‘It’s not you, it’s me’ is the gist of college student qualms with dating apps. Hook-up culture declines while young people search for genuine connection.
Match Group deserves to collapse. Online dating has never been fun, but since Match Group bought up nearly every dating app, they’ve all become very homogeneous and outrageously more expensive.
Seriously it’s all just carbon copies of each other.
I doubt the core of this is any social awakening…the platforms are simply unusable due to the amount of scams, bots, and spam.
Also, paid models simply won’t work in this sector. Attractive people simply don’t need the apps.
attractive people don’t need the apps
There’s more to this; attractive people also use the apps not to actually find partners but for entertainment and validation.
These apps are filled with shit like that meaning earnest users must wade through even more trash
I was attempted to be scammed by a catfish or a prostitute on facebook. I kind of felt good for a moment…? Honestly, I dont really trust views and likes enough to connect this with psychological internal validation.
Attractive people simply don’t need the apps.
and funnily enough, attractive people are being “promoted” by the apps. By “promoted” I mean, that people who receive a lot of right-swipes are pushed higher in the stack of appearing to users because if users were seeing not-attractive users, they would ditch the app.
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Probably never should have tried to make money off hook up apps in the first place. When you have a rotten business idea, eventually the house of cards come tumbling down. I’m surprised it took this long.
Investors made bank either way. Same shit with Airbnb. It doesn’t have to be a sustainable business if you can make a shit ton of money in a short amount of time.
So pump n dump has more than one meaning here.
Welcome to capitalism. It may not be the best system…but the oligarchs say it’s the only one we can have (until NeoFeudalism).
Grindr was fine from what I hear. But it had a unique way to succeed. Horny men want horny men right now. It was an evolution of cruising not of dating.
The rest? Yeah I meet people in person for a reason.
thats because men dating men in general is a completely different culture than women dating men or vice versa. A lot of women like to take it slow and are very cautious, but a lot of men are very direct and want instant gratification and are impatient. That’s why an app was so exponential for this type of instant cavaliering gratification culture. This is the stereotype, I know not all gay men are like this…
Yeah and honestly ironically I think such an app could also have success with lesbians if it wasn’t for the fact that it would include a lot of “surprise my boyfriend wants to join/watch”. I know plenty of women who want casual sex with men but decide that the risks aren’t worth rushing in.
And yeah not all or even most gay men are the grindr audience, but their casual sex scene is an enduring part of their culture. And it’s because horny dumbass 21 year old men who are attracted to men can just fuck other horny dumbass 21 year old men.
Though I do think there’s been interesting cultural shifts they’ve developed due to grindr. Namely many have begun employing safety techniques traditionally used by women on dates.
And I’ve noticed that part of the queer backlash against grindr and the like is that it doesn’t build culture or community like the things it replaced. You go to a gay bar, get irresponsibly drunk looking for a casual lay, maybe you find it, maybe you find someone who isn’t your type that you chat with all night, maybe you find friends old or new. I hate that our and their in particular main cultural hub is bars, but that’s something really important for community building that living on the apps will cost you.
Grindr went through a period where it was really shit, but in the last two years or so it has gotten a lot better.
I like how the title implies that the college students have dumped the app because the CEO has stepped down, as if they only kept using it to not hurt the CEO’s feelings.
Many posts in lemmy have confusing titles.
I wonder if posters like OP brainstorm for 10 min like… How can I make the title more confusing?
Edit: sorry to all OPs, I’ve never noticed titles are the same after visiting the article page.
It’s the title on the article.
While this article and post happen to have the same title I have noticed that way too many posts have editorialized titles that aren’t nearly what the article is portraying. Needs to be more rules for these communities that the post title must match the article title.
I took it the exact opposite way. College students aren’t using the app and the CEO was forced out… I’m sorry “stepped down”
Then it should be the other way around “CEO forced to step down as college students aren’t using the app anymore”, the latter caused the former.
Notice how you have to add the "“is forced to” to make even the “reverse” say what you want. I agree that it isnt a great title, but the “as” indicates things happening at the same time, not necessarily the former causing the latter.
Tbh I just wrote it from memory as I’m on my phone: Bumble CEO steps down as college students dump dating apps
And I have to disagree, it definitely is a causality thing in a weird way, sure they happen at the same time-ish but it implies a connection between the former and the latter — the latter being used as a reference point around which the former is explained to have happened.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a shitty title that could be more clear and I can absolutely see how you can infer that conclusion. But the fact that when you reversed it you had to add “is forced to” to drive home the point just kind of proves my point how weak the inference that the former caused the latter is.
But I rewrote it in the comment you just replied to based on the accurate wording 😅
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She’s succeeded by Lidiane Jones, a former CEO of Slack, who’s looking for opportunities to use artificial intelligence in dating app algorithms.
Oh great, just what we needed, app sponsored AI bots to lure people into paying premium
app sponsored AI bots to lure people into paying premium
sorry but what do you mean? Can you please explain?
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still not get it. You imply that these “premium messages” will be messages by AI bot accounts ?
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and what does it prevent them to do the same thing now? In both cases, sooner or later the real users will figure out they are bot accounts. I don’t get how the company will benefit if they have a series of angry users when they realize that the messages were from bots all along? Or are they gonna keep the bar so high that the end users will never realize that they were bot accounts.
The dating apps are just a symptom of the disease, to be completely honest. The hook-up culture isn’t going anywhere, because despite what people say, that’s what continues to happen. Anyone longing for a genuine connection are wasting their time on these apps, especially if you’re guy. People need to work on the impossible standards, on the constant approval-seeking/instant gratification, and set their priorities straight
I’ve found several long term relationships off tinder as a WLW. It seems to work pretty well for me. The system doesn’t seem to be working for guys, and that’s unfortunate. But a lot of the pressure on women to settle for any man has gone away as women have become more self reliant. The whole thing has become far more consensual and less mandatory for survival. That’s going to influence men’s dating success no matter what medium people use to find matches.
My personal experience with these has been even worse than the average, because my demi ass just doesn’t find most of the people on those apps interesting.
After half a year of some activity, I got maybe 2 likes, and 0 matches. Obviously I don’t even know who those people are, because the app doesn’t show me until I pay. Issue is, if I didn’t already swipe on those people, I don’t care who they are anymore.
Ironically, when I checked out the BFF section, I got several pings within a few days
This is ultimately a big part of it, and it’s universal, not just in dating. Most friendships are “friendships of convenience” and the other types of relationships typically progress from there. But in western culture, we don’t have any third places, and so we just plain don’t make friendships of convenience anymore.
If you’re demi how are you judging people based on images?
I obviously I can’t speak for the OP you are questioning but I’m also on that demi spectrum, if you want my two cents.
It’s not that I can’t see that someone is attractive, it’s just that I don’t find them sexually attractive. I’m sure there are a lot of het men that would agree that Timothée Chalamet or Chris Evans are very attractive and handsome men but that doesn’t mean that they want to have sex with them. It’s not like people go around looking at beautiful art or gorgeous sunsets and think “man, I’d really like to fuck that” lol
I believe they also mentioned that they didn’t find them interesting, not that they found them unattractive. I have the same issue. When these apps are set up for looks first no one really bothers to sound overly interesting, they just want to come off as fuckable and not a murder.
That’s pretty much how I’d describe it too. In my own words, I basically just don’t connect to people how someone normally would. Someone would first experience lust, and then build an emotional connection, once they get through the rest, but I don’t really experience any romantic feelings towards a person until that connection had already been built.
Maybe choosing an attractive photo at a beach, with a drink, at the same place as the next 100 girls, would work for someone else, but for me it’s pretty much an instant no. I’m looking for a person to share future experiences with, not a picture that has been purposefully selected to win a popularity contest
I think I might also be demi and I don’t know what to go after with these apps. I try to talk to anyone who doesn’t look like a serial killer but it feels like I’m supposed to make a sexual impression of some kind to get them interested in talking to me. So if it’s an app where you swipe I’m basically swiping yes on everybody and I’m completely rudderless.
There are some dating apps/services that don’t use images until you’ve agreed to like each other but I live in Canada and the nearest other users are either from Europe or South America (the continent) on all of them.
What does WLW mean?
probably Woman Looking for Woman
I was guessing White Lesbian Woman
ye that works too
woudl be great if someone would conduct a proper survey in certain areas and populations that survey peopel who have actually “hooked up” via hook up apps so we can finally set the record straight
I married a smoke show I met on Bumble.
I gotta be real: you’re all doing it wrong.
It’s a sea of people’s assumed personas. Being genuine actually makes you stand out.
Feel like you’re pressured to be or act a certain way in order to get matches? And then you’re sad that they’re of low quality? While you are actively misrepresenting yourselves? Wtf did you think was going to happen?
If you’re approaching it like you’re trying to get a high score, you aren’t going to be yourself, and you and the people you match with are going to be disappointed. Faithfully represent yourself and what you want. Accept you’ll get even less attention than you already are. Get much fewer but higher quality connections.
Every online dating forum’s advice is incredibly terrible, and people failing to realize that they don’t HAVE to treat the platforms as a Skinner Box are what I think the root causes of the decline of online dating.
Which, isn’t to say the industry doesn’t bear most of the responsibility. If people treating your platform as a Skinner box decimates the value of your platform, maybe you shouldn’t go to such great lengths to make your platform such a box.
I married a smoke show I met on Bumble.
I gotta be real: you’re all doing it wrong.
My ex was on bumble and she had over 4000+ likes. She was too anxious to even open the app by the time we had met. I deleted it for her.
You can have the greatest profile in the world as a dude, it just dosent matter statistically speaking if you’re not perceived as attractive/ have shitty photos.
If you married a smokeshow you met off of bumble, you could have probably had the same or better luck in real life. I’m not saying boo hoo poor boys but at the same time most of the guys desperately hoping for a connection on these apps won’t be able to get a date. Guys outnumber women on these apps something like 4 - 1.
The monetization of the apps are no good. I’m not agaisnt online dating but at the same time the status quo is pretty shitty, espcially if you fall into categories of people who are viewed as less desirable on these apps; ie Asian men and Black women.
I can’t stress enough that I understand the mechanics at play. I am a software engineer. It’s literally my job to step back and understand how systems work.
I’m saying my initial failure, and the failure of most users, is choosing to compromise their authenticity for short term gains, if long term connections are your objective.
Look at any dating app forum. They’re all obsessed about min-maxing your profiles. They’ve got repositories of pickup lines. They’re all running under the faulty premise that you want to maximize the number of matches.
That is a great strategy if you are looking for a hookup. That is a great strategy if you’re looking to maximize dopamine hits.
It is an intrinsically self-defeating approach if you’re looking for a steady long term relationship.
If you’re looking for a steady long-term relationship, there are a few factors that have to align, and one of them is you. If you’re not getting matches at all, it’s discouraging.
And my understanding is that the algorithm for apps like Tinder (as opposed to apps with compatibility algorithms, like OkCupid) make it less likely that you’ll be shown to a given person the more that you’ve been swiped left on. That means there’s a good chance you won’t be mutually shown to someone who would be a great match because your profile (including your pictures) isn’t broadly appealing.
When dealing with an app like this, if you have no quality matches, working to improve the appeal of your profile and get more right swipes, even by people you aren’t interested in, is actually your best strategy to get more quality matches.
My personal experience anecdotally confirmed this, though I haven’t used Tinder in over 5 years, so maybe they’ve improved. But back then if I put something in my profile designed to weed out bad matches, I got fewer matches, period - including of the people I wanted to match with. And I’m not talking lines that are generally looked down on, anyway, like “swipe left if X.” Specifying the kind of dating I was looking for meant I got fewer matches from people who were also looking for that.
What worked for me was to figure out how to signal to the people I wanted to match without being unappealing to the people I didn’t, to swipe left on any obvious bad matches, and to try to have organic, authentic conversations with as many matches as I could, even if those conversations didn’t go anywhere, because Tinder rewarded that kind of engagement.
I wish dating apps were more tailored towards longer term connections. It’s hard to meet people, but I don’t want to go on tinder to meet people either.
I sometimes think they might be intentionally steering people away from longer term connections because the core model of app development teams nowadays is constantly driving engagement. A long term connection means (hopefully) no more engagement.
That’s almost precisely their business model.
Get users, retain users, turn users into recurring paying customers.
Dating apps don’t exist to find you connections, they exist to keep you hooked. They’ll give you the bare minimum of opportunities necessary to make you think they’re viable, drag it out as long as possible, pressure you to pay for premium, and if they ever developed a matching system that worked well, they’d bury it to stop half their userbase from marrying each other and uninstalling the apps.
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Yes but why stop to the new adults when you can keep your user base? More growth more money.
That is the end of the reflexion for companies.
For what it’s worth that’s been my experience on Hinge.
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It doesn’t help that these dating apps are all deeply enshittified. The free experience is kind of shitty, and the paid is suspect and expensive.
They could do more to focus on matching by something other than pictures. Shared interests, maybe.
They could do more to deal with bots, scams, and low effort users.
They could stop showing me people that live in Thailand. For some reason tinder likes to show me people that live 8000 miles away. Probably because they’re paying for it, but it makes the app worse for me.
I can’t speak to what college kids are up to these days. I’m old. I’ve never had a lot of luck “just meeting” people in real life, though. I always struggled with figuring out if someone was available and interested. I have several unpleasant memories of asking people out in college that I’d been spending time with, only for them to be like “sorry my boyfriend [you’ve never met and I never mentioned] and I are exclusive”. (Which may have been a lie to let me down gently, I guess.)
Also when you have a deal breaker or two, having that up front is helpful.
I know rejection is scary, but its not reallyna reflection of you rather then a reflection of someones preference. You could be a greek god and still get rejected.
Keep trying, but in the meantime also focus on you. Do what you need to do to love yourself, and then the rest will follow
Were people really using dating apps in college that often? It’s pretty easy to meet people when in a hool when you’re around a bunch of 18 to 22 year olds all the time
Yes can confirm maybe 80% or more of single male friends were on dating apps. I found my wife on tinder.
How wide we talking here?
Fixed.
I found my wife on tinder.
I hope you guys are doing okay now. Infidelity is a hard thing to get past.
They were definitely using Tinder when I was in college
I said it in a different thread.
I think dating apps were an important tool for women to assert control of their dating lives, ten years ago. And I think for the new generation of young women, a total wall between their daily life and dating life, is less necessary.
My two cents.
Why is that wall needed? Can you expand on this more?
You don’t know what I am talking about?
There was a big trend, and it still exists to an extent today, that many woman do not want to be approached at the gym, etc.
I feel men have finally started adapting to how shitty their behavior was, meaning women are relying less on online dating as a way to stop the feeling of daily irl harassment.
How exactly does an app help to stop the feeling of daily irl harassment? Do you seriously believe those problems have now been solved? If so, how did apps bring this about.
Men weren’t keeping women from taking the initiative, so it’s not like these apps gave women a power they previously had no control over. Yes they felt far safer but walking away from these apps just reintroduces that inherent risk.
I’m pretty sure there is about the same amount of shitty behavior, just look at where we are with abortion in the US. One party out of two is mask off sexist against women.
But dating apps cleaned up societies shitty behavior toward women?
That’s not what I said
This all depends if people feel harassed via social media, texts, photos, etc. Its a matter of perspective, for people who have mainly experienced social interaction through social media, then yes the harassment feeling is much higher.
I think it turned a lot of women into players too, because they had incredible control moreso than every before. I remember hearing something about women who go on dates just to eat… lolol
Here’s why your apps are failing. You don’t have proper ratios. When women are outnumbered 2 to 1 that means about 33% of the user base can’t use the app as intended. That’s why you are losing users
There’s nothing they can do about that…
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There’s a lot to be said about it but anyone with a brain will agree to this, and simply this;
Good.
Don’t qualify it. Don’t turn it into yet another stale argument that will invariably link some grifter’s asinine manifesto. Everyone from every side can agree that this is a good thing. Let it be enough.
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This is the best summary I could come up with:
A decline in interest from dating apps’ core demographic is wreaking havoc across the industry, as Bumble’s CEO and founder Whitney Wolfe Herd steps down a day before the company reports earnings, says the Wall Street Journal Monday.
Tinder’s stock plummeted 15% last week after reporting a decline in paying users.
Wolfe Herd, who also cofounded Tinder, started Bumble to create an app where women could have more control by initiating conversations with men to reduce the unwanted and creepy messages that plague dating apps.
She’s succeeded by Lidiane Jones, a former CEO of Slack, who’s looking for opportunities to use artificial intelligence in dating app algorithms.
The resurgence of organic relationships deals a major blow to Bumble, Tinder, Hinge, and other dating apps that have profited off the boom of hook-up culture.
Though the company says this is not the case, frustrations with dating apps have percolated through user bases and many are opting for meeting partners the old-fashioned way.
The original article contains 382 words, the summary contains 161 words. Saved 58%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
How about a fediverse dating service? 😏
But I’m looking for a woman…
There’s plenty of trans women lol
So basically a MTG convention with the expectation that there’d be sex at the end?
short answer: not possible without real moderation by people who are getting paid for that.
Yeah, I was daring my luck, in case someone had enough motivation to implement it technically. With so many good social apps in the fediverse.
If your only tool is a hammer then every problem looks like a nail
Hello there. 👋
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I was just playing around, of course haha
But it would be good to have a way to develop services like this but don’t get corrupted by money so easily
