No matter what you use, it seems they always fail and no one is interested.
Even a free app like duolicious has this problem.
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No, they used to be more or less good - they all had slightly different vibes instead of being the exact same thing with different fonts. Okcupid used to publish a lot of fun data and was kind of a middle ground, Match was known for being for more “serious” daters, and plenty of fish tended to be a little trashier - not that there wasn’t plenty of overlap, that was just kind of the reputations they had. You could pay for things but you could also do just fine with free accounts, and the ads focused on how many people had had success with them.
Now they’re all owned by the same company and it shows, and they’ve decided dumbing the experience down to the most superficial stuff and letting bots and people advertising OF or their MLMs take over is fine. I don’t think any of them are worth the time they take to download at this point.
I remember 10+ years ago using okcupid. It was alright.
Best dating site ever? Myspace.
See the thing about dating sites is the women are guarded, and protective of what they say and do because they’re afraid of any little thing they say being judged as then being slutty.
But on myspace, I would introduce myself by sending a new message, to someone I never talked to before and the message would say “Hi, I’m Rob. Can I put it in your butt?”
And then they’d see my pics, and realize my entire existance is a joke. And they’d reply “Well obviously! When are we getting drinks?”. Her joking obviously, because who would agree to something like that so fast?
And then we WOULD get drinks. And I WOULD put it in her butt…eventually.
But on Tinder, it requires the women to swipe right to create a match. And in their mind, it means they’re actively agreeing to sex in that moment. And that little butterfly effect moment breaks the chain.
They never have that joking intro. They never meet for drinks. They never start dating. They never get vunerable about their biggest fears. They never come home to their house full of bees as clowns wrap their arms around them and drag them into the bees nests. They never get stripped down and have honey lathered all over their naked body. They never have you come in with a chainsaw, decapitate a few dozen clowns, and run with her out of a bee filled house just moments before it explodes, and ride away on a motorcycle as you flee the chasing yakuza, despite being in Ohio. She never feels the adrenaline rush of speeding up a ramp on the motorcycle, and hopping over the tracks of a speeding train, thus stopping the yakuza. Then later at your place, you’re like “oh, sorry, the water is broken. Some house exploded and the whole citys water is shut off now. Which means I can’t serve you a cold glass of water. Just some wine. Like…a LOT of wine. You wanna drink 46 bottles of wine? Also, you can’t take a shower to wash off that honey. I’ll have to lick it off. But you better hurry. There’s fire ants outside, and they sting.”
And after 2 hours of drinking, and licking, she’s now in the mood, and now you’re putting it in her butt, and she’s loving it. Her reservations she previously had about anal were totally false.
And thats what she’s worried about happening if she swipes right. So she swipes left instead. So now YOU are spending Saturday night masturbating with a bottle of honey…
Can you be a bit more clear on what you mean by failing?
I’ve met my girlfriend on Tinder and had some nice dates / hookups because of it. Are 98% of the women not intetested because of my average looks and being overweight? Sure, but it’s the 2% that made wit worthwhile. Tinder was getting more expensive depending on your age back then but I think I would use an app again if I needed to.
I’ve met some people that I would otherwise never have met, made some rich corporation even richer in the process… 🤷
Wait…you paid for tinder?
Yep, wasn’t as overpriced back then though.
Without wanting to sound patronising, dating apps absolutely do work, but it’s the users that make them work. If your profile photos are shit, or your chat is uninteresting or unfunny, you’re not going to succeed.
I’m a middle-aged male divorcee who’d been off and on Tinder for about 4 years, and I’d describe myself as average-looking, but I met a number of women on it. Without the dating apps, my in-person shyness would have prevented me from meeting anyone. They were an absolute godsend for me.
Idk what to tell you. Are you following rules 1 and 2 of online dating cause while I haven’t settled down with a woman yet, I’ve met multiple gfs through tinder and bumble. Some lasted years
Well, think about it.
They profit off their users by either charging them for a service, selling user data, and/or advertisement. If their dating app was very successful and quickly matched users together, they wouldn’t be using the app very long and the company would lose potential profit.
This probably wasn’t the case in the earlier days of the internet but it certainly is now. They want you hooked and coming back every day so they can get maximum profit off you.
Duolicious only asks for donations and it’s algorithm was interesting, too bad the anti-AFK ideology was never enforced
They were “decent” 14 ish years ago. And they worked a fair amount. I know married friends who met on them.
That said the Internet in general has fallen off a cliff with enshitification…
I know people today that still use them and do ok.
“Free” anything is going to be complete shit.
Like anything else in life it takes work, during 8 months I was doing it I spent 10-15 hours on it. And that wasn’t “scrolling” profiles. I was constantly tweaking my profile, looking for was to improve it. Also when I did “match” someone I worked on my greetings, interesting things to say, etc.
I would even keep snippets of texts. (The one I was on had a question/answer part.
Dating is a lot of work for many people.
The first dating apps designed for straight people always had an unbalanced ration of men and women, which appears to have gotten worse over time. Early on a few people I know did find people, dated, and married. They were mostly people who had niche interests for our area and were successfully connecting with people at least a couple hours away who they never would have met in person.
But that was well over a decade ago and I don’t know of anyone having success since those early years.
No, they work
I always wonder about people who claim they don’t work. People say they’re rigged, meh, maybe so, but how rigged can they be?! You get pictures and words, decide if you want to engage. That’s the meat of it, and they’re not fucking with that.
Years ago I logged into Plenty of Fish with a fake woman’s account, looked at the men’s profiles. Jesus fucking Christ. What a bunch of pathetic sad sacks, boring as hell to boot. Don’t start me on the pics.
Went back and rewrote my profile to be funny and interesting, likes came pouring in. I’ve had many, many women over the years message me to say, “Hey! Not looking for a date, but wanted to say your profile is awesome!” Both a bummer and nice to hear. :)
Duolicious? That owl has been busy, I see.
I think they are worse now than they used to be, but they do work for some people. I was always suspicious of the PII gathered so I stayed away from them. Craigslist personals worked back when they existed, and Reddit can work. An important tip: copyedit your SPAG (spelling, punctuation, and grammar) to hell and back before sending a response, since the slightest error WILL hurt your chances.
I remember being shocked in the early 90’s listening to plans for a dating site. The focus was on collecting and selling demographics. Even the private info being collected was driven by what sold to advertisers more than what helped people relate to each other
Yes, dating apps have always been a fraud because making a social connection was always secondary to selling you
Profit is gained by engagement.
Engagement is the opposite of solving the problem.
So an intermediate platform is not a working solution for dating.
Best interests of people looking for other people and the intermediary are in direct contradiction.
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They work sporadically, but you have to fit a few fairly specific archetypes to get a significant amount of matches. There’s more options that you can shoot for beyond hyper-attractive guy but not a lot more.
If you’re a generic man looking to find a generic woman to have a generic relationship with, then the odds are stacked against you for most of them.
Dating apps are SUPER saturated now. Didn’t used to be like that way back in the beginning. OKCupid was cool because it was free and had no limitations. Bumble is one of the better ones these days, as far as I’m concerned.
