In the weeks leading up to Valentine’s Day, dating apps typically see a spike in new users and activity. More profiles are created, more messages sent, more swipes logged.
Dating platforms market themselves as modern technological solutions to loneliness, right at your fingertips. And yet, for many people, the day meant to celebrate romantic connection feels lonelier than ever.
This, rather than a personal failure or the reality of modern romance, is the outcome of how dating apps are designed and of the economic logic that governs them.
These digital tools aren’t simply interfaces that facilitate connection. The ease and expansiveness of online dating have commodified social bonds, eroded meaningful interactions and created a type of dating throw-away culture, encouraging a sense of disposability and distorting decision-making.
Most of the apps are trashy and don’t optimize for good matches.
At the same time, many users half-ass using them, or deploy a variety of self-sabotage. (No, it’s not that you’re not tall or hot or whatever. It’s more likely your impersonal message didn’t warrant a response)
These two facts together mean a lot of people have truly bad outcomes.
Honestly the way a lot of the Tinder-style ones (swiping) are designed it almost feels like they’re meant to be half-assed? You can’t filter by likes, just exclude by dislikes (ex. Don’t include people who don’t want kids, don’t include smokers, etc) because there’s no search anymore. They just show you a profile, and you swipe.
When I was using them I very quickly stopped reading bios before they matched back. I just swiped right on everyone, checked daily for new matches, read those profiles and blocked/messaged people based on what was in their profile.
Speaking on filters, though: They don’t even work. I had men filtered out, and I ended up getting about 25% of profiles being men. Like, the only gender tag they had was “Man,” which lead to a lot of the “Idk why they even showed me to you I have men filtered out” message being sent.
I had that happen to me, too, and I’m a straight man. Never really wanted to do gay stuff, and yet Tinder would constantly throw in gay matches as if to say “are you SURE you don’t wanna do a little experimenting while we watch?”