“We’re seeing a greater need for authentic human connections”
I’m going to take a wild guess and wager that this is about increasing engagement by increasing the amount of opening moves that are created on the platform.
Dating sites profit by increasing engagement with the platform, not by getting you an “authentic connection” that gets you off the platform and into a healthy relationship.
There’s a reason people are going analog again. They know these sites are just a thirst trap.
Calling it a thirst trap is too innocent. These dating app companies are scum-sucking vampires designed to make most people feel lonely and desperate enough to give them money in perpetuity. People just handed one of the most important and intimate aspects of their lives over to US tech bros, pressured everyone else to do the same, and two whole generations are not just having less sex than their parents, but half of them have never had a long-term relationship as they’re approaching 30.
I feel like I saw somewhere that men message dozens of times more women than vice versa. I get their non-nuanced temptation but you can hardly call a system that encourages one gender to incessantly spam the other ‘engagement’.
I read that men have to send over 110 likes before they get a single response whereas women get 50-60 guys a day messaging them and they act really creepy like sending dick pics.
It’s absolutely true. I’m polyamorous, and various women I’ve dated over the years have shared their dating app situations with me. Not one of them didn’t have 999+ likes and/or a dozen messages from new men on that day alone (depending upon the app).
I prefer apps like Hinge and OKCupid. They allow me to tell more about what I’m about, and I get to learn more about them as well before I attempt to reach out. I’ve had fairly good success with both.
Hinge is the only one I use anymore. Honestly, you need to be able to say something. Just swiping doesn’t do shit. If they paywall that feature they’ll be sunk in no time. I’ll be the first to leave. But I’ve been dating someone for a little and it might turn monogamous soon. So, guess we’ll see.
If I may, out of curiosity, you say it “might turn monogamous soon”; when you first started dating, what were each of your dating styles? Has one of you been more monogamously-minded than the other? Is one person more interested in monogamy than the other?
That’s the way it works in real life tho…it’s not the apps fault. Women always have more options than men.
I will never understand this take.
Logically speaking this is simply incorrect.
Have you been on a dating app? The experience is extremely gender specific. Men spend their time sending out as many likes as are available, and women spend their time sorting through likes they get. This is the experience for either gender unless you’re at the very high or low end of the desireability spectrum.
That is the way dating apps work.
Isnt being approached by creeps part of the ‘authentic’ experience?
Not on your phone, though. That’s just ambush after ambush. Statistically, IRL there a higher chance of escape in that analog.
(Hol’ up. What’s a double entendre that’s not sexual called?)
I don’t think double entendre is necessarily sexual
A pun, usually.
Isn’t this the one thing that made it stand out?
Yes, but there is a new CEO, people are leaving the dating apps like crazy now, and they’re probably trying to do some shortsighted BS that will increase engagement now at the expense of eroding the long term health of the product experience.
It’s ok, they’ll make it up with some IA.
IA aka Inept Assholes
lol right? And wasn’t it for women to have a safer place to online date?
So they’re basically throwing women under the bus for money. Classy.
At least they’re grown!
It doesn’t sound that way. Can you explain how the specific change does that? Sounds like to me it’s an option for women, and it’s done in a way that limits how they can reach out first.
One thing I’ll say about the old model was that out of all the dating apps, Bumble was the only one where every woman who I met or even just messaged with could hold a conversation. That one requirement of them reaching out first set the bar, and I knew they were making the choice to speak to me out of all the other guys they were drowning in. I ended up with more dates through Bumble than any other app, and even made great friends with some people I didn’t romantically click with. Online dating is awful, or was for me, but Bumble was the least awful one of the bunch. The new model sounds not so great.
I met my fiancée on Bumble 4 years ago, but I also created this from my experience on the app:
Which of those girls is your fiancée?
Not pictured; she spared herself the shame by having an actually good opener that referenced something in my bio
This says way more about you than it does about the women on the app.
really? I haven’t used Bumble myself but I’ve heard stories of guys with inboxes full of women just saying “hi”
In my experience all the women do start with hi however 100% of them engaged with the conversation after that. It felt much better then getting a bunch of matches but most of them ignoring you(understandably).
The story I heard was 9/10ths of the women on the platform had “I don’t message first, you message me first” in their bio, so it was functionally a display case for morons.
Look at Fabio over here.
So… tinder? Every other dating app?
Bumble was unique because men couldn’t make the first move.
Right… so now it’s Tinder? Or every other dating app?
they’re all owned by match.com anyway.
I don’t think Bumble is
Bumble is pretty much the only one they don’t own. The only other one I can think of is coffee meets bagel, does anyone still use that?
I think we should get a blind match dating app, where we emphasize on the content and not on the visuals. You just add some information about what kind of a person you are, what you are looking for, etc. and after you match and exchange some messages, you can open the pictures.
But dating apps are turning into those cheap e-commerce sites where everyone judges the items by the packaging and no one actually cares about the content. And mind you in a lot of cases the pictures of the packaging are highly exaggerated or from a couple of years, from better times. And you know, no matter how shiny this package is, there would be a day you will need to throw it in the trash and you will need to decide whether to throw the product along or only the package.
Excuse my metaphors.
You should take a look at blindmate. It does exactly what you imagined. You just upload some Fotos, Friends of yours answer some questions about you and swipe for you. If you have a match you write a little bit and after every other message you unlock a bit more on the others profile. I don’t know if it’s currently available outside of Germany.
I think we should get a blind match dating app, where we emphasize on the content and not on the visuals. You just add some information about what kind of a person you are, what you are looking for, etc. and after you match…
And it’s only the morning after that you’re allowed to turn the lights on.
Any dating app where both people have to “like”/“swipe right” each other should allow either side to initiate tbh or at least opt out of the stupid matchmaking system and accept all incoming matches.
I was on the dating apps last summer after having been out of the dating pool for 6 years and the current crop of apps are pretty awful for men (amd probably women as well, maybe for difderent reasons). When I used dating sites in the early/mid 2010s most sites let anyone initiate a conversation so you didn’t need to worry about the (usually paywalled) “like” system. These days literally everything is a Tinder clone and the only interaction you have with the app is like or dislike. I get why they did it because women receive so much bullshit from unsolicited messages, in my experience it devolved into just mashing the Like button over and over again blindly because it’s a shitty numbers game and the odds aren’t in your favor. There’s no sense reading through detailed profiles and making thoughtful decisions when it’s rare to get a match anyways. Easier to like every single profile and then be the one to filter out matches once they come in. If the harassment is going to primarily target women and women are the ones who need to be more selective in their matches, the dating apps should let women be the ones to pick matches, or better yet give each and every user a toggle that lets them accept matches from anyone, because that makes it easier to get over the hurdle of not receiving any matches at all.
I eventually gave in and paid for the Tinder upgrade that lets you like an unlimited amount of times. I just mindlessly mashed the like button until the queue was empty every day. Before long, matches were actually happening. Two months into that nonsense I actually got a perfect match (she sent the first message) and we’ve been together for 6 months now. I absolutely love her and I’m glad it worked out, but damn was dating on Tinder, Bumble, OKCupid, and POF a horrible experience all around. All owned by the absolutely dreadful Match.com now of course. The prospect of your perfect match being hidden behind a stupid loot box RNG style gacha system is absolute insanity, because that’s what it is. You have a limited number of likes and the profiles you get to see are seemingly picked at random.
Five bucks says all the first messages from men are asking if the woman chose the bear, and if they answer yes calling them some slur.
I’ll take that bet.
How would you like to pay me?
I’ll send you some rolled coins.
In penny’s please. I’ll let you pay for shipping. :)
Sadly I’m Canadian and we no longer manufacture pennies. Nickels ok?
Turns out they never do lol
I mean on bumble, they did. It’s why I prefer it when I was single. Felt a bit better to allow the women to make the first move as tinder it felt like if you weren’t peacocking in some fashion, you were doing it wrong. Felt better for either gender. Bummer to hear they’re turning into tinder+.
The CEO of Bumble’s parent company, Richard Pictograph, pushed for the feature
The bar is no longer “up here”.
