‘Bumble fumble’: online dating apps struggle as people swear off swiping

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.

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.

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.

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."

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

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.

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.

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

Good.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

The solution is obviously more AI!

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

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.

Met my now-wife on Bumble in 2019, but I have a feeling it peaked around that time based on all the stories I've heard.

Might have to do with commodifying relationships, but who am I to guess 🙃

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.

There are ways to fix the issue, but it wouldn't be 'profitable'. It probably could not be run as a for-profit company. It would also necessarily be deeply intrusive; there's no way to beat some of the problems that make dating apps such a pain in the ass without also giving up a lot of privacy to the company running the app.

You've got a couple of issues going on. First, women--and some men--end up getting harassed on these platforms. Related to that, you have people using them that simply aren't safe, such as people convicted of violent crimes and sexual assaults. Second, you have a number of people using them to cheat on existing partners. Third, catfishing and scams. Fourth, the profit motive of the company means that they aren't really interested in seeing you finding a partner at all.

For starters, you'd need to have a system that required your real name, and would require verification on the order of opening a bank account built into it. (Yes, that means that you'd need really strong security.) They would need to run background checks, and look for things like criminal history, and searching tax records to make sure that you weren't filing taxes jointly. It would also forcibly populate fields about e.g. how many children you have. You'd likely need to set it up with geolocation (both GPS and WiFi); trying to use a VPN or any other privacy-centric processes running would prevent the app from functioning.

Rather than subscriptions, you pay a single fee up-front, and activate/de-activate your account as desired.

For harassment/catfishing/scams/paid sex work, etc., you could create a reporting system that would result in permanent bans for anyone found to be engaging in those behaviors. You'd likely need to also have systems in place and warnings against moving conversations to other platforms (e-mail, texting, etc.), so that harassing and scammy messages could get reported easily. Catfishing would be much more difficult if accounts were linked to your real identity.

This is just kind of brainstorming. As I said, there are ways around all of the issues that people have with apps, if they're serious about meeting people. You can't fix hook-up culture per se; someone can lie to you just as easily IRL as they can on an app. But you can at least remove the worst trash from apps.

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

Meeting people via clubs, activities, and friendships is the key to success these days.

Has anyone tried Facebook dating?

And before anyone says its Facebook, yes I know. I'm just wondering how it compares.

Hmmm.

Sounds good to me I haven't met anyone so I can happily quit them now methinks, especially if they will financially suffer at this point

The editor had far too much fun coming up with that headline 😄

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