“We’re seeing a greater need for authentic human connections”
I’m going to take a wild guess and wager that this is about increasing engagement by increasing the amount of opening moves that are created on the platform.
Dating sites profit by increasing engagement with the platform, not by getting you an “authentic connection” that gets you off the platform and into a healthy relationship.
There’s a reason people are going analog again. They know these sites are just a thirst trap.
Calling it a thirst trap is too innocent. These dating app companies are scum-sucking vampires designed to make most people feel lonely and desperate enough to give them money in perpetuity. People just handed one of the most important and intimate aspects of their lives over to US tech bros, pressured everyone else to do the same, and two whole generations are not just having less sex than their parents, but half of them have never had a long-term relationship as they’re approaching 30.
Why can’t we go back to meeting people on BBS and forums. Shit I met my partner in 2009 on a forum. It was organic and real, no apps, no algorithms just good ol’ fashion php with a dash of flame war.
Or just… talk to people IRL? I met my wife at my apartment complex, and plenty more meet their SOs at a local social event or whatever. Go to meetups for stuff you’re interested in and talk to people. I trust that way more than dating apps that pair you with strangers given a short bio…
Yeah, talking to people sucks, I get it. I’m quite introverted and need to relax after putting myself out there. When I met my wife, we texted for 2-3 days before I had enough social energy to ask her out on a date, even though I was quite interested in her. She’s a little introverted as well, so we’re a good match.
Text is way easier for me, but in-person is way more effective. Most of my friends met their SOs in person at some kind of meetup, whether a DND night, tech meetup, or a dance (not a club, that’s way too loud). Online worked for my brother, but I just don’t see nearly as much success as with in-person meetups, at least among my friends.
Met my first girlfriend on a forum that’s name in english would be masturbation.org, she contacted me. The second one I met on my country’s equivalance of Omegle. The current one I found on Instagram.
Turns out that if you put even a little effort into your first message and for the very least make sure the grammar is on point and save the dickpic for later, she may actually reply back. The bar isn’t very high if you want to stand out. Seeing the kind of messages she gets almost daily really shows how pathetically low effort they are. It’s clear as day that you’re just one of the 50 girls he messaged today.
I feel like I saw somewhere that men message dozens of times more women than vice versa. I get their non-nuanced temptation but you can hardly call a system that encourages one gender to incessantly spam the other ‘engagement’.
I read that men have to send over 110 likes before they get a single response whereas women get 50-60 guys a day messaging them and they act really creepy like sending dick pics.
It’s absolutely true. I’m polyamorous, and various women I’ve dated over the years have shared their dating app situations with me. Not one of them didn’t have 999+ likes and/or a dozen messages from new men on that day alone (depending upon the app).
I prefer apps like Hinge and OKCupid. They allow me to tell more about what I’m about, and I get to learn more about them as well before I attempt to reach out. I’ve had fairly good success with both.
That’s the way it works in real life tho…it’s not the apps fault. Women always have more options than men.
I will never understand this take.
Logically speaking this is simply incorrect.
Not on your phone, though. That’s just ambush after ambush. Statistically, IRL there a higher chance of escape in that analog.
(Hol’ up. What’s a double entendre that’s not sexual called?)
It’s wild to me that anyone would say that sentence and not immediately realize they sound like an emotionless robot. Like damn, who would’ve thought people have a great need for authentic human connections? Not me!
This kinda shit you hear from people so deep in the world of product marketing is sickening and really shows how disconnected from they are from both reality and the point of selling a good product: benefitting people. I guess I’m just glad to see more stories of people ditching dating apps as they continue to become more predatory and less helpful.
Isn’t this the one thing that made it stand out?
Yes, but there is a new CEO, people are leaving the dating apps like crazy now, and they’re probably trying to do some shortsighted BS that will increase engagement now at the expense of eroding the long term health of the product experience.
It’s not changing the default behavior, so it still has it.
Per the article, they’re introducing a new opt-in feature that a woman, enbie, or person looking for same-gender matches can set up - basically a prompt that their matches can reply to.
I think Bumble also used to prevent you from sending multiple messages before getting a reply, but maybe that was a different app… If they still do that in combination with this feature, then I could see this feature continuing to accomplish their mission of empowering women in online dating.
lol right? And wasn’t it for women to have a safer place to online date?
So they’re basically throwing women under the bus for money. Classy.
One thing I’ll say about the old model was that out of all the dating apps, Bumble was the only one where every woman who I met or even just messaged with could hold a conversation. That one requirement of them reaching out first set the bar, and I knew they were making the choice to speak to me out of all the other guys they were drowning in. I ended up with more dates through Bumble than any other app, and even made great friends with some people I didn’t romantically click with. Online dating is awful, or was for me, but Bumble was the least awful one of the bunch. The new model sounds not so great.
I met my fiancée on Bumble 4 years ago, but I also created this from my experience on the app:
Sorry to embarrass you OP but it’s actually spelled “hay.” “Hey,” is an informal greeting.
really? I haven’t used Bumble myself but I’ve heard stories of guys with inboxes full of women just saying “hi”
Women hold conversations on every app? This feels like an extremely misogynistic take. I’ve literally never had a problem with women not being able to hold a conversation, like, some do and some don’t. It’s just an app and you aren’t entitled to people’s time.
Have fun complaining about women for not responding to your almost-certainly rancid-ass vibes lmao
Men learn jokes and pickup lines to impress girls
You: That’s mysogynistic
Women have to do the same
You: That’s mysogynistic
You know I’ve never, or at least very rarely, used pick up lines or jokes to initiate conversations on dating apps and it’s been fine? It’s kind of the worst way to start an actual conversation IMHO but you do you. I never once mentioned jokes or pick up lines and it’s weird you brought it up lol
Ha big doenvotes from the incel faction.
It’s always so funny when people push these obvious self tells, like yeah you’re not going to be a good match with everyone so a lot of conversations die but as soon as someone starts blaming an entire gender for not being able to hold a conversation its a pretty clear sign they’re the problem.
So… tinder? Every other dating app?
I think we should get a blind match dating app, where we emphasize on the content and not on the visuals. You just add some information about what kind of a person you are, what you are looking for, etc. and after you match and exchange some messages, you can open the pictures.
But dating apps are turning into those cheap e-commerce sites where everyone judges the items by the packaging and no one actually cares about the content. And mind you in a lot of cases the pictures of the packaging are highly exaggerated or from a couple of years, from better times. And you know, no matter how shiny this package is, there would be a day you will need to throw it in the trash and you will need to decide whether to throw the product along or only the package.
Excuse my metaphors.
I can’t imagine something more awkward than having to explicitly deny someone based on looks after having a good conversation.
What, never been catfished before? Had plenty of women do this to me on apps. All their pictures show one person, then they show up as a person and a half. After the date I just tell them “thanks but no thanks, you catfished me.”
No I’ve never been catfished before. My “type” is queer/weird though, I would never blindly swipe right on the stereotypically attractive straight woman.
How has this happened multiple times?? Are you actually being catfished or are you just talking about people who look fatter than you’d like in person?
I have an inkling that would result in people speedrunning all the stuff up until they can see what someone looks like…
Looks do matter, and everyone has different preferences.
The problem isn’t that people are judging people based on only their looks, it’s that these companies have tuned their matching algorithms to match people who enjoy each others appearance, and specifically don’t like each other as people.
In reality, for a satisfying relationship you need both. It’s really hard to be more than friends with someone that physically repulses you, and it’s really hard to be more than friends with benefits with someone you don’t like as a person.
By specifically tuning their system to only give you one, and never the other, they keep people in the grind. You might be pretty happy using these apps for hookups, but even there the algorithm will actively be working against you stumbling onto someone you might wanna meet more than once, because they want you back to swiping for the next person asap.
The fact remains that the matchmaking industry is doomed to be toxic in a capitalist system, because actually being good at it, also means getting rid of your customers.
I’ve met several partners off the internet through means where images were not involved, but it was clearly geared towards dating still (mainly reddit, if you would believe it). Some like to get the images out of the way early, others talk for weeks before that becomes an issue. There’s still some that then drop out (I’m not the most attractive lad to ever be a lad, plus preferences exist, as you say) but others worked out great.
My strengths don’t lie in my style or looks, so dating apps are basically useless to me, yet I have no trouble in attracting partners in circumstances where my personality is a bit more in focus.
I think there’s a space for apps like those for sure. Since there’s plenty where you can go purely or predominantly by looks, no one has to go for an app where that is the case.
My two best and longest (multi-year) relationships were on the Internet in places where I didn’t know anything about looks of my partners.
With one of them, I said I love her before I first saw her. And I’m not the kind of person to take such words lightly.
But yes, you have a point about retaining audience here.
You absolutely can love someone because of who they are alone. And if you genuinely, truly, can “get it up for anyone”, then great. Or maybe you don’t have a need for that stuff in your relationships in the first place.
But as someone who is borderline haphephobic (the fear of touch), yet also absolutely have a psychological and physiological need for physical intimacy, loving someone as a person is not enough to automatically mean I’m also going to feel something physical.
It doesn’t matter how strongly I feel about who they are. If I don’t want to touch their body, no amount of wishing I wanted to, changes that.
And personally, I do need to want that.
You should take a look at blindmate. It does exactly what you imagined. You just upload some Fotos, Friends of yours answer some questions about you and swipe for you. If you have a match you write a little bit and after every other message you unlock a bit more on the others profile. I don’t know if it’s currently available outside of Germany.
I think we should get a blind match dating app, where we emphasize on the content and not on the visuals. You just add some information about what kind of a person you are, what you are looking for, etc. and after you match…
And it’s only the morning after that you’re allowed to turn the lights on.
