I think we should make dating apps even worse, and just let humanity die out naturally.
I bet that the Pandas would step in and keep us going.
:D
I am forklift certified. I do not need this.
I’d hate to be the one to say this, but that’s not what people mean by “picking up girls.”
I still remember when bumble had to change their entire premise and business model because as it turns out women are worse at starting conversations than men lmao.
I wholeheartedly believe that the Internet and smart phones have been the biggest double edge swords in human history. We have the entire globes collected knowledge at our fingertips with the ability to connect with any other person on the planet instantly and it has caused the largest shift in loneliness and depression ever.
Humans simply are not wired for social media and the Internet. Seeing every single person you know posting themselves beautiful and dressed up doing the coolest things 24/7 will make anyone feel ugly and like they aren’t doing anything with their lives. It takes real focused effort to remember that people (generally) only post when they are doing something special and what you don’t see are the days or weeks between posts that show they live the same boring life you live.
I’m ranting for no reason. I think when we lost in person social gatherings as the primary method of meeting new people is when society kicked that concrete block off the cliff. Right now we are just waiting for the rope to snap taught and drag us all into the abyss.
Humans simply are not wired for social media and the Internet. Seeing every single person you know posting themselves beautiful and dressed up doing the coolest things 24/7 will make anyone feel ugly and like they aren’t doing anything with their lives. It takes real focused effort to remember that people (generally) only post when they are doing something special and what you don’t see are the days or weeks between posts that show they live the same boring life you live.
I’ve never seen a friend post on social media about something and then felt sad. I’ve instead thought “That looks awesome! Good for them! I can’t wait to do something like that too, I’m inspired!”
I think when we lost in person social gatherings as the primary method of meeting new people
This is something only chronically online people say. Most people form almost all of their relationships offline. This is still extremely true of platonic relationships. Online dating has increased in popularity, but mostly this is among people with niche tastes or in remote locations, where finding a match is more difficult due to the rarity of finding potential partners in real life. Tons of people still date primarily via their social circle or community gatherings, and most people use a mix of all their options.
This is something only chronically online people say. Most people form almost all of their relationships offline. This is still extremely true of platonic relationships.
Where are you meeting these people, magic real life wizard?
Of the 5 I currently have in my roster, 2 came from online, 2 were friends of friends, 1 I introduced myself to at a rock climbing crag.
I also seek out partners at my job, at the climbing gym, at various meetups like for acroyoga or fire spinning or pickup ultimate Frisbee, at social bars or concerts or festivals, or just when I’m walking around in the park near my house. Importantly, I’m not just going up to every attractive woman I see and saying “nice tits, wanna bang?” - even though this is my truth in my heart of hearts. Instead what I do is show up, have fun, meet people, joke around, and just be a normal person. But then if someone is cute, I’ll do a little eyebrow wiggle or some shit during a break in the conversation, and if she eyebrow wiggles back, I escalate - like by tickling the back of her elbow or telling her that she’s, like, literally the worst why am I even talking to her. And then at the end of the night I say “hey, I think you’re cute - wanna hang out alone sometime and maybe do some smoochin’?” And then she says yes or no, I give her a high five either way, and I’m on my merry way.
Edit: I’ll point out that the number of partners I have from online is mostly because I have a good profile, so getting matches is pretty easy for me. Most people don’t have as high of a sex drive as me, and so won’t want to put in the effort. Going through social networks (real life social networks) or social hobbies is far more likely to net you compatible partners, since the choices you make in these arenas are likely to attract people with similar values and dispositions.
Well, that was a lot more than I bargained for. Also, gross.

Given who runs “online”, that’s kind of worrying.
Every starting conversation on Bumble was like:
“Hey”
A couple times I asked people directly if that opener worked for them.
One of them said, “I used to write more thoughtful first messages, but I didn’t get good results so I don’t bother anymore.” I told her that writing a bad opener is likely turning away whole classes of people, likely the more thoughtful and interesting ones, but she didn’t care. I said we weren’t a good match and moved on.
Another one said, “But you responded so it worked!”. Her profile was also largely blank. I said yeah, but it didn’t make me want to date you. It was a bad first impression that made me think you’re a half-asser. Rude, I know. The conversation ended shortly after.
I think communication is a skill that requires practice and feedback. Writing messages on dating apps is a more specialized form of that skill. I have years of practice now (sad, but here we are). A 30 year old woman downloading bumble for the first time, asked to write first messages? That’s kind of like putting someone on the baseball field who’s never played before. They probably know most of the rules intellectually, and in other parts of life they’ve done all the little pieces like throwing, running, and catching, but doing it all together at the right time? Not likely to go well at first.
If that happend, it triggered me so hard. Its like the insanest thing ever. Why are you even on bumble then.
Why are you expecting conversations to be otherworldly?
How many conversations in real life with people you like start with something akin to “hey”? I’m gunna bet most but I suppose I could be wrong.
There is a whole universe of possibilities between “hey” and a conversation so good it is otherworldly.
Most of these apps, the user has a profile. If they’re not fucking it up, the profile has topics to talk about.
“Hey! Your profile says you love the mets. Do you go to a lot of games? I used to go with my pop, but he just watches the game on TV now” isn’t stellar but it’s significantly better.
If the other person responds with “Nah [end of communication]” then they’re doing a bad job. I’d see that all the time and it drove me crazy.
You both seem to ignore the fact that conversation is two way and that conversations from nothing ie. Small talk is extremely off-putting.
How am I ignoring that conversation is two way? I specifically mentioned it’s a bad job when one person engages and the other half-asses it with one word responses.
I don’t see what small talk being off-putting has to do with anything. I don’t know if I even consider talking about your interests small talk, but okay. How else do you expect it to work?
We just agreed that isn’t half assing it, it’s a normal introduction.
Polite and informal conversation with no functional purpose.
It’s relevant because that’s all small talk bro, what you’re describing is small talk. It’s worthless and mostly annoying.
A confounding issue is the apps themselves have gotten worse over time. Like, old okcupid you could search. You could type in like “final fantasy” or “the Mets” and find people who liked those things enough to put them on their profile.
Now you’re limited to whatever the app decides to give you. Well, the app doesn’t want you to leave so that incentive doesn’t line up.
A lot of the more popular ones, okcupid included, all got bought up by Match Group and almost immediately started trending anti-consumer in their updates or removal of features. They want you paying, they don’t give a shit about success.
100%. Match group should be broken up.
It’s an especially insidious type of monopoly to me because it deals with relationships, they can manipulate millions of people, affecting the creation of their families and kids.
Close, they actively fight success. Legally obligated to, even. It’s their fiduciary responsibility to keep you using the app.
That’s not really how that works.
I’d love for you to be right. Please elaborate.
You don’t have a fiduciary responsibility to maximize profit, or anything like that. You have a responsibility to act in accordance to company rules and guidelines, and to act in the company’s interest, not your own.
There is no requirement to burn to company down to maximize short-term profits, like some people think. That’s usually at the expense of long-term profits anyway, so it could be better for profits to do something better for the customer.
You’re only required to act “ethically” and keep the company’s interests above your own.
If the company has a goal to make more money every year, then you can justify a lot of actions in that pursuit. And once they have a monopoly you kinda don’t have many options, so they can push more.
Saying they have a responsibility to keep you on the app may sound silly, but app user churn is most likely measured and has some goal around it. And if a goal is set around that churn then they very much have an obligation to keep you on there as long as possible.
You also had decent profiles where you could write more texts about you. That could give you an idea of who that person is. There is a difference between “Tea or Coffee? - Tea.” and “Tea or Coffee? - I like green teas but also some black teas like assam. I sometimes bake scones to eat with the tea.” A lit of modern apps don’t even give you the option to show your personality more.
I met my husband on Plenty of Fish 7/8 years ago. This baffles me, they don’t let you type your own content to show your personality? How are you supposed to get a feel for someone then?
OkCupid used to actually work rather well at finding compatible people who were actually honest about what they were looking for.
Then it got bigger, got acquired, and the matching model of the whole industry was intentionally modified to be more monetizable, and to keep giving matches that are close, but not close enough to be truely long term compatible.
You aren’t using the app/website anymore if it works and gets you a successful long term match.
You are using the app for a longer time if you keep getting close but just missing the mark.
…
Do people not think their dating app is tracking… how many matches and text exchanges they have?
How much time elapses between you matching, chatting, leaving… and then going back to swiping?
And then multidimensional matrix comparing that to every other definable variable about you?
Including whether or not you say you’re looking for something long term, or serious… but you actually keep cycling through people?
These algos, these things… they know exactly to what extent you lie to yourself and others, and they weaponize that to keep people in a sort of optimal (for the app, not you), constant disappointment loop.
…
Everything digital is now way beyond ‘if its free, you are the product’.
The model is now entirely attention, addiction based, and manipulating your emotions in as close to real time as possible is absolutely integral to all this.
People forget that over a decade ago, Zuckerberg said his dream was to be able to predict with high accuracy what any given Facebook user would post next.
Nearly a decade ago, Netflix CEO or some such stated ‘our primary competitor is sleep’.
People largely do not realize the extent to which these corpo fucks have been running highly precise and targeted manipulation of every aspect of human behavior… all to drive goddamn ad revenue and market share, ie, entrench themselves as institutions the modern world is no longer imaginable without.
I’m just confused as to how there isn’t a dating app that is better.
short answer:
Dating Apps/Sites are basically social media sites, they only really work via the network effect, by being so huge that they necessitate significant financial investment.
…
long answer:
A dating app is only broadly, mass appeal successful if it can scale to have a wide selection of people, users, ideally, in as many places as possible.
This requires a large amount of servers.
A large amount of servers requires a large amount of money.
A large amount of money requires investors.
Investors require as much profit as possible.
…
A conventional dating site/app, as we think of the big ones today… its a social media platform.
Just with a different, more constrained feature set, a different UI… but roughly similar levels of network infrastructure and overhead.
…
You could actually make a reasonable argument for running a non profit, or … some kind of collectively owned and operated dating service that is restricted to say a city or small region, or maybe a neighborhood in a larger city.
(Indeed, many of the older ones kind of began this way, pitched more like a … a club that you join and pay membership dues for, thats how they were marketed in the late 90s / early 00s… though these of course were largely actually privately owned, but the marketing angle was that of ‘exclusive community’)
The technicals of exactly how to do that, legally and financially, might end up being impractical though… and if the government is directly involved, well… 10, 20 years ago I would say thats a rather serious privacy problem, but at least in the US right now, I am sure Tinder will sell your info to a data broker who sells it to the FBI if they want to investigate you, so… yeah.
The other obvious problem is that the best dating app is the one you use the least… so… some kind of unconventional payment structure would have to be figured out, to counteract this massive and glaring incentive conflict between app and user.
Maybe high upfront fixed costs to the user, but if you don’t find a good match after a year, 75% gets refunded to you?
Not sure. Could be legal nightmare.
…
Other than that, privately owned and operated dating communities can work fairly well without huge server overhead… if they are precisely targeted at a pretty specific kind of people, be it a religion, or a bdsm community, or a specific ethnicity, who knows… those can at least theoretically work at a larger geographic scale, because that kind of scale doesn’t also massively ramp up user count.
But there’s nothing stopping them from being bought out if they get too big.
…
Bonus!
Job application / recruiting sites are also basically dating apps/sites.
Its just person vs job instead of person vs person.
Broadly, guys on dating sites have been flooding women with match requests for years now, women have been overwhelmed by the volume and believe they can be very picky.
Now replace ‘guys’ with ‘job seekers’, ‘match requests’ with ‘applications’ and ‘women’ with ‘companies’.
Both scenarios result in wasteful amounts of energy going into ‘match-making’, which is horrendously inefficient.
Wow, that’s an incredibly insightful answer. I suppose I never considered the scale of it. Most are fairly bare bones, but you are right, there are so many users and repeat users that it would scale very poorly.
You’re also right on the social media part of it. There kindof needs to be secondary engagement thing to attract and support the community.
Always felt that dating apps were a little too ?accesible? That is to say that they are exceedingly easily flooded by no or low effort profiles, abandoned and duplicate profiles. Especially by desperate men who are completely undiscerning and undereducated (consent, sex, sexuality, etc…).
I feel like there should be engagement/social/education tiers that grant more access to more features. Like literally give points if you can pass tests on consent, relationships, kink, whatever. Get social points from good engagement and behavior. These don’t show your profile more or less, but like if the medium has NSFW features, forums, criteria/location filtering it gives access to them based on community trust and such. Maybe offer a paid shortcut, but have that declared on their profile somehow.
Could be nice. But I’d also probably have the swiping style app be accessory to a more traditional forum.
I feel like there should be engagement/social/education tiers that grant more access to more features. Like literally give points if you can pass tests on consent, relationships, kink, whatever. Get social points from good engagement and behavior. These don’t show your profile more or less, but like if the medium has NSFW features, forums, criteria/location filtering it gives access to them based on community trust and such. Maybe offer a paid shortcut, but have that declared on their profile somehow.
I like this line of thinking.
I more or less used to use OkCupid in this way… it has so many questions you can answer that basicsally, if you have your own set of hard red flags… just look through their answers to questions.
…
You could theorerically do a paid shortcut for some things, but not others.
…
With my gamer brain, the first thing that comes to mind is pay to win games:
You can design a game such that… you can reasonably progress through the game, get good items, level up reasonably quickly… without having to spend any more real world money.
Warframe is arguably a good example of this.
You can just play a fleshed out and enjoyable game and progress at a reasonable rate without spending any real world money, everything in the game is obtainable without more money if you’re good at the game… but if you just have cash to burn, you csn just outright buy some high level gear, basically, to say, join up with some friends who’ve been playing for a long time, without playing for 50 or 100 hours to be on their level.
…
But you can also make it just an absolutely hellish slog to progress through the game, such that you finally get tired of grinding and have that ‘fuck it!’ moment, and just pay to progress… and then you at first find those payments are rather cheap actually… but if you keep playing, the actual money costs ramp up faster and faster, alongside your time devoted to the game, so now you’ve got sunk cost and your brain sunk cost fallacy’s you into just still playing and spending.
This is pretty much how WarThunder is designed.
…
But uh yeah, ramble ramble… I like your basic framework here, but again the problem with monetization is thag is has to be reasonable and apparent to everyone, your idea of badges that show everyone this is I think good.
I am just very worried that if this whole app is privately owned… it will inevitably enshittify and subvert itseld to being an evil money draining skinner box as it attracts more investors or gets new owners or goes public or whatever.
…
EDIT:
oh right
Wow, that’s an incredibly insightful answer.
Thank you! =D
Ha!
As a middle aged man you think its great for us? You think all the hot, sane, independent women in their 30s and 40s are strugging for options? If you’re on there theres a 80% chance that you’re no catch either.
Last time my dude showed me a bunch of profiles it was easily 50% “applications to be a stepdad” and 25% women with a checklist (6 foot tall, good living, own house, etc.) Like 6 foot tall athletic lawyers who own their own home are having trouble meeting women.
You think all the hot, sane, independent women in their 30s and 40s are strugging for options?
You’d be surprised… My wife is in a professional dance company full of single ladies ranging in age from 20s to late 30’s. Most of them are on the struggle bus when it comes to finding a decent partner who isn’t a lazy bum or a rampant misogynist.
Tbh most of the dudes in long term relationships with the dancers are just regular everyday dudes. Imo the bar is pretty low nowadays considering that like 1/3 of dudes have been brain poisoned by Joe Rogan/Jordan Peterson.
Honestly, some of the women I see have profiles that are basically demanding an incredible amount of labor from their potential partners.
No coffee dates, no walks. They want something planned out multiple days a week and in exchange they’ll put up with you grunting on top of them.
They want something planned out multiple days a week and in exchange they’ll put up with you grunting on top of them.
Lol, women enjoy sex as well my dude. With an opinion like that it kinda sounds like you may be stepping on your own feet there.
I’m referring to these particular women, not women as a whole.
There’s a type of woman who are essentially asexual, never masturbates, says they don’t really need sex, but still wants to be in a heterosexual relationship from either societal expectations or because they think a boyfriend is useful in other aspects of their life.
And there are some dudes who only want sex and aren’t willing to put any work into building an actual relationship outside the bedroom. My point being is that there are lots of different attitudes out there, but the vast majority of people are just normal people wanting healthy relationships.
I think social media has really segregated people from reality and has warped people’s interpretation of others. It feels as if everyone believes they are the last “normal” person in society and everyone else is just intrinsically antagonistic.
Married dude here who has a lot of single dude friends. 1/3 is accurate.
And if it’s not Rogan, it’s some other right-adjacent influencer. It’s fucking weird too. They’re regular dudes, helping old ladies on the street and supporting a neighbor. Then suddenly, they crack and share how terrible women are.
Then you got women who are on the other side, complaining about how terrible men are.
I don’t understand it.
I mean, when there’s less cross-interaction nowadays and everyone’s in their own bubbles prevent a challenge their preconceptions, it makes sense.
This is affecting all facets of society, politics even.
Also there’s survivor bias: there is also the fact that on these platforms, the impact of assholes in the dating pool is much greater then the good ones, because it’s the same assholes being cycle through the system, whereas the good ones have already reached the terminal state and found their partner.
And if it’s not Rogan, it’s some other right-adjacent influencer. It’s fucking weird too. They’re regular dudes, helping old ladies on the street and supporting a neighbor. Then suddenly, they crack and share how terrible women are.
Yeah… Idk what it’s all about. A lot of the girls in the company have issues with dudes who like the idea of hooking up with a dancer, then as soon as they get in a committed relationship they want them to quit because they get insanely jealous of other people watching them dance.
The younger crowd of men seem to be super possessive and simultaneously believe that girls only have sex to get things they want and at the same time are massive sluts who can’t be trusted not to cheat…
then as soon as they get in a committed relationship they want them to quit because they get insanely jealous of other people watching them dance.
I think a lot of people are really bad at managing their emotions, especially jealousy.
A friend was telling me about her friend and that friend’s boyfriend. They’d go to concerts together, and the guy would get like super raging jealous that she was dancing in the crowd. Like, grow fucking up. She’s super into you, why are you destroying this relationship? Let her fucking dance.
The bar isn’t low. Not being a lazy bum or misogonyst is the bare minimum (as it should be). The real bar is multiple bars in form of a 110 meters hurdles. You have to jump over all of them. Everything below that and the other person will feel as if they are settling.
Not being a lazy bum or misogonyst is the bare minimum (as it should be).
Idk, just judging by any post containing gender discourse on Lemmy…seems to be a pretty big hurdle for a lot of dudes.
You have to jump over all of them. Everything below that and the other person will feel as if they are settling.
That may just be a product of being younger. By the time you get to my age both men and women seem to be wanting to settle down and are more likely to compromise with the idea of an imperfect partnership.
That may just be a product of being younger. By the time you get to my age both men and women seem to be wanting to settle down and are more likely to compromise with the idea of an imperfect partnership.
I dealt with my share of toxic relationships. Happened in my late teens and early twenties. Late 20s and early 30s is when I and all my friends met good people we wanted sticking around and all got married.
Same
In my 50s and I don’t bother anymore. It’s just not worth the hassle. In my 30s I would have had to send out 100 messages to get 1 date. It’s so much worse in my 50s.
If I ended up single again at my age, I don’t think I would try again. Not due to difficulty, but just apathy. Been there, done that, got the T-Shirt. I’m my own human now, doing my own stuff.
It would definitely suck to be single again, and I’d mourn what I lost, but there’s more to life
I’m in IT who generally is tech oriented. I’ve never even thought of touching dating apps. The idea itself of meeting digitally first, when there are so many women around in real life, is somewhat absurd to me. I feel like the apps might be used mostly by the ones who fail to make contact in real life, which already makes you questionable
Looking forward to getting back on dating apps at 38
If they aren’t divorced they are probably crazy.
Target the divorced MILFs. That’s your best bet. This also applies if you’re a cis-het woman.
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A lot of women use the phrase “all the good ones are taken” but the reverse can also be true as well. Where all the good women are also taken. So most dating apps are full of the people who can’t keep a relationship, cheat, aren’t investing into something, or are the “leftovers.” I have a ton of female friend and what I saw on the dating apps when we were 25 was horrendous. As you get into your late 20s and early 30s you start seeing a lot of divorcees and single parents who then don’t have time and therefore don’t invest. Or do “invest” but now aren’t worth it because their kids should be more important.
America is a different universe lmao. Most people aren’t even married once in their late 20s in Denmark.
Yeah, when some friends started getting married in our 30s I thought they were being impulsive. We’re a bit young to be getting married aren’t we?
When woman say, that men are poor quality commodities it’s funny you see?
I’m a man and I need a bro to explain me
why are men attracted to younger women?
I’m interested in women my age ± like 5 years ish.
when I was a teen I was into teens, in my 20s I was into girls in their 20s…
the idea of dating a 20 years old as a 36 year old man seems gross and annoying.
I may not want kids but I still want to be called daddy
🤮
Apart from obvious attractiveness in younger adults, I’d probably chalk it up to societal norms (and maybe there’s an evolutionary component to it as well) for males’ perceived value on being the bread winner.
So dating younger is how you ensure they are dependent on you, and thus fulfill your purpose as a man.
even more gross
dating younger women to take advantage of dependence.
Purely physically speaking, pretty much everyone gets less attractive as they get older.
There is, of course, a maturity gap, which is a whole different problem.
This reminds me of the conversation I had with my co workers the other day. They basically warned don’t do to your 10th/15th year class reunion, especially if you’re in a relationship. All the girls who were used to constantly being in demand suddenly… aren’t. And they’re HORNY. And not in a very good way. In a very sad/depressing way.
Hey, can I come to your reunion?
All the girls who were used to constantly being in demand suddenly… aren’t. And they’re HORNY. And not in a very good way. In a very sad/depressing way.
Had a friend who joked that if anyone questioned whether she was still hot, they only had to count the rings.
But to do that you’d have to cut her in half
I don’t think 29 year olds are millennial, are they? Or is this an older meme?
Fully dependa on whether they remember 9/11.
Millennial here. Have recently dabbled with the apps. Honestly the guys I was shown were not objectively bad looking. Many of them were pretty attractive. But not my type at all. My interests were books and video games and nerdy sweetness…and it kept recommending me muscle gym divorced military dads. So I gave up.
Yeah at first it is. The algorithm learns about you over time and it gets a little better with regular use. It still has a bit of a blind spot around nerd/geek culture.
Literally fuck algorithms. Anything that has one is dead to me, if at all possible.
Yes, they literally are fuck algorithms. 🤣
Not a fan of how corporations make them work myself but understanding a little about them can make things like this a little less frustrating.
I would argue that the existence of an algorithm isn’t inherently evil, they just ruin things when they’re designed to maximize profit.
Is it really in the apps interest to find your perfect partner or just ones that bring you back to the app again and again?
I’m not convinced they’re looking out for your best interests.
It may be more profitable to have regular success stories getting churned. The algo looks out for the best interests of the company’s profit. Sometimes things line up.
A fair point, so it’s in its favour to help maybe a tiny percentage find a tiny bit of success and then promote that success while everyone else pays.
Yeah. It’s just profit, whatever makes line be as up as possible. I doubt there’s any regard, good or bad, for the user’s experience beyond that.
The 17yo… at work?? I wonder what’s the minimum working age in memeland.
When did you start working? Here in the states its pretty normal to have teenagers work part time after school. I did so I would have money to spend on doing stupid stuff with friends haha
Minimum here is 18, so 18.
Yeah i get the temp crappy jobs kids get, but still, 18.
Maybe if you work at your parents’ small shop or something you could pull it off, but they could get in trouble.Oh that’s kinda crazy. The minimum age here is like 14, albeit with a huge amount of restrictions. I think it got my first job at 15
But I was working in my parents restaurant since i was like 6 or 7. Its “technically” not allowed but people mostly turn a blind eye to parents using their kids as labor, unless its otherwise abusive/neglectful
Damn, at 15 you’re still at school here and going to school is compulsory by law. (It is also financially supported by the state, i.e. pupils and parents don’t have to pay for school attendance themselves. Well, through taxes)
I didn’t work full time? I worked like 5hrs a week, just enough to have some spending money haha
Dating is hard for everyone in one way or another, and, speaking as one, several ways for those who look pretty dead average but have trouble socializing and really only go between home and work. I don’t even feel like I’m that picky; no cigarettes, no kids, yes empathy, and a complementary flavor of weird/neurodivergence.
It’s hard for weirdos to find other weirdos because all weirdos have some level of social anxiety. Ask me how I know.
How do you know?
Make a lemmy community for dating.
I wouldn’t want to meet other Lemmy users in person, let alone date them.
Hot! 🔥🔥 Check your dms!
The last DM I got was Nicole, sadly.
Your weirdo will appear.
Survivorship bias.
:(
I am putting it out there for him. It’s all circumstance and luck.
I read this first as “it’s all circumcision and luck”. lmao
Free circumcison for the first guy to date! 🥳
I’m always surprised to hear people unimpressed with others on dating apps. A couple of my friends have shared their “feeds” and I was struck by how many good-looking people are out there. But they would swipe away from just the smallest turn-offs becoming deal breakers. Like if I saw these people in real life, I would think of them as average looking at worst, many being remarkably attractive. This is in the 20s to mid 30s range like the tweet. I definitely understand deciding you’re incompatible based on politics or religion or culture but most of the time it would be for minor quirks. It felt like they were spoiled for choice in my eyes.
But then again, they’re in serious long term relationships with conventionally attractive and supportive partners now so maybe being picky pays off. At the time, their reluctance to settle was a very frustrating experience for them.
Reluctant to settle, spoiled for choice, great ways of describing the situation.
the apparently-bottomless firehose of faces that makes you desensitized, the anonymous dismissal of them makes you callous.
The apps are just another dopamine slot machine, so the companies don’t care and in fact would rather keep people in their app.













