this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2024
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Online dating industry in crisis as shares fall and nearly half of all users report negative experiences on the apps

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[–] abigscaryhobo 230 points 4 months ago (8 children)

As a guy, these apps suck. I've met a few people on them, but it's very obvious that they are deliberately hiding matches and people that are your type behind a paywall. It's not in their best interest to show you people that have the same interests as you, it's better if they bundle them all up and slap a big fat price tag on the front.

People are starting to realize these apps aren't about hooking up or making connections, they're about squeezing desperate people looking for love into giving money for the promise of finding it.

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[–] Chessmasterrex 104 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (5 children)

Get hardly anyone to notice me on okcupid, so I cancel my subscription, and within a day or two after it lapsed, I get 25 people interested in me, but I can't see their profile unless I pay, so I resubscribe only to see they're all in the Philippines and Africa. Then it's back to getting nothing. It seems to me that okcupid baited me into buying a subscription and I fell for it. The whole service is a scam.

[–] irotsoma 29 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Yeah, all of the Match.com owned services have done that for ages. Okcupid used to be truly a unique service, but it got transformed into another match.com zombie. Yay for late capitalism consolidation efficiency, or something...

[–] [email protected] 15 points 4 months ago

Had it happen to me too. They'll refund you for this. Just be polite when asking for it.

My review on the Play Store: “Premium is a scam. Hides likes which come from all over the world (clickfarms?) even though I set my radius to 5 km. But of course they only show you the fake likes (all of them) after one pays for premium.”

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[–] hate2bme 75 points 4 months ago (7 children)

I always have great conversations with girls on apps. Then when we set up a date I get ghosted the day of. The one time the date actually would have happened the girl was a LOT larger than her pics. And I have no problem with dating a bigger girl but I do have a problem with liars. Never again.

[–] rehydrate5503 48 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Similar situation here. Lots of ghosting, or unmatching the day of a scheduled date. Had two dates in the last few months of using the apps. First woman was about 15 years older than her pics. Not unattractive by any means, but felt lied to from the get go. The other, let’s just say she had some work done after most recent pics, and the surgeon shouldn’t be practicing.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 4 months ago

Maybe he was practicing on her

[–] IphtashuFitz 15 points 4 months ago (2 children)

My wife and I met through eHarmony about 15 years ago now, and have been happily married over 10 now. Prior to meeting her I’d tried a handful of other dating apps but never had any luck. I had very similar stories about ghosting, unmatching, etc.

I have no idea if eHarmony still works the way it used to, but back when I met my wife it was fairly different from the likes of Match.com, Tinder, etc. When setting up your profile you had to answer a bunch of fairly specific questions that covered everything from if you were looking for casual dates, long term, marriage, if you have/want kid, etc. to things like activities you enjoy to how important things like family, religion, career, etc. are to you.

When they show you a potential match you get to see how they answered those questions along with a more open profile. If both of you indicate interest in communicating with each other then you’re first led through some rounds of guided communication to begin with. As I recall you would both pick 3 or 4 multiple choice questions from a list of 30 or so to ask the other person, and they would do the same. After you both answered those questions then you would do the same with more open-ended questions and so on. Only after a few rounds of that would you be able to chat/email with the other person.

What I realized while using eHarmony is that it kind of forced you to invest time & some conscious effort to communicate with potential matches. That resulted in more of them being open to proceed further. I went on dates with a few women I met on eHarmony before I met my wife.

As I said before I have no idea if eHarmony still operates this way or not. That’s how they did things 15 years ago and it could have changed a lot since then.

[–] Dkarma 23 points 4 months ago (3 children)

From what I hear 15 years ago online dating is wildly different than today.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 months ago (1 children)

15 years ago the first iPhone came out. Probably related.

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[–] derf82 62 points 4 months ago

Another thing MBAs have destroyed as they try to slightly increase profits.

[–] [email protected] 57 points 4 months ago (7 children)

Good, maybe politely* asking people out in public spaces other than "the fucking bar" will become acceptable again rather than creepy.

*To clarify, I mean stuff like "I think you look cool, wanna grab some coffee?" not like "Ay lemme taste the inside of your butthole gurl."

[–] Dkarma 47 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Aww man, throwing shade on my best lines, bruh

[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Lmao it seems 5 people agree with you. Sorry butthole tasters, I didn't mean to say I don't count myself amongst your ranks, as I most assuredly do. I only mean to say that leading with it is probably not the least creepy move one could pull in a grocery store.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

"Ay lemme taste the inside of your butthole gurl."

🥵 I think I need a cold shower now

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 months ago (4 children)

Maybe women like not having men randomly coming up to them trying to express interest and pursue a date, and not having to deal with the fear of what they may do if rejected?

IDK I'm not a woman.

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[–] pastabatman 48 points 4 months ago (5 children)

I don't mind the concept of dating apps, but nearly all of the useful features are paywalled. I also wouldn't mind paying a few bucks for a service I find useful, but the prices are outrageous.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 4 months ago (1 children)

That’s really key. They might have 10 times the subscribers if they charged a quarter as much.

[–] pastabatman 11 points 4 months ago

Right? There's no way it costs more money to run Tinder than Netflix, and Netflix is profitable at like $15 per month.

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[–] mlg 38 points 4 months ago (3 children)

I remember that one dude they interviewed like 10 year ago who basically made his own algorithm to find the perfect match on I think several dating apps including Tinder.

It would also tell him a ton of information about each person from web scraping other profiles and stuff.

He said he got about 200 dates that all went really well because he knew everything about the person, and the algorithm would sift through thousands at a time to match someone he wanted.

After all that, he still never committed to anyone, eventually stopped his scripted thing, deleted all his dating app profiles, and met his future wife months later IRL by complete chance lol.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 4 months ago (2 children)

His description of how his analysis of the OKCupid questions discovered that there were 7 discrete cluster of personality that it would put you in was awesome.

He then make three profiles. One for each of the clusters he felt he was most like, but the profiles targeted the groups very specifically and so his matches started climbing like crazy.

After going on many many dates, he dropped two of the profiles because he found that he didn't click with the women that they matched with.

The description of going on two dates to the same location in the same day with different women because ran out of novel date locations was hilarious.

Data science nerd out played a data driven system.

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 4 months ago (2 children)

These apps all monetize emotions. Of course they're going to be terrible. Modern SAAS business models suck.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 4 months ago (3 children)

EaaS. Emotions as a service.

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 4 months ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 30 points 4 months ago

Met my fiance on a dating app, but I think they really peaked in the pandemic for the reasons the article stated that nobody had anywhere else to go.

Now it's likely just filters for people who spend the time cultivating a social presence elsewhere.

[–] garretble 26 points 4 months ago (3 children)

These apps are a service, and as such - in theory - it’s not out of the question to ask for some sort of payment.

HOWEVER, the price they ask is so damned high it’s not worth it.

I think Tinder wants $35/m to let you “see your likes” (the people who have swiped right on you), and as far as I know that’s basically the only way to ever see them because just using the app regularly they never seem to show up. I think I’ve had 40 Likes in a queue for about a year because they just never show up in day to day usage. I assume it’s all bot profiles from other countries at this point.

[–] Havald 17 points 4 months ago

It's all people outside of your search parameters that's why they never show up. So basically it's people you're not interested in anyways and it's not worth paying them money to find that out.

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 4 months ago (11 children)

There should be something like non-profit dating platforms. Just like Lemmy.

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 4 months ago (7 children)

Can we fix dating already and stop trying to make it a business?

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[–] Snapz 21 points 4 months ago

An already shit thing that has been massively enshittified, "NOBODY WANTS TO DATE ANYMORE!!!!???"

[–] [email protected] 18 points 4 months ago

Met my now wife on these when they first came out. It was challenging back then. Can't imagine how much they've enshittified it by now.

[–] snekerpimp 15 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

Never met anyone good off those apps. Now Craigslist, I have met friends for life.

[–] [email protected] 44 points 4 months ago

Now Craigslist, I have met friends for life.

Or at least the rest of it.

[–] ickplant 13 points 4 months ago

I met my husband of 8.5 years on Craigslist Casual Encounters. Those were the times.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 4 months ago (3 children)

Bumble is stupid. The core design of the app forces you to check it every 24 hours or less or you'll lost people you matched with.

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[–] cmbabul 13 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Historically I’ve had a lot of success and met some really great women, even had awesome relationships with a few, but things changed at some point after Covid. I barely see anyone that isn’t almost the exact opposite of what I look for and thats alongside the litany of notifications to buy something

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[–] lath 11 points 4 months ago (4 children)

The solution is obviously more AI!

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[–] FlyingSquid 10 points 4 months ago (10 children)

I've never used one of those apps, but the risk of being defrauded or, worse, assaulted, would be way too high for me to take that sort of chance.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I can't imagine how unpleasant I would feel if I was defrauded or harmed because of using a dating website. I'm going to call that 'appalling', although that's too weak a word.

I'm so happy that I met my wife through circumstance and chance and we just love each other and that's it.

[–] FlyingSquid 11 points 4 months ago

I got married before smartphones were a thing. I'm just lucky my wife loves me even though I'm an idiot.

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[–] IAmNotACat 9 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Why did they all go for the swipe model? That vastly reduced the size of their customer market while splitting that reduced market across several apps.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 4 months ago

Well Match saw the success of Tinder so they switched a lot of their apps to do the same. Then they bought Tinder and filled it with ads and enshittified it. Then people flocked to other apps because the old ones were shit. Then Match bought those too and made them shitty too worth swiping and ads. There have been no stellar new apps so people are avoiding them. Eventually there will be a cool new dating app that people will flock to that Match will buy and not learn anything from the catalogue of apps their strategy has killed and they will make that one shitty too.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Right? Even OKCupid ditched their highly successful model in favor of swiping.

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