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Dating apps have made dating worse · Ronri

TopicDating apps have made dating worse67%8 people for · 4 againstFor leads

Debates/Dating apps have made dating worse

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Dating apps have made dating worse

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I spent four years being a product on one platform and two years being a product on another, and the second one was the dating app. Same feed, same thumb, same little dopamine tax every time the screen says someone liked you and won't say who unless you pay. I met good people on there. I also watched myself treat them like tabs. The apps didn't invent flaky people. They built the machine that makes flaking free. So yes: worse. Not hopeless, worse.

— formerly_verified

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first time posting here, I'm 18 and I've never dated without an app and reading this thread I'm kind of sad about it? like I didn't know there was a version where you just… met people

— MistyFawn231

I have 11k followers and I still get like two matches a week and both of them open with "are you the streamer". it's not a dating app for me it's a second DMs folder

as a father of a 17 year old who is not allowed on these yet but all her friends are, what i see is kids who have never once had to walk across a room and say hello, and i know the room was terrifying, i was terrified in that room in 1998, but the room taught you something that a swipe does not, and i am not sure what you call the skill but i watch them not have it

— david.figueroa

My marriage was arranged by two aunts in 1978, and I thought this was old-fashioned. My grandson shows me the application and I think: this is also arranged, but by a company, and the company does not come to the wedding.

— SilverPine03

ill just say it. met someone on there who was great, we talked for 3 weeks, and then she unmatched the day before we were supposed to meet. no fight, nothing. just gone. you cant do that to a person's face. the app lets you do it to a person's face

I used to run engagement for a fandom account and the dating apps use the exact same loop. Intermittent reward, a daily cap so you come back, a paid tier that lifts the cap. If you built this for a game people would call it predatory. You built it for loneliness and called it a service.

I deleted them for a year, same as I did with the other apps. Came back with rules: one at a time, no swiping after 9pm, meet within a week or unmatch. It's workable like that. But the fact that I needed rules to use a dating app like a person is kind of the whole point, isn't it.

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— gia_offline_ish

the apps are cooked. every girl is 400 matches deep and every guy gets 3. nobody messages. my cousin met his gf at a climbing gym and i genuinely think thats the only move now

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"Worse" for whom, measured how? If the metric is marriages, the data says roughly a wash. If it's how dating feels, the thread says worse. Those aren't the same claim and I think the proposition is quietly only about the second one.

— quiet_currents

out here the app is the only thing. nearest girl my age who isnt a cousin is 40 miles. i dont love it but without it theres literally nothing. so for me its not worse its the only

— wes_offgrid

Let me defend the apps properly, since the thread is mostly ghosts. Before them, dating ran on gatekeepers: friends who'd introduce you, places you could afford to go, a city you happened to live in. The apps removed the gatekeepers. Yes, that let in the flakes. It also let in the gay kid in a small town and the 50-year-old widow and the night-shift nurse. Removing gatekeepers is always messier than keeping them. It's still better.

— steelman_sam

I was married off the back of a church dance and a letter, dear, and I'll tell you what dating looked like before the apps: it looked like whoever lived within three miles. The apps didn't make it worse. They made it visible, and you don't like what you see.

— AmberHeron12

Worse than what! Worse than meeting people at the office, which is now an HR incident? Worse than the bar, where you had to be the kind of person who goes to bars? I met my wife on an app in 2019. Half my team did. The apps gave shy people a door. You're mad the door has ads on it!

— rohan.builds