| I'm not going to go into details as I don't want to create a throwaway account for HN, but I can attribute a lot of people's feelings in dating apps to a few things. I got an email from Bumble a few years ago that said I was in the top x percent of people swiped on. If you try to brute force stats your way to dating apps, you will fail.... to some extent. A lot of this comes down to looks that you can control, and looks that you cannot control. Some people are born better looking than others and when you spend less than a second filtering people, the first factor you use is looks. That said, not everyone is looking for the same qualities so ymmv, but better looking people find dating apps much easier. Throwing money at apps works. I'm not going to go into details because my opinion is not based on anything other than my opinion, but I found that the more I spent on the apps, the more dates I would get. Modern dating when compared to traditional dating offline is not even the same thing. Ghosting and talking romantically to multiple people is normal. You can't let yourself get emotionally attached to anyone until you actually know them or expect anything from them. I've heard horror stories from both men and women from online dating, and I've only had great exeriences from it. Some people find me attractive, and at the time I was very active and fit, so I usually got past the swipe test. I'm honest with myself and ok with my flaws. I'm also comfortable in social situations which helps me talk to new people. I think crunching the numbers in this style only looks at a binary 'reality' of dating apps and not what you can do to help yourself and other factors that can lead you to what you ultimately want from partnership, or relationships or physical comfort or whatever else lead you to online dating. |
How old are you / how long ago was this? I've been active on-and-off on the apps for the past year; and once you are over the hump of getting consistent matches I feel like the apps create poor behavior that really isn't measured by these companies.
I think being stuck in "situationships" is something that doesn't come out of the data but is caused by dating apps. It's very hard for me to get people to commit (or worse, just give me a hard no), which led me to casting a wider net. Potential partners are reluctant to tell me "I don't like you", and will either ghost or just keep playing along because it's something to do. I started to adjust my behavior by dating multiple people at a time - this eased the sting of wasting time on someone but then I became less sure if I wanted to commit to someone (e.g. I need a date to event X, I'll give Alice 2 weeks, and she doesn't respond so I ask Bobette day of, which pisses Bobette off because she feels like a second option).
I've also had issues where women rarely advertise upfront what they want is a hookup (for obvious reasons), but then I spend 2-3 weeks courting a woman who doesn't have the guts to tell me she didn't see a future with me.
If your goal is a long term relationship, even if you get matches, it's still a mess and I feel the whole rating curve distracts from that.