There have been multiple accounts created with the sole purpose of posting advertisement posts or replies containing unsolicited advertising.

Accounts which solely post advertisements, or persistently post them may be terminated.

Meltrax ,

The apps served a purpose. They raised the available pool of possible dates from “who’s in this bar with me right now” to “everyone in a 10 mile radius” or whatever, and everyone is there for the same reason, mostly.

But it also doesn’t have to be all or nothing. It shouldn’t be. Use an app you like and also go to in-person dating events. Just use apps if that’s your speed. Fuck the apps and go out there and meet people at the local cafe, or board game night, or beer league softball, or whatever. It can augment the old ways. It doesn’t have to replace the old ways.

Patches ,

From “who’s in this bar with me right now” to “everyone in the entire world” but mostly Russian spam bots, Only Fans, and ‘Influencers’ 🤮

FYFY

Clbull , (edited )

You forgot ‘South East Asian and African women GPS spoofing their way to matching with Western men with the aim of getting a spousal visa in mind.’

That’s what 65% of my matches on dating apps are. The other 35% are fake accounts using photos stolen from a model’s Instagram or Weibo. Unfortunately the mobile nature of modern dating apps makes it far more difficult to run a reverse image search and weed out those fakes. But generally if I match with someone hot enough to look like a model, I’m automatically suspicious.

This isn’t me having a preference. I just don’t want a long distance relationship with somebody who lives 5000+ miles away. Been there, done that.

I used to date a Japanese lady who came to the UK on a student visa to do a foreign exchange year. Our relationship fell apart the moment we finally closed the gap.

Also, I’ve known ladies who have married foreign spouses and the ordeal they’ve been put through by the Home Office to bring their husbands to the UK. I don’t want to have to surrender years of private chat logs to the government and be interrogated for hours because of their crackdown upon mail order brides.

A_L1FE ,

He got the 110% match rizz

MadBob ,

They’re saying he can’t count on anyone any more.

Clbull , (edited )

I just realized that I fail at basic maths and counted to 110, not 100.

It’s more of a problem with Okcupid than anything else. Match drove that website to the ground once they acquired it.

Customer Support gifted me a month of Premium half a year ago after a really bad experience I had with another user harassing me. I found out that nearly all of the 100+ likes I had on my Okcupid profile were from ladies who didn’t even live on the same continent as me. They’d just switch cities and countries all the time, then disclose where they actually lived in their profile description.

GPS spoofing is incredibly easy to pull off, and despite it literally being a violation of the site’s Community Guidelines, their customer service team really don’t give a shit. Quote:

Also, your profile details such as age, height, location, etc. must be accurate. We restrict searching and showing profiles based on mutual fit for details like age, location, gender, and orientation for a reason: so that you can find a person who is looking for someone just like you. Changing these details to appear in searches that you would not otherwise is not allowed and will result in your profile being banned.

I logged into my account for the first time in about two months. I still see matches I reported that remain unbanned to this day.

THEY HAVE THE CHEEK TO CHARGE £20 - £40 A MONTH FOR PREMIUM.

HawlSera ,

No it isn’t. Those things are nothing but trouble

Clbull , (edited )

Coming from somebody in their early thirties who has had nothing but atrocious luck with women in general, I’ve mentally checked out of dating.

Every dating app is now a carbon-copy of Tinder where you can’t pull a lady unless you look like a fucking Chippendale, are above 5’11" tall, have your own property and are sufficiently wealthy. It also doesn’t help that Match Group hold a virtual monopoly over the market, with Bumble as their only credible competition. They literally profiteer from making the experience as miserable as possible so they can sucker you into paying a £40/month subscription.

Match also put the bare minimum into moderating and policing their apps. The sheer volume of love scammers, fake users and spammers shilling OnlyFans pages is massive, and it feels like they really couldn’t give a shit about enforcing their own rules.

Online dating really is that soul-destroying, and the longer I spend trying to use any app, the less it surprises me that the incel, MGTOW and red pill communities are growing, and that people like Andrew Tate and Sneako have such a huge following despite being such garbage human beings.

At the same time I wish there was a better alternative.

Pxtl ,
@Pxtl@lemmy.ca avatar

The discussion of this same article on Hacker News is shockingly redpilly.

news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38055947

echodot ,

The dating apps would still be useful if they haven’t broken themselves in order to make short-term profit.

If they hadn’t all sold out to the same company who then ruined each one of their purchases that would also help as then there would still be some competition in the market. But sadly it’s now become monolithic and completely pointless

Mereo ,

The problem with dating apps is the commodification of human relationships. The way people use these apps is too superficial. They’re looking for the perfect man or woman, so if there’s something they don’t like or that person has a flaw, they don’t take the time to really get to know them on a deep level. There’s a lot to choose from! FOMO!

Perfection does not exist in this world and we must really try to connect on a deep level. Unfortunately, some people use these apps for window shopping and shallow relationships.

gregorum , (edited )

On the backend, no company could fulfill their promise if a “special sauce” to successful matching that was especially better than anything anyone else had, so they focused on impulse matching that worked best for short-term satisfaction and hookups. This worked for the dynamic of what people expected, and the reviews and word-of-mouth remained generally high— until we all got burned out on meaningless, futile, superficial relationships.

So, what comes next?

obinice ,
@obinice@lemmy.world avatar

7 of 9 just lookin for perfection baby

erg ,

I agree with this but would say it’s just one of the problems.

I always have trouble with the idea that in reality these dating apps can’t want you to be perfectly successful or else you’d never use them again. There’s a real insidiousness there

Krauerking ,

I saw a terrible new dating app that was all about how super incredible you are and how you should only accept true partners who can battle your wits and income level, while it made vague references to coders and crypto.

It’s a website for those antisocial nerds that think themselves superior and anyone that goes on there is always going to be judging every partner as to their closeness to perfect. Anyone on there is a narcissist for sure.

What a terrible reduction of spouse to that. No wonder no one is having kids and people are lonely. That is how the “elite” view themselves and each other. Our society deserves to be burnt to the ground.

ChrisLicht ,

You do understand you’re gonna give this kid a complex based on a single anecdote?

obinice ,
@obinice@lemmy.world avatar

Dating websites were useless, turning them into phone applications just made them even less engaging then they already were.

An extremely tiny percentage of dating website users get anything positive from it. You might as well play a lottery instead.

agressivelyPassive ,

I wouldn’t say that. I know several people in long term relationships that met on Tinder.

Aleric ,

I’m married now but was pretty successful in meeting people through dating apps when I was single for a couple of years. Each and every person I met ended up being a complete shit show, by far the worst dates and one worst relationship of my life. The relationship was with someone who turned out to be an abusive narcissist. Fun.

By contrast, the relationships and dates that came from meeting people in person were the best, I think because they originated from spontaneous mutual interest, plus I could much more easily weed out the creeps.

SCB ,

I just don’t see this. I’ve had lots of success and I’m not a typically attention-grabbing person on a dating app (my first line is about how I’m married).

I have numerous friends who met their long-term partners on dating apps.

TheWaterGod ,
@TheWaterGod@lemmy.ca avatar

I gave up on online dating last year and I won’t be back. If that means I’ll end up dying alone, I’m honestly more comfortable with that idea than suffering though anymore of the bullshit that’s Tinder/Bumble/Hinge/etc. It’s become such a miserable experience for both sides (men and women).

As someone who had used online dating on and off for 10+ years, I can tell you one of the big problems - money and greed. I know it’s always easy to just “blame capitalism”, but I’ve seen first-hand the paradigm shift from an actual useful service (i.e. a way to meet people that you would otherwise not meet) to the blatant greed it’s become. The dating apps are so obviously profiteering off people’s loneliness it’s fucking disgusting. Back before Match bought everyone up, these services used to actually be okay for what they were.

HaggierRapscallier , (edited )

Best to try meet people in the real world. It’s good for the mental state (especially nature and bodies of water), increases chances of meeting somebody, etc.

JoShmoe ,

I guess we’re ignoring the subscriptions and bot accounts. The primary reason I never paid for any of it nor spent longer than a month on any of them.

pete_the_cat ,

I’ve paid for bumble, hinge and tinder multiple times over the past 7 years, all it got me was less money in my bank account.

ICastFist ,
@ICastFist@programming.dev avatar

When the apps suffer turbo enshittification, everybody tires of it fast. Tinder is little more than an ad front for Instagram, over half of every profile’s bio (which is hard to see on purpose, because of how Tinder works) is just @whoever . Tinder may also show a profile you already "Nope"d a second time, same with a profile you give a “Yeah”, effectively wasting a like.

Then there’s the heavy push for users, mainly men, to pay for premium. But wait, there’s premium Gold and premium Platinum! And also stuff you have to buy separately!

Tinder was good back in 2015. It became absolute shit with time. That the majority of other dating apps literally abandoned what set them apart (like OkCupid, which had comprehensive profiles to be filled and ditched it all for the same like/dislike schtick) doesn’t make people trust in them either. “Same shit, less people”.

Not to mention fake profiles and bots, because of course the apps will pretend they have more users than they actually have. How else will desperate men pay for platinum premium?

Paradachshund ,

Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but OKC went down the tubes because it was bought by the same company that owns tinder (match I believe?). They actually own many of the dating apps at this point.

ICastFist ,
@ICastFist@programming.dev avatar

Match Group. Pretty much an evil conglomerate of dating apps.

pete_the_cat ,

Yep, they own like 25 of the major apps. I even tried match.com around 2016, thinking it would be better than the apps since it was the OG, but nope, same shit just without the swiping, and it costs astronomically more.

Snapz ,

“Fell out of love”

Quite a shame how the partner who had a spouse that beat the shit out of them and stole their wallet every day FELL OUT OF LOVE with that spouse…

feedum_sneedson ,

Okay but they’re talking about dating apps here.

Snapz ,

Woosh

nutsack ,

le

ASaltPepper ,

This lines up with the experience of single friends I’ve seen. I wonder how much of it though is that those who are left on the dating market are on there for a reason?

Namely they select for avoidant types who when trouble arises are more likely to embrace singledom

feedum_sneedson ,

I’m anxious attachment style, but latterly maybe do tend towards fully avoidant because I can’t face anymore pain. Not a great position to be in at 35.

Luisp ,

Of course not, most of the dates are still found by going outside

autotldr Bot ,

This is the best summary I could come up with:

(tldr: 7 sentences skipped)

“I’m always in a state of flux.” Lacey’s approach might not suit everyone looking for love, but she is one of a growing number of people rejecting swiping on a screen and taking their dating lives offline.

(tldr: 26 sentences skipped)

Many say the apps feel like work and there is a genuine sense of burnout as people struggle to commit to what is essentially hours of admin a week alongside their day jobs and other responsibilities.

(tldr: 13 sentences skipped)

“You really have to set some standards – people can be so keen to help that they tend to overestimate how good-looking or interesting their mates are, or they try to suggest the only single person they know, no matter how unsuitable – but it has worked quite well.

(tldr: 6 sentences skipped)

The benefit of meeting someone vouched for is also driving Clare, 38, from Bath, to explore her options, after having signed up to numerous dating apps over the years, only to quit after a few months each time.

(tldr: 7 sentences skipped)

She has done slow dating at Shambala festival, with an emphasis on doing exercises that could help to make emotional connections, including questions like, “What are you most proud of in your life?” and “What’s the biggest challenge you’ve overcome?”

(tldr: 12 sentences skipped)

“You have the opportunity to meet heaps of other cute, single people in real life with no stuffy or awkward first-date vibes because if you don’t click with someone, you can just excuse yourself and chat with someone else,” she says.

(tldr: 27 sentences skipped)

The original article contains 2,349 words, the summary contains 269 words. Saved 89%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • [email protected]
  • random
  • lifeLocal
  • goranko
  • All magazines
    •