‘It’s not you, it’s me’ is the gist of college student qualms with dating apps. Hook-up culture declines while young people search for genuine connection.

  • Geek_King@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    Match Group deserves to collapse. Online dating has never been fun, but since Match Group bought up nearly every dating app, they’ve all become very homogeneous and outrageously more expensive.

  • chakan2@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    I doubt the core of this is any social awakening…the platforms are simply unusable due to the amount of scams, bots, and spam.

    Also, paid models simply won’t work in this sector. Attractive people simply don’t need the apps.

    • Fades@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      attractive people don’t need the apps

      There’s more to this; attractive people also use the apps not to actually find partners but for entertainment and validation.

      These apps are filled with shit like that meaning earnest users must wade through even more trash

    • gohixo9650@discuss.tchncs.de
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      10 months ago

      Attractive people simply don’t need the apps.

      and funnily enough, attractive people are being “promoted” by the apps. By “promoted” I mean, that people who receive a lot of right-swipes are pushed higher in the stack of appearing to users because if users were seeing not-attractive users, they would ditch the app.

  • NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    Probably never should have tried to make money off hook up apps in the first place. When you have a rotten business idea, eventually the house of cards come tumbling down. I’m surprised it took this long.

    • Drinvictus@discuss.tchncs.de
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      10 months ago

      Investors made bank either way. Same shit with Airbnb. It doesn’t have to be a sustainable business if you can make a shit ton of money in a short amount of time.

    • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      Grindr was fine from what I hear. But it had a unique way to succeed. Horny men want horny men right now. It was an evolution of cruising not of dating.

      The rest? Yeah I meet people in person for a reason.

  • The Barto@sh.itjust.works
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    10 months ago

    I like how the title implies that the college students have dumped the app because the CEO has stepped down, as if they only kept using it to not hurt the CEO’s feelings.

    • deleted@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      Many posts in lemmy have confusing titles.

      I wonder if posters like OP brainstorm for 10 min like… How can I make the title more confusing?

      Edit: sorry to all OPs, I’ve never noticed titles are the same after visiting the article page.

      • hardware26@discuss.tchncs.de
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        10 months ago

        We should stop calling these titles confusing and call them what they are, plain wrong. This is the title of the original article. People who cannot write grammatically correct titles are writing entire articles.

      • eatfudd@lemm.ee
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        10 months ago

        While this article and post happen to have the same title I have noticed that way too many posts have editorialized titles that aren’t nearly what the article is portraying. Needs to be more rules for these communities that the post title must match the article title.

    • Salamendacious@lemmy.worldOP
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      10 months ago

      I took it the exact opposite way. College students aren’t using the app and the CEO was forced out… I’m sorry “stepped down”

      • Crit@links.hackliberty.org
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        10 months ago

        Then it should be the other way around “CEO forced to step down as college students aren’t using the app anymore”, the latter caused the former.

        • EatATaco@lemm.ee
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          10 months ago

          Notice how you have to add the "“is forced to” to make even the “reverse” say what you want. I agree that it isnt a great title, but the “as” indicates things happening at the same time, not necessarily the former causing the latter.

          • Crit@links.hackliberty.org
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            10 months ago

            Tbh I just wrote it from memory as I’m on my phone: Bumble CEO steps down as college students dump dating apps

            And I have to disagree, it definitely is a causality thing in a weird way, sure they happen at the same time-ish but it implies a connection between the former and the latter — the latter being used as a reference point around which the former is explained to have happened.

            • EatATaco@lemm.ee
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              Don’t get me wrong, it’s a shitty title that could be more clear and I can absolutely see how you can infer that conclusion. But the fact that when you reversed it you had to add “is forced to” to drive home the point just kind of proves my point how weak the inference that the former caused the latter is.

                • EatATaco@lemm.ee
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                  10 months ago

                  lol. I didn’t even realize you had rewritten it again. Further driving home the point that the order makes little difference.

  • I Cast Fist@programming.dev
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    10 months ago

    She’s succeeded by Lidiane Jones, a former CEO of Slack, who’s looking for opportunities to use artificial intelligence in dating app algorithms.

    Oh great, just what we needed, app sponsored AI bots to lure people into paying premium

  • dinckel@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    The dating apps are just a symptom of the disease, to be completely honest. The hook-up culture isn’t going anywhere, because despite what people say, that’s what continues to happen. Anyone longing for a genuine connection are wasting their time on these apps, especially if you’re guy. People need to work on the impossible standards, on the constant approval-seeking/instant gratification, and set their priorities straight

    • girltwink@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      I’ve found several long term relationships off tinder as a WLW. It seems to work pretty well for me. The system doesn’t seem to be working for guys, and that’s unfortunate. But a lot of the pressure on women to settle for any man has gone away as women have become more self reliant. The whole thing has become far more consensual and less mandatory for survival. That’s going to influence men’s dating success no matter what medium people use to find matches.

      • dinckel@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        My personal experience with these has been even worse than the average, because my demi ass just doesn’t find most of the people on those apps interesting.

        After half a year of some activity, I got maybe 2 likes, and 0 matches. Obviously I don’t even know who those people are, because the app doesn’t show me until I pay. Issue is, if I didn’t already swipe on those people, I don’t care who they are anymore.

        Ironically, when I checked out the BFF section, I got several pings within a few days

        • girltwink@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          This is ultimately a big part of it, and it’s universal, not just in dating. Most friendships are “friendships of convenience” and the other types of relationships typically progress from there. But in western culture, we don’t have any third places, and so we just plain don’t make friendships of convenience anymore.

          • FraidyBear@lemmy.world
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            10 months ago

            I obviously I can’t speak for the OP you are questioning but I’m also on that demi spectrum, if you want my two cents.

            It’s not that I can’t see that someone is attractive, it’s just that I don’t find them sexually attractive. I’m sure there are a lot of het men that would agree that Timothée Chalamet or Chris Evans are very attractive and handsome men but that doesn’t mean that they want to have sex with them. It’s not like people go around looking at beautiful art or gorgeous sunsets and think “man, I’d really like to fuck that” lol

            I believe they also mentioned that they didn’t find them interesting, not that they found them unattractive. I have the same issue. When these apps are set up for looks first no one really bothers to sound overly interesting, they just want to come off as fuckable and not a murder.

            • dinckel@lemmy.world
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              10 months ago

              That’s pretty much how I’d describe it too. In my own words, I basically just don’t connect to people how someone normally would. Someone would first experience lust, and then build an emotional connection, once they get through the rest, but I don’t really experience any romantic feelings towards a person until that connection had already been built.

              Maybe choosing an attractive photo at a beach, with a drink, at the same place as the next 100 girls, would work for someone else, but for me it’s pretty much an instant no. I’m looking for a person to share future experiences with, not a picture that has been purposefully selected to win a popularity contest

            • clearleaf@lemmy.world
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              10 months ago

              I think I might also be demi and I don’t know what to go after with these apps. I try to talk to anyone who doesn’t look like a serial killer but it feels like I’m supposed to make a sexual impression of some kind to get them interested in talking to me. So if it’s an app where you swipe I’m basically swiping yes on everybody and I’m completely rudderless.

              There are some dating apps/services that don’t use images until you’ve agreed to like each other but I live in Canada and the nearest other users are either from Europe or South America (the continent) on all of them.

    • Windex007@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      I married a smoke show I met on Bumble.

      I gotta be real: you’re all doing it wrong.

      It’s a sea of people’s assumed personas. Being genuine actually makes you stand out.

      Feel like you’re pressured to be or act a certain way in order to get matches? And then you’re sad that they’re of low quality? While you are actively misrepresenting yourselves? Wtf did you think was going to happen?

      If you’re approaching it like you’re trying to get a high score, you aren’t going to be yourself, and you and the people you match with are going to be disappointed. Faithfully represent yourself and what you want. Accept you’ll get even less attention than you already are. Get much fewer but higher quality connections.

      Every online dating forum’s advice is incredibly terrible, and people failing to realize that they don’t HAVE to treat the platforms as a Skinner Box are what I think the root causes of the decline of online dating.

      Which, isn’t to say the industry doesn’t bear most of the responsibility. If people treating your platform as a Skinner box decimates the value of your platform, maybe you shouldn’t go to such great lengths to make your platform such a box.

      • AnarchoDakosaurus@toast.ooo
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        10 months ago

        I married a smoke show I met on Bumble.

        I gotta be real: you’re all doing it wrong.

        My ex was on bumble and she had over 4000+ likes. She was too anxious to even open the app by the time we had met. I deleted it for her.

        You can have the greatest profile in the world as a dude, it just dosent matter statistically speaking if you’re not perceived as attractive/ have shitty photos.

        If you married a smokeshow you met off of bumble, you could have probably had the same or better luck in real life. I’m not saying boo hoo poor boys but at the same time most of the guys desperately hoping for a connection on these apps won’t be able to get a date. Guys outnumber women on these apps something like 4 - 1.

        The monetization of the apps are no good. I’m not agaisnt online dating but at the same time the status quo is pretty shitty, espcially if you fall into categories of people who are viewed as less desirable on these apps; ie Asian men and Black women.

  • Pyr_Pressure@lemmy.ca
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    10 months ago

    I wish dating apps were more tailored towards longer term connections. It’s hard to meet people, but I don’t want to go on tinder to meet people either.

    • Salamendacious@lemmy.worldOP
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      I sometimes think they might be intentionally steering people away from longer term connections because the core model of app development teams nowadays is constantly driving engagement. A long term connection means (hopefully) no more engagement.

      • Icaria@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        That’s almost precisely their business model.

        Get users, retain users, turn users into recurring paying customers.

        Dating apps don’t exist to find you connections, they exist to keep you hooked. They’ll give you the bare minimum of opportunities necessary to make you think they’re viable, drag it out as long as possible, pressure you to pay for premium, and if they ever developed a matching system that worked well, they’d bury it to stop half their userbase from marrying each other and uninstalling the apps.

      • Dkarma@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        This is silly to me for dating apps cuz there are literally always new customers entering the market every single day. It’s not like ppl stopped turning into adults suddenly.

        • Bjornir@programming.dev
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          10 months ago

          Yes but why stop to the new adults when you can keep your user base? More growth more money.

          That is the end of the reflexion for companies.

  • LotrOrc@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    Were people really using dating apps in college that often? It’s pretty easy to meet people when in a hool when you’re around a bunch of 18 to 22 year olds all the time

    • Shanedino@lemmy.world
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      Yes can confirm maybe 80% or more of single male friends were on dating apps. I found my wife on tinder.

      • LotrOrc@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Guess it depends on the timeline

        When I was in college it hadnt really become a main stream thing - it had just about started by my junior or senior year

        I honestly can’t imagine going through college with all the dating apps around though

  • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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    Have they tried not making a shit app, that actually seems purposely designed to not achieve its stated goals? Just a thought.

    How about not locking all the actual useful features behind a paywall. If people actually get dates they will be prepared to pay for more premium features but they actually have to get dates to begin with.

  • neptune@dmv.social
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    10 months ago

    I said it in a different thread.

    I think dating apps were an important tool for women to assert control of their dating lives, ten years ago. And I think for the new generation of young women, a total wall between their daily life and dating life, is less necessary.

    My two cents.

      • neptune@dmv.social
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        You don’t know what I am talking about?

        There was a big trend, and it still exists to an extent today, that many woman do not want to be approached at the gym, etc.

        I feel men have finally started adapting to how shitty their behavior was, meaning women are relying less on online dating as a way to stop the feeling of daily irl harassment.

        • Fades@lemmy.world
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          How exactly does an app help to stop the feeling of daily irl harassment? Do you seriously believe those problems have now been solved? If so, how did apps bring this about.

          Men weren’t keeping women from taking the initiative, so it’s not like these apps gave women a power they previously had no control over. Yes they felt far safer but walking away from these apps just reintroduces that inherent risk.

          I’m pretty sure there is about the same amount of shitty behavior, just look at where we are with abortion in the US. One party out of two is mask off sexist against women.

          But dating apps cleaned up societies shitty behavior toward women?

  • jjjalljs@ttrpg.network
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    10 months ago

    It doesn’t help that these dating apps are all deeply enshittified. The free experience is kind of shitty, and the paid is suspect and expensive.

    They could do more to focus on matching by something other than pictures. Shared interests, maybe.

    They could do more to deal with bots, scams, and low effort users.

    They could stop showing me people that live in Thailand. For some reason tinder likes to show me people that live 8000 miles away. Probably because they’re paying for it, but it makes the app worse for me.

    I can’t speak to what college kids are up to these days. I’m old. I’ve never had a lot of luck “just meeting” people in real life, though. I always struggled with figuring out if someone was available and interested. I have several unpleasant memories of asking people out in college that I’d been spending time with, only for them to be like “sorry my boyfriend [you’ve never met and I never mentioned] and I are exclusive”. (Which may have been a lie to let me down gently, I guess.)

    Also when you have a deal breaker or two, having that up front is helpful.

    • Alexstarfire@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      Last time I used Bumble, a few years ago, I think about a third of the profiles I looked at weren’t even filled out. Step 1 might be enforcing users to actually fill out a profile.

      I got to a point where I just swiped left on anything that wasn’t filled out enough. If you can’t even be bothered to do that then I don’t think you’re going to be a good partner.

    • Smoogs@lemmy.world
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      I have several unpleasant memories of asking people out in college that I’d been spending time with, only for them to be like

      Well a lot of people don’t want their value boiled down to what you can get from using a connection for a single minded thing. It doesn’t exactly scream emotionally accessible.

      At least on dating apps there is an understanding of why you’re both hanging out with each other but even then still only using energy to get what you want from others will limit your options. Sure you can get just sex. Probably with someone you don’t want sex with…or with $trings attached. But if that’s how you treat spending time with a person : as a trade off, you’re reaping what you sow with that.

      if you’re looking for deep connection and sex but you’re only using the connection to get sex, it’s not really a connection because you’re not really valuing that connection to people or other people. Connection isn’t payment. If you weren’t just doing it for ulterior motives and a genuine person you’d both getting something out of the connection even if it’s not sex.

      ’I gave you four coins worth of attention. Sex now pls’…if I picked up on these vibes id suddenly have a bf too. A big one. A really really big one.

      • angrystego@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        Spending time with people is how you get to know people better. It’s how you make friends. You can start feeling something to some of them and it’s ok to ask them out if that’s the case. There’s nothing in what jjjalljs wrote that says they were spending time with the people for the sole purpose of finding a date.

        • Smoogs@lemmy.world
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          There’s nothing in what jjjalljs wrote that says they were spending time with the people for the sole purpose of finding a date.

          Except Referring to it not panning out as an ‘unpleasant’ experience. Connection alone should not be unpleasant. People who don’t put out should not be considered ‘unpleasant’

          • angrystego@lemmy.world
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            10 months ago

            Well, getting rejected IS usually an unpleasant experience. You can value someone’s friendship and still find it an unpleasant experience to be rejected by them. Then, ideally, you act grown up about it and you can remain friends. But the feelings can be pretty unpleasant.

            Where did they say they found the connection or the person unpleasant? Did I overlook something?

            I don’t even know them and don’t know how they really behave, but I feel like it’s unfair to jump to the worst conclusions about someone based on just a few neutral lines of text.

            • Smoogs@lemmy.world
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              Its not unfair. And it’s unfair of you to discount that this is indeed a very common problem with connection. Especially in the swipe culture we have surrounding us. It’s basic psychoanalysis of how this person uses language when discussing connection. And getting a feeling from a person for the words they use is valid. Especially if it’s about what kind of essence you put off Vs what you get back. Many other words can be used to described what you’re saying. Unpleasant used to generalize an experience of connecting with people instead of an explicit emotion of one thing was intentional summary and at best it was a bit of an easy reach for someone who isn’t genuine.

      • jjjalljs@ttrpg.network
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        10 months ago

        Well, yes, the “I was nice to you why aren’t you sexing with me?” trope is very bad.

        The two I remember specifically were people I legitimately liked. One of them we spent like hours talking after class a couple times. But when I asked her out for dinner she replied she had to help her boyfriend study.

        I can see her perspective of just having a friend to hang out with, and then being annoyed when the guy wants to make it more.

        But I am legitimately confused how to square what you’re writing about with the advice of “ask people out you know in real life” some people give. That was the advice I was getting back then. Meet people. Be friends. Ask them out.

        Now I use apps so I know the other person is in fact available to date, and does date men. Also I’m old and my relationships currently are fine.

  • flicker@kbin.social
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    10 months ago

    There’s a lot to be said about it but anyone with a brain will agree to this, and simply this;

    Good.

    Don’t qualify it. Don’t turn it into yet another stale argument that will invariably link some grifter’s asinine manifesto. Everyone from every side can agree that this is a good thing. Let it be enough.

  • zepheriths@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    Here’s why your apps are failing. You don’t have proper ratios. When women are outnumbered 2 to 1 that means about 33% of the user base can’t use the app as intended. That’s why you are losing users

    • Dkarma@lemmy.world
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      Ehh. That would matter if it was. 1:1 ratio of people meet and leave the platform but it’s not. One girl can and will date multiple guys from the platform and vice versa.
      100% can use the app as intended. 33% just don’t have a 1:1 match to rely on…but if we’re being honest no meeting spot ever has a 1:1 chance even if there are same number of men and women present. That’s how life works.

      • Smoogs@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        Monitoring for scams and bots should be something they can at least try to deal with directly to add some value to the database. Not just rely on users to do it for free.

    • Asafum@feddit.nl
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      10 months ago

      Yeah wtf with this “it’s not you, it’s me.” It’s 100 fucking percent them.

      I’ve been on and off dating sites for over a decade. I watched them all turn to complete shit because Tinder got successful with the swipe only b.s and Business Educated People said “oooo, money! Let’s just completely copy that and even remove useful features we once had to keep people stuck on the sites longer!” and they’ve completely failed at, or don’t care to, address the bot/scammer problem.

      Fuck, POF turned into fucking TWITCH for christs sake… They have a streaming function now where people specifically state they are not looking for anything they’re just there to stream and take peoples money…

  • nutsack@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    how are you supposed to connect with anyone if you don’t have an app that makes no sense