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Comment by conductr | Hacker News Reader

I’ve been married since before Tinder so never used it. But I think the “Dating App problem” is something of a head scratcher. The reason the apps all have problems is because Dating is the problem. It’s hard. Always has been. Finding a lifelong partner, very hard.

I might be wrong but these types of conversations about how bad the apps are make me think y’all are expecting some sort of technological easy button. It will never exist. These companies are probably making it worse because of their profit motive but there’s definitely a reason nobody has “solved” dating.

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Honestly, the worst part about dating apps is that it's basically become the only way a lot of women want to meet men. And I'm not speaking from a disgruntled male perspective, I'm speaking from a friend of a lot of women who've essentially stated exactly that.

It's funny because most of my LTIR friends have met their significant others through more traditional means and the perpetually single are stuck on gamified apps.

The apps can definitely work so it's not all for naught but I think the privacy and low risk (emotionally) nature of them leads to an over reliance by a lot of people.

I highly doubt most women would reject a male asking for a date IRL but not in Tinder or whatever. I think the preference for online dating is simply convenience, taking the path of least resistance.

IMO taking this path of least resistance is a bad idea, especially much so for males who make up the vast majority of dating app users. Meeting people and asking them out takes some courage and makes you stand out from the crowd. That’s the main reason why it can work so well, in online dating you’re just one face among others.

The problem is not dating, the problem is visibility. If you have tons of dates with tons of people you'll end up with someone who aligns with you (also will help you to learn what you really like) but these apps, as funny as it sounds, make you invisible by oversaturation. The amount of people is so huge that you spend less than a few seconds to decide if you want to match or not with someone and you never know about this person ever again.

I struggle to see how this is different than the real world of strangers. If you go out anywhere you are around people. Some you find attractive some that may find you attractive. Yet, you probably never even speak to each other so visibility isn't really the problem.

The fact it’s a dating app, just means you have some expectations. You expect you may get a date. But you may not. You expect those other people are real profiles. They may not be. You expect those people that you do match with actual intend to have a conversation/go on a date. They may not have that intention.

If I’ve learned anything from the younger-than-me generations, they like having Likes. It’s attention. It’s meaningless by most measures but gives them some endorphins or something. I’ll probably never get it fully but I can completely see how people would have a Tinder profile for no reason other than to get a confidence boost when they got a Like/Match. I realize that’s a broad stoke but I continue to observe it over and over.

Volume and effort.

Likes and such are distracting as they are attract the wrong people (attention seekers) or give off the wrong impression (false flags). The former is very prominent against men, the latter is very prominent against women.

Volume exasperates both this problem and the problem of choice. There are so many choices for so little effort, people are drowning in it and not investing enough to feel attached to their choices. Where before you had to invest more time into an individual person and your other options where far more limited, now you have far more choice for less effort when you're on the winning side of the market.

Some poster posted a few sources one time on a similar topic regarding the importance of investment and how people will generally stick together when invested. It's the initial investment which is missing. The fact ghosting as a concept didn't just come into existence, but is so omnipresent among both sexes, speaks for itself.

I believe this is correct. The vast majority of my modern "swipe era" dating experiences fall into either 1) Woman makes up excuse to bail within ~2 hours of planned date 2) Woman ghosts/un-matches just as conversation begins to gain momentum 3) Woman tells me she is "overwhelmed" by the attention she's getting from the app and is going to delete it, leaving behind her cell number. The effort/attention ratio for women on dating apps is literally unnatural. This ratio is tempered in the real world because it takes circumstance and balls to approach a woman.

exacerbates

ghosting occurs because despite that people complain about it, they would resent even more being told that they don't make the cut. ghosting is a little disappointment each day, and it fades as the days accumulate.

and if you still don't like it, just accept that the other person does like it, and it's a kindness you could extend to them.

The difference is precisely what you mentioned, people there expect to have dates and find a partner. There could be other people trying to get something else (heck there are even scammers) but it's not your expectation to start a convo expecting to get somewhere, it's the goal of the app. This doesn't happen in real life, in fact, if you try the same approach, you'll be seen as creepy depending on the context. Dating apps should skip this initial uncertainty and technically make it easier to get to the point.

I guess dating for me always just was an activity without expectation. Or perhaps better said, without surprise. Meaning anything could happen. I might have fallen in love with someone on the night we met, the universe seemed aligned, we already got in some small talk face to face, maybe even got physical then - only to find out the next day they gave me the phone number for Pizza Hut and I’d never see or hear from them again. I couldn’t even Google them or DM them, it didn’t exist. Everyone was a ghost by default.

The apps to me seem exactly like what you all are saying. If I were young I'd probably turn to the same tactics I employed before the apps; meeting people in the real world. Probably easier said than done, but that's always been true.

Dating apps aren't about dates they are matchmaking apps.

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