinks she could expect her business to grow and then have her compare how much her new workers would be getting paid. Then I could ask her if she thinks that it's a fair deal that her workers are adding so much to the business and only getting a fraction.
A good person would say it isn't fair, so I'm hoping she agrees.
Specifically, 30% of Tinder users are married, and another 12% are in relationships.
wow! source is this article, which takes it from a GWI survey.
Our findings were based on an online survey among 95,118 internet users aged 16-64. Drawn from 34 different markets, there were 1,282 adults within this sample who said they had used Tinder in the last month.
chart says UK & USA: 66% single 21% married 9% relationship 4% previously married. different globally.
Wish GWI had bothered to ask whether the respondents were in open relationships or not, this is pretty useless otherwise.
Anyway wrt the article:
The instant gratification offered by each ‘match’ causes the idea of exclusivity to appear unsettling, with many individuals remaining addicted to these apps even in committed relationships.
90% of men who use Tinder - and probably women - know that the little dopamine boost from getting a match is not at all worth the time spent swiping. What you're after is going on a date and you like each other.
Also, frankly, I've "settled" for a partner before and it very predictably ended in heartache. The presented argument against "serial swipers" (is this even a thing?) is practically an argument for settling.
I think this article is backwards. Apps have an incentive to keep you swiping, yes. Are they the reason people are turning to apps to meet partners in the first place? No, I don't think so. Common social spaces have been disappearing for decades. The mall is gone, the church is dwindling (especially for young people, primary Tinder users), social clubs are gone. Who hangs out in a bar to meet people in 2023? To my mind, internet is papering over spaces where genuine social connections used to be, and meetup apps are an expression of that. Bowling Alone thesis is trite at this point but it seems correct.
I think this article is backwards. Apps have an incentive to keep you swiping, yes. Are they the reason people are turning to apps to meet partners in the first place? No, I don’t think so. Common social spaces have been disappearing for decades. The mall is gone, the church is dwindling (especially for young people, primary Tinder users), social clubs are gone. Who hangs out in a bar to meet people in 2023? To my mind, internet is papering over spaces where genuine social connections used to be, and meetup apps are an expression of that. Bowling Alone thesis is trite at this point but it seems correct.
100%. the commons are more closed than ever before, it's not the gamification of the app that is the driver of the problem, it's that the app in itself is a symptom of an underlying contradiction regardless of the actual content of the app. it's why hinge and tinder have the same problem despite wildly different goals and marketing. the medium is the message after all, and the message here is that you're dead inside anyway, so you might as well meet the people that will disappoint you on your phone first rather than having to touch grass to even have a chance at meeting someone.
"finding the one" as a concept is so incompatible with how relationships and love actually work
If your reply is made as a generalized statement in support of polyamory, I'm neutral on the subject. But my intent was to complain about how bi or gay women are fetishized and preyed on by "spicy straight" couples
oh yeah, that too.
swingers can be cool but a lot give predatory vibes
“finding the one” as a concept is so incompatible with how relationships and love actually work
why?
i just think it causes ppl to be too picky and set unrealistic expectations for their relationships
Unlike the case of online shopping, users aren’t choosing between products, they’re choosing between people
:marx: :i-told-you-dog:
I have never used one of these, but been thinking of it. Not really sure how else you are supposed to meet people interested in a relationship. Like, in all of my time spent in bars and shit, I've never seen strangers trying to get to know each other and shit. People come with groups of friends, and hang out with them. The idea of walking up to someone I don't know in a loud-ass bar and like trying to flirt just seems absurd.
I see it happen a lot. I’ve seen people approach and talk to new people at bars, concerts, etc. Mostly platonically
Huh, I wonder if that varies depending on area and/or on what kind of bar, etc.
I typically go to dives and play darts or billiards and those lend themselves to socializing. The smoking area and bar are also places to meet people.
So glad I stopped using that shit. Modern dating is a nightmare and I'd rather be single for the rest of my life than wade back into that nonsense
whew. i thought i was the one that destroyed modern romance by farting so much.
