Oh hey maybe lets buzz on over to Bumble, where women have to initiate the interaction!
Whats that?
That rarely ever happens and the business is imploding?
Quick! Do an ad campaign calling people nuns in a convent for not using our pay to win subscription service!
Wait, people didn’t like that?
Uh maybe we’re actually just an app for finding friends now, or something… sure yeah we’ll just pretend Discord and Instagram and Tiktok don’t exist, this’ll totally work.
Hrm uh ok, lets try uh… Grindr.
Closeted Republican, closeted Republican, another closeted Republican…
Fuck it.
Into the 4chan dating app, at least that one works about as well as you’d expect it to; openly deranged maniacs with no filter = low chance of being misled.
And there are no paywalls!
If you want to make a dating app that actually works, actually reliably produces what the user is looking for… you need to call out the user on their own bullshit. You need to actually tell them ‘your profile says you are looking for this, your actual history on this platform indicates otherwise’.
Well I mean… the datings apps know that, they just don’t tell you. They keep that info for themselves, and then leverage the difference between the gap there to keep you on the platform for as long as possible, by matching together people who are lying to each other and themselves in approximately the same way.
the women i have met on apps are no different than the ones i met on the internet generally, or the ones I met in college or in real life.
It’s almost as if the issue is people themselves, not the tech.
at least in USA, we live in a culture that worships ourselves above all else, and that’s not a very good mindset for dating and relationships, or starting families.
I think their point was that dating apps do the opposite. They show you only a trickle of what you actually want, then barely or never show your profile with them, and spend a huge amount of time showing you ads and asking you to pay them to see all your likes.
They want you there as long as possible, and then they want you frustrated and desperate enough to just pay the ransom for the likes your profile already generated. They’re evil.
I’m not buying into techno evangelism. I’m saying that given a choice between a good faith effort to match users with compatible dates, and something else that will make money, they will almost always choose to make money. You can have success on the apps, but they’re not trying to get that success rate very high.
Furthermore, many problems people face in dating are present with or without apps. The behavioral and emotional provlems you allude to, I expect.
people match people. people chat, people go on the dates.
all the company does is allow you to create a profile and look at other profiles. the provide a platform.
your success on the app is a product of your attractiveness. most people aren’t attractive and their standards are way too high, so they fail. but that is their choice, not the dating apps.
nobody is getting matches or going on dates without their direct personal efforts. the companies do not do that for anyone. the issue is that people are lazy and entitled and won’t settle for realistic options. and that has nothing to do with apps, really. plenty of people had that attitude before apps existed, it’s just apps make them feel like should be able to find a perfect person when no such person exists.
and that is the paradox of choice. when you are presented to 1000s of options, you feel any one choice you make is not great. but if you are presented with 5 options, you are a lot more confident and attached to your choice was a good one.
all apps really do is exaggerating existing cognitive and emotional biases people already have, but the problem lies with the person holding that belief.
Saying “the apps don’t match people” and “the apps provide a platform [for matching]” is I guess technically true but disingenuous. You could say, like, libraries don’t give you books. You have to go and check it out yourself. Yeah, kind of, but people go there with a purpose the platform is (nominally) intended to fulfill.
your success on the app is a product of your attractiveness
I don’t know if that’s really true. I’m middling attractive and had a lot of success. There are a lot of factors.
I don’t think the sweeping generalizations about people are really helpful. Is this making you happy? Are you doing okay in your dating life?
Oh hey maybe lets buzz on over to Bumble, where women have to initiate the interaction!
Whats that?
That rarely ever happens and the business is imploding?
Quick! Do an ad campaign calling people nuns in a convent for not using our pay to win subscription service!
Wait, people didn’t like that?
Uh maybe we’re actually just an app for finding friends now, or something… sure yeah we’ll just pretend Discord and Instagram and Tiktok don’t exist, this’ll totally work.
Hrm uh ok, lets try uh… Grindr.
Closeted Republican, closeted Republican, another closeted Republican…
Fuck it.
Into the 4chan dating app, at least that one works about as well as you’d expect it to; openly deranged maniacs with no filter = low chance of being misled.
And there are no paywalls!
If you want to make a dating app that actually works, actually reliably produces what the user is looking for… you need to call out the user on their own bullshit. You need to actually tell them ‘your profile says you are looking for this, your actual history on this platform indicates otherwise’.
Well I mean… the datings apps know that, they just don’t tell you. They keep that info for themselves, and then leverage the difference between the gap there to keep you on the platform for as long as possible, by matching together people who are lying to each other and themselves in approximately the same way.
the women i have met on apps are no different than the ones i met on the internet generally, or the ones I met in college or in real life.
It’s almost as if the issue is people themselves, not the tech.
at least in USA, we live in a culture that worships ourselves above all else, and that’s not a very good mindset for dating and relationships, or starting families.
The dating apps are definitely not optimized for user dating success.
That said, a lot of people self sabotage in their dating life. The apps aren’t going to put in a lot of effort to stop you from doing that.
dating apps cannot optimize dating dude. your entire premise is false.
stop buying into the techno evangelism that technology can solve human emotional and behavioral problems. it can’t.
I think their point was that dating apps do the opposite. They show you only a trickle of what you actually want, then barely or never show your profile with them, and spend a huge amount of time showing you ads and asking you to pay them to see all your likes.
They want you there as long as possible, and then they want you frustrated and desperate enough to just pay the ransom for the likes your profile already generated. They’re evil.
I’m not buying into techno evangelism. I’m saying that given a choice between a good faith effort to match users with compatible dates, and something else that will make money, they will almost always choose to make money. You can have success on the apps, but they’re not trying to get that success rate very high.
Furthermore, many problems people face in dating are present with or without apps. The behavioral and emotional provlems you allude to, I expect.
the apps don’t match people.
people match people. people chat, people go on the dates.
all the company does is allow you to create a profile and look at other profiles. the provide a platform.
your success on the app is a product of your attractiveness. most people aren’t attractive and their standards are way too high, so they fail. but that is their choice, not the dating apps.
nobody is getting matches or going on dates without their direct personal efforts. the companies do not do that for anyone. the issue is that people are lazy and entitled and won’t settle for realistic options. and that has nothing to do with apps, really. plenty of people had that attitude before apps existed, it’s just apps make them feel like should be able to find a perfect person when no such person exists.
and that is the paradox of choice. when you are presented to 1000s of options, you feel any one choice you make is not great. but if you are presented with 5 options, you are a lot more confident and attached to your choice was a good one.
all apps really do is exaggerating existing cognitive and emotional biases people already have, but the problem lies with the person holding that belief.
Saying “the apps don’t match people” and “the apps provide a platform [for matching]” is I guess technically true but disingenuous. You could say, like, libraries don’t give you books. You have to go and check it out yourself. Yeah, kind of, but people go there with a purpose the platform is (nominally) intended to fulfill.
I don’t know if that’s really true. I’m middling attractive and had a lot of success. There are a lot of factors.
I don’t think the sweeping generalizations about people are really helpful. Is this making you happy? Are you doing okay in your dating life?
I feel like we’ve had this conversation before.