this post was submitted on 06 Nov 2023
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‘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.

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[–] Geek_King 181 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Potatos_are_not_friends 41 points 1 year ago

Seriously it's all just carbon copies of each other.

[–] chakan2 131 points 1 year ago (3 children)

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.

[–] Fades 61 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago

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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[–] [email protected] 124 points 1 year ago (3 children)

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.

[–] deleted 31 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago

It's the title on the article.

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[–] Salamendacious 19 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

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"

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (6 children)

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.

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[–] NocturnalMorning 95 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 66 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.

[–] ElectroNeutrino 18 points 1 year ago

So pump n dump has more than one meaning here.

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[–] captainlezbian 22 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.

[–] Pregnenolone 12 points 1 year ago

Grindr went through a period where it was really shit, but in the last two years or so it has gotten a lot better.

[–] [email protected] 84 points 1 year ago (12 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 68 points 1 year ago (9 children)

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.

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[–] dinckelman 43 points 1 year ago (10 children)

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

[–] girltwink 32 points 1 year ago (5 children)

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.

[–] dinckelman 13 points 1 year ago (5 children)

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

[–] girltwink 24 points 1 year ago

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.

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[–] [email protected] 40 points 1 year ago (3 children)

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.

[–] Salamendacious 35 points 1 year ago (3 children)

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.

[–] Icaria 12 points 1 year ago

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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[–] dangblingus 32 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I remember back in the day if people found out you were on a dating website, you were basically totally ostracized. Then people realized, well shit, if I'm going to be ostracized for looking for love online, I might as well do it on the free website (POF). But POF basically became the "drug addict and single mom machine". Then dating apps came out and it became trendy and cool because you didn't have to actually connect with anyone and you could be aloof and detached and have NSA sex with strangers. Now everyone hates dating apps again. Normalize talking to people about real things in public!

[–] Fungah 16 points 1 year ago

I'm not sure if this applies where you are but since covid it is HARD to talk to people irl. I'm chatty and will strike up conversations everywhere I go. Before covid most people engaged. Since they look at me like I'm grow>ng a second head. Dating apps have always worked well for me though. Damn well.

[–] Salamendacious 12 points 1 year ago (5 children)

I remember people would lie about how they met because they didn't want to say they met online. Oh how the times have been-a-changing

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago

Yeah wtf with this "it's not you, it's me." It's 100 fucking percent them.

I've been on and off dating sites for over a decade. I watched them all turn to complete shit because Tinder got successful with the swipe only b.s and Business Educated People said "oooo, money! Let's just completely copy that and even remove useful features we once had to keep people stuck on the sites longer!" and they've completely failed at, or don't care to, address the bot/scammer problem.

Fuck, POF turned into fucking TWITCH for christs sake... They have a streaming function now where people specifically state they are not looking for anything they're just there to stream and take peoples money...

[–] LotrOrc 31 points 1 year ago (3 children)

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

[–] Shanedino 21 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Yes can confirm maybe 80% or more of single male friends were on dating apps. I found my wife on tinder.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago

I found my wife on tinder.

I hope you guys are doing okay now. Infidelity is a hard thing to get past.

[–] slumberlust 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)
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[–] zepheriths 28 points 1 year ago (3 children)

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

[–] elbarto777 21 points 1 year ago

2 to 1? Lol! I bet it's more like 7 to 1.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

There's nothing they can do about that...

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Why is that wall needed? Can you expand on this more?

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Have they tried not making a shit app, that actually seems purposely designed to not achieve its stated goals? Just a thought.

How about not locking all the actual useful features behind a paywall. If people actually get dates they will be prepared to pay for more premium features but they actually have to get dates to begin with.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] nutsack 14 points 1 year ago

how are you supposed to connect with anyone if you don't have an app that makes no sense

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (7 children)

How about a fediverse dating service? 😏

[–] [email protected] 47 points 1 year ago (1 children)

But I'm looking for a woman...

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago (1 children)

So basically a MTG convention with the expectation that there'd be sex at the end?

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

short answer: not possible without real moderation by people who are getting paid for that.

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