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Here’s a concept: women over 29 years old don’t view Tinder as a good option for finding decent men. Therefore only the most desperate are the ones who sign up to display themselves on the digital meat market.
I am forklift certified. I do not need this.
I think we should make dating apps even worse, and just let humanity die out naturally.
Schopenhauer did say as much I suppose. Except for the Tinder bit. Now to pin him as a millennial or a Gen Z…
oh dont worry. The right wingers will murder us all soon.
I bet that the Pandas would step in and keep us going.
:D
I’ve been curious if a government-run dating app could do better - if its goal is to achieve genuine engagement, not cycles of frustration that boost subscription rates.
This is one of many subjects where capitalist concern ruins the product (and that’s not even something I say as often as others on Lenny)
You said capitalism and summoned your resident anticapitalist. How can I be of assistance, comrade. :D
Looking for an anticapitalist on lemmy is like looking for a lesbian at a Teagan and Sara concert. It’s not everybody, but it’s not a difficult search
Honestly, 90% of the need for dating apps would vanish if people had more free time away from work and well-kept public spaces for entertainment that didn’t expect you to purchase anything.
So rather than a government-run dating app, how about a government-sanctioned 4 day work week and well kept public parks?
I don’t know if I buy that. I think people simply like hiding behind a screen for many interactions these days - including dating.
Not that Im against your idea but maybe just the 90% part seems inflated.
Perhaps, but we would need to put the idea in practice to determine what’s the cause/effect relationship here.
Are people more addicted to their screens because the real world became hostile, or is the real world becoming hostile because people are glued to their screens?
I’d bet on the first option, but I could be wrong.
Real relationships require a vulnerability that dating apps can not provide
I love my screen time but if there was free ping pong somewhere outside or something I’d go there a lot. Same for rock climbing, board game spaces… I’d get out for a lot. Screen time is a cheap substitute for this real stuff.
But who makes the profit in your silly goose scenario? Somebody has to be making money or it’s a terrible idea!
This is what we call long-term investment a taxman wins once you have kids
“App” and “genuine engagement” are 2 things that don’t go together.
I run a social club for gay men, and we’ve talked about coming up with an app that’s run by a non-profit, with social workers on the board, that’s designed to actually connect people, not keep them glued to the app. Friendship, dates, activity partners, whatever.
I don’t know why no one has come up with the non-profit model here but if I can get enough steam, we’re doing it.
But even non-profits need to pay for operating costs like salary and cloud fees. Where would you get the funding for that?
The app doesn’t need to be free, and the revenue stream won’t dry up if it actually works because people break up, and there are so many fucking people that even in a zero sum scenario it would take forever to reach saturation.
Sorry if I come off like a butthole but I’m both curious yet dubious of the idea. I feel like people probably have thought about it but they probably ran into the same problems you’ll run into.
You didn’t quite answer my question. Where are you getting revenue? Eg. Subscription, one-time fees for X, grants, investments, etc?
Duallingo started like a non-profit but even their revenue with its massive userbase couldn’t cover their expenses so they had to compromise hard to keep the lights on. The same happened to Coffee Meets Bagel. Hinge started with the same premise of “this app is meant to be deleted” but they also had to compromise and eventually sold to Match Group.
Also, I feel like gay men are a unique demographic that has higher that average engagement so Grindr is probably in a uniquely advantaged position to resist enshitification.
I guess I’m just saying it’s probably in practice a cost center like city infrastructure or schools or research, so it might only work without heavy compromises if it’s also funded by taxes.
Where are we getting the funds for Lemmy and its instances?
It’s almost as if men are a little bit hornier than women…
Might not be a great idea, tbh.
This isn’t what was suggested here at all.
That’s how it’ll end up though.
Although with all the Nazism going on in Silicon Valley, there’s a good chance that’s what they’ve been attempting all along.
I can’t wait for TRUMPDate. Make America Date Again. Can’t go wrong.
yes, and women will be required to use it and have babies with the incels on it.
Its that or prison, ladies!
But the date is August 2, 1934
Someone tried this with a dating app for right-wingers only called “The Right Stuff”, which has faced significant criticism for lacking female users.
Enter the colour of your skin:
Whoops, no matches for you!
I would prefer something defederated over government owned.
In my 50s and I don’t bother anymore. It’s just not worth the hassle. In my 30s I would have had to send out 100 messages to get 1 date. It’s so much worse in my 50s.
I hear ya there. I had a blast 10+ years ago with online dating, mostly okcupid. I’ve heard that it’s went to shit and I just don’t even have the energy to trudge through the apps.
I’m recently single and had ok results with ok Cupid in the past so I signed back up. Absolutely everything is hidden behind a subscription now. I deleted it right away. I knew it was going to be bad when match bought them years ago, but I’m not paying $30/mo for the morale destroying thing that online dating is.
If I ended up single again at my age, I don’t think I would try again. Not due to difficulty, but just apathy. Been there, done that, got the T-Shirt. I’m my own human now, doing my own stuff.
It would definitely suck to be single again, and I’d mourn what I lost, but there’s more to life
I’m in IT who generally is tech oriented. I’ve never even thought of touching dating apps. The idea itself of meeting digitally first, when there are so many women around in real life, is somewhat absurd to me. I feel like the apps might be used mostly by the ones who fail to make contact in real life, which already makes you questionable
I met my now wife through myspace back when i was 19.
I went out and always managed to find some cute girl no matter where i went, but they all lacked depth and interests. Even then, i can’t even imagine what women are like now…they probably look like a phone brand logo 24/7.
We started talking because of a friend of hers, that lasted about a year until i was finally able to meet her for the first time…turns out she wasn’t acting about who she was and had been genuine all the time.
Easiest decision i ever made.
I’m just in my 40s and single. Everyone I’d be in to is shacked up or dead at this point.
keep going, i heard hospice dates are going up in the last few years /s
The 17yo… at work?? I wonder what’s the minimum working age in memeland.
When did you start working? Here in the states its pretty normal to have teenagers work part time after school. I did so I would have money to spend on doing stupid stuff with friends haha
Minimum here is 18, so 18.
Yeah i get the temp crappy jobs kids get, but still, 18.
Maybe if you work at your parents’ small shop or something you could pull it off, but they could get in trouble.Oh that’s kinda crazy. The minimum age here is like 14, albeit with a huge amount of restrictions. I think it got my first job at 15
But I was working in my parents restaurant since i was like 6 or 7. Its “technically” not allowed but people mostly turn a blind eye to parents using their kids as labor, unless its otherwise abusive/neglectful
Damn, at 15 you’re still at school here and going to school is compulsory by law. (It is also financially supported by the state, i.e. pupils and parents don’t have to pay for school attendance themselves. Well, through taxes)
I didn’t work full time? I worked like 5hrs a week, just enough to have some spending money haha
The text in () was also not referring to you, but in general. In retrospect, I’m thinking about the costs of high school. Unfortunately, I can only find information about years abroad for non-US citizens. Many people take on debt for college, don’t they?
High school here runs through grade 12, and is part of primary education. It’s publicly funded. The only costs to students are for clubs and sports, and for school-provided lunch (which is excepted if your family is below a certain income). Most students graduate the same year they turn 18, so higher education (college or university) considerations only apply to adults.
There are heavy restrictions on pre-18 employment because of school. Limited hours per week, and evening cutoffs to ensure teens still have time for family/homework/etc.
Some schools (maybe all? I can only speak to my own experience) allow work release to grades 11 and 12, provided you’re ahead enough on required credits and coursework for this to not set you back. Basically, you can trade elective classes for early release, but you must prove employment.
This was one of the “culture shocks” for me too so I will explain.
It’s pretty much the norm for highschoolers to be working part-time during school days. One fo the main arguments against increasing minimum wage is “I don’t want a highschooler making as much money.”
Middleschoolers also often have jobs tho it’s usually either working for a relative or simply not on paper.
Not on paper ones also often pay less than minimum wage, in my case I was working in a warehouse at 13 for $5/hr.
This is for Texas, idk what other states do.
I started working at 15. And I am not saying this in a ‘back in my day!’ type of way where I think child labor is good - its sad.
I was 13 when I had my first job (paper round) and then 15 when I worked in a pub kitchen. The pub job was a great laugh! They definitely made me appreciate the value of money and work.
It was 14 for me. But I wouldn’t wish it on anyone else, kids shouldn’t be laborers and it was mostly a very bad experience.
I’m so glad I’ve never had to date officially. My first two girlfriends I met at school the latter of which I was in a relationship after school, which was good. My current partner is, strangely, also related to the school I’ve been to as we’ve met via a common acquaintance. Getting to know each other happened mostly via texts and then through meetings - unofficial dates, I guess - and the rest is history.
I can’t imagine the stress of using these dating platforms constantly. Putting yourself out the over and over again, meeting all kinds of people for a shred of possible companionship. Must be so exhausting. Don’t even wanna think about what the experience must be for women* and female-presenting people
Ha!
As a middle aged man you think its great for us? You think all the hot, sane, independent women in their 30s and 40s are strugging for options? If you’re on there theres a 80% chance that you’re no catch either.
Last time my dude showed me a bunch of profiles it was easily 50% “applications to be a stepdad” and 25% women with a checklist (6 foot tall, good living, own house, etc.) Like 6 foot tall athletic lawyers who own their own home are having trouble meeting women.
You think all the hot, sane, independent women in their 30s and 40s are strugging for options?
You’d be surprised… My wife is in a professional dance company full of single ladies ranging in age from 20s to late 30’s. Most of them are on the struggle bus when it comes to finding a decent partner who isn’t a lazy bum or a rampant misogynist.
Tbh most of the dudes in long term relationships with the dancers are just regular everyday dudes. Imo the bar is pretty low nowadays considering that like 1/3 of dudes have been brain poisoned by Joe Rogan/Jordan Peterson.
Married dude here who has a lot of single dude friends. 1/3 is accurate.
And if it’s not Rogan, it’s some other right-adjacent influencer. It’s fucking weird too. They’re regular dudes, helping old ladies on the street and supporting a neighbor. Then suddenly, they crack and share how terrible women are.
Then you got women who are on the other side, complaining about how terrible men are.
I don’t understand it.
I mean, when there’s less cross-interaction nowadays and everyone’s in their own bubbles prevent a challenge their preconceptions, it makes sense.
This is affecting all facets of society, politics even.
Also there’s survivor bias: there is also the fact that on these platforms, the impact of assholes in the dating pool is much greater then the good ones, because it’s the same assholes being cycle through the system, whereas the good ones have already reached the terminal state and found their partner.
And if it’s not Rogan, it’s some other right-adjacent influencer. It’s fucking weird too. They’re regular dudes, helping old ladies on the street and supporting a neighbor. Then suddenly, they crack and share how terrible women are.
Yeah… Idk what it’s all about. A lot of the girls in the company have issues with dudes who like the idea of hooking up with a dancer, then as soon as they get in a committed relationship they want them to quit because they get insanely jealous of other people watching them dance.
The younger crowd of men seem to be super possessive and simultaneously believe that girls only have sex to get things they want and at the same time are massive sluts who can’t be trusted not to cheat…
Honestly, some of the women I see have profiles that are basically demanding an incredible amount of labor from their potential partners.
No coffee dates, no walks. They want something planned out multiple days a week and in exchange they’ll put up with you grunting on top of them.
They want something planned out multiple days a week and in exchange they’ll put up with you grunting on top of them.
Lol, women enjoy sex as well my dude. With an opinion like that it kinda sounds like you may be stepping on your own feet there.
I’m referring to these particular women, not women as a whole.
There’s a type of woman who are essentially asexual, never masturbates, says they don’t really need sex, but still wants to be in a heterosexual relationship from either societal expectations or because they think a boyfriend is useful in other aspects of their life.
The bar isn’t low. Not being a lazy bum or misogonyst is the bare minimum (as it should be). The real bar is multiple bars in form of a 110 meters hurdles. You have to jump over all of them. Everything below that and the other person will feel as if they are settling.
Not being a lazy bum or misogonyst is the bare minimum (as it should be).
Idk, just judging by any post containing gender discourse on Lemmy…seems to be a pretty big hurdle for a lot of dudes.
You have to jump over all of them. Everything below that and the other person will feel as if they are settling.
That may just be a product of being younger. By the time you get to my age both men and women seem to be wanting to settle down and are more likely to compromise with the idea of an imperfect partnership.
Social media is raising expectations to unrealistic levels. As if Hollywood wasn’t bad enough for past generations.
Pretty sure Tinder shadow banned me for some reason. I saw the same people constantly.
check out https://www.truublue.com/
dating for progressive singles. And check out the ginger lady at the bottom of the front page-- I couldnt say no after seeing that.
All dating apps suck, but Hinge sucked less for me. I actually found someone with similar interests that wasn’t just looking for a free dinner.
apps centered on polyamory tend to be far less hostile to its users. I assume it’s because a user getting one or two good relationships out of the app doesn’t lose them those users.
the sea is full of plenty of fish. (although these days not so plentifully)
A lot of the fish that are left are radioactive and full of poison.
Millennial here. Have recently dabbled with the apps. Honestly the guys I was shown were not objectively bad looking. Many of them were pretty attractive. But not my type at all. My interests were books and video games and nerdy sweetness…and it kept recommending me muscle gym divorced military dads. So I gave up.
Which app? Cause I can’t find the nerdy girls.
The algorithm just pushes all these women who are wanting someone who will house them and take them on worldly vacations.
I tried bumble and hinge, got the ick, and gave up. Yeah, I’ve heard people saying something similar; going on about women looking to be housed. It’s such a huge turnoff and it makes me consider their financial insecurity, to be honest.
Most people seem to accept living on debt or handouts. It’s strange. I see everyone around me (both sexes) acting the same. So it’s not even a dating app issue, I think it’s a people issue. Offer nothing and expect everything in return. Maybe it’s an American thing?
I don’t want to be grouped into incel mentality, but is there a dating app to meet people from another country?
I don’t know, it could be your immediate environment. I certainly noticed this behavior in some friend groups, but not others. I don’t think you need to go that far to avoid the behavior. Just be vigilant and expect reciprocity.
muscle gym divorced military dads
I know a bunch of these dudes, and most of them are into books and video games.
Something about the RPG grind mechanic in certain video games and a typical strength/barbell progression program scratch the same itch, so people who tend to be into one are also into the other.
That’s very interesting…I’ll have to take your word for it. My ex was in the military and my experience was…not that. I’m sure some are wonderful people.
What kind of nerd stuff? You like Pokemon? 3D printers? D&D?
After the third/fourth gen of Pokémon I kinda lost interest. Whenever it was they started being jet skis.
Add tower defense and sim games to the list though. DnD based games, although I’ve played tabletop from time to time, just too much of an introvert to join a random group.
Anyways, when you’re swiping in my age range there aren’t a lot of folks with these interests in my area. Maybe I’m too old and get shown whatever.
I think a lot of nerdy people need to just start going outside and doing stuff. Like, if you enjoy DND roll up to the local hobby store and start hanging out, even if you arent playing.
None of this is targeted directly at you, just as good a spot as any to rant… lol
I think more people would be surprised that the horror stories are the minority. At my local game story I go to a painting night once a month mostly to hang out and chat. There are a pretty even split of women/men.
Point is I think this a safe spot to make friends and making friends is the only way to get into a relationship you’ll actually enjoy.
I met my girlfriend doing Star wars rp. My friend met his girl playing magic l. All my single friends have something in common. They don’t make time for their hobbies and don’t hang out with like minded people in that space.
Just a side note I’m not saying that everyone should go harass people at their FLGS or use it as a dating service, but rather, going out and hanging out with like minded people opens up a lot of options that aren’t on dating apps.
I’m pretty introverted too but when people are into whatever my hyper focus is it’s much easier to open up. Go out there! Be uncomfortable! Not a cure all but it’s something.
For me, the biggest impediment is really having to work a full time job. And being in my late 30s, a lot of these activities are described to be for 20-30s in the meetups app. I agree though, I’ve met some nice people at gaming stores when I was younger and had the energy. So this is good advice.
Freaking Star Wars RP. Spectacular!
Let’s see, I’m in an entire server where people your age are playing pokemon tabletop. Ok, it’s not even funny anymore. I wanted to make a joke about how I’m single and into those things, but it really is like that.
I’d be interested in the server. Why are you making the joke? It’s okay to be single.
The joke is well we are pretty much the same, but complain about not being able to find partners. Reality: because we don’t want to. Lemmy users are not so different from Reddit users.
Ah yes, both big dumb pandas. At least were fluffy…? :)
I’m lean and short 🤣
Barely any tummy.
I’d be interested on the server as well, depending on if you guys play around evening time in my timezone (GMT).
Here you go\2
Yeah at first it is. The algorithm learns about you over time and it gets a little better with regular use. It still has a bit of a blind spot around nerd/geek culture.
Literally fuck algorithms. Anything that has one is dead to me, if at all possible.
Yes, they literally are fuck algorithms. 🤣
Not a fan of how corporations make them work myself but understanding a little about them can make things like this a little less frustrating.
I would argue that the existence of an algorithm isn’t inherently evil, they just ruin things when they’re designed to maximize profit.
Is it really in the apps interest to find your perfect partner or just ones that bring you back to the app again and again?
I’m not convinced they’re looking out for your best interests.
It may be more profitable to have regular success stories getting churned. The algo looks out for the best interests of the company’s profit. Sometimes things line up.
I wondered about that too. I certainly didn’t see any profiles to match my interests. I wondered if “my type” just didn’t use the apps at all.
It’s all conjecture. I suspect the algorithm puts it towards the bottom of the stack because there’s more money in casting a conventional net.
I don’t blame you. The algorithm is gonna force you to look at what people your demographic like despite whatever input you give it. At least it seems this way with how algorithms in general seem to work on social media. The amount of dick pill ads I get is way to high.
Isn’t society like that in general?
I still remember when bumble had to change their entire premise and business model because as it turns out women are worse at starting conversations than men lmao.
I wholeheartedly believe that the Internet and smart phones have been the biggest double edge swords in human history. We have the entire globes collected knowledge at our fingertips with the ability to connect with any other person on the planet instantly and it has caused the largest shift in loneliness and depression ever.
Humans simply are not wired for social media and the Internet. Seeing every single person you know posting themselves beautiful and dressed up doing the coolest things 24/7 will make anyone feel ugly and like they aren’t doing anything with their lives. It takes real focused effort to remember that people (generally) only post when they are doing something special and what you don’t see are the days or weeks between posts that show they live the same boring life you live.
I’m ranting for no reason. I think when we lost in person social gatherings as the primary method of meeting new people is when society kicked that concrete block off the cliff. Right now we are just waiting for the rope to snap taught and drag us all into the abyss.
Every starting conversation on Bumble was like:
“Hey”
If that happend, it triggered me so hard. Its like the insanest thing ever. Why are you even on bumble then.
Why are you expecting conversations to be otherworldly?
How many conversations in real life with people you like start with something akin to “hey”? I’m gunna bet most but I suppose I could be wrong.
From what I saw, it wasn’t just “hey”. Hey was the yellow flag.
It was all the one word responses. To everything. It was the job of the guy to be entertaining on the app to barely any response.
That takes its toll on men, especially when there were women who used it as a source of free entertainment.
I would expect something else then one word if you select the Dating platform where the big difference is that you have to write first as a women. It seems odd to me.
But probably tinder or the other dating platforms are just (as) shitty and it didn’t have any deeper thought about joining bumble.
In my experience the bot and scam scripts have become refined enough to seem exactly like a pretty disengaged or disenchanted user, or someone not confident in what they’re doing. It’s led to some awkward moments when I suddenly send “BOT CHECK”
Taut*
This was eloquently written and I enjoyed reading your insights. I found your closing metaphor particularly apt!
sorry ladies, im exclusively looking for love on the Rumble forums
Mikasa?
A confounding issue is the apps themselves have gotten worse over time. Like, old okcupid you could search. You could type in like “final fantasy” or “the Mets” and find people who liked those things enough to put them on their profile.
Now you’re limited to whatever the app decides to give you. Well, the app doesn’t want you to leave so that incentive doesn’t line up.
A lot of the more popular ones, okcupid included, all got bought up by Match Group and almost immediately started trending anti-consumer in their updates or removal of features. They want you paying, they don’t give a shit about success.
100%. Match group should be broken up.
It’s an especially insidious type of monopoly to me because it deals with relationships, they can manipulate millions of people, affecting the creation of their families and kids.
Surprised that the religious right haven’t put them in their sites.
Close, they actively fight success. Legally obligated to, even. It’s their fiduciary responsibility to keep you using the app.
So capitalism is incompatible with dating apps. Who woulda thunk?
OkCupid used to actually work rather well at finding compatible people who were actually honest about what they were looking for.
Then it got bigger, got acquired, and the matching model of the whole industry was intentionally modified to be more monetizable, and to keep giving matches that are close, but not close enough to be truely long term compatible.
You aren’t using the app/website anymore if it works and gets you a successful long term match.
You are using the app for a longer time if you keep getting close but just missing the mark.
…
Do people not think their dating app is tracking… how many matches and text exchanges they have?
How much time elapses between you matching, chatting, leaving… and then going back to swiping?
And then multidimensional matrix comparing that to every other definable variable about you?
Including whether or not you say you’re looking for something long term, or serious… but you actually keep cycling through people?
These algos, these things… they know exactly to what extent you lie to yourself and others, and they weaponize that to keep people in a sort of optimal (for the app, not you), constant disappointment loop.
…
Everything digital is now way beyond ‘if its free, you are the product’.
The model is now entirely attention, addiction based, and manipulating your emotions in as close to real time as possible is absolutely integral to all this.
People forget that over a decade ago, Zuckerberg said his dream was to be able to predict with high accuracy what any given Facebook user would post next.
Nearly a decade ago, Netflix CEO or some such stated ‘our primary competitor is sleep’.
People largely do not realize the extent to which these corpo fucks have been running highly precise and targeted manipulation of every aspect of human behavior… all to drive goddamn ad revenue and market share, ie, entrench themselves as institutions the modern world is no longer imaginable without.
I’m just confused as to how there isn’t a dating app that is better.
short answer:
Dating Apps/Sites are basically social media sites, they only really work via the network effect, by being so huge that they necessitate significant financial investment.
…
long answer:
A dating app is only broadly, mass appeal successful if it can scale to have a wide selection of people, users, ideally, in as many places as possible.
This requires a large amount of servers.
A large amount of servers requires a large amount of money.
A large amount of money requires investors.
Investors require as much profit as possible.
…
A conventional dating site/app, as we think of the big ones today… its a social media platform.
Just with a different, more constrained feature set, a different UI… but roughly similar levels of network infrastructure and overhead.
…
You could actually make a reasonable argument for running a non profit, or … some kind of collectively owned and operated dating service that is restricted to say a city or small region, or maybe a neighborhood in a larger city.
(Indeed, many of the older ones kind of began this way, pitched more like a … a club that you join and pay membership dues for, thats how they were marketed in the late 90s / early 00s… though these of course were largely actually privately owned, but the marketing angle was that of ‘exclusive community’)
The technicals of exactly how to do that, legally and financially, might end up being impractical though… and if the government is directly involved, well… 10, 20 years ago I would say thats a rather serious privacy problem, but at least in the US right now, I am sure Tinder will sell your info to a data broker who sells it to the FBI if they want to investigate you, so… yeah.
The other obvious problem is that the best dating app is the one you use the least… so… some kind of unconventional payment structure would have to be figured out, to counteract this massive and glaring incentive conflict between app and user.
Maybe high upfront fixed costs to the user, but if you don’t find a good match after a year, 75% gets refunded to you?
Not sure. Could be legal nightmare.
…
Other than that, privately owned and operated dating communities can work fairly well without huge server overhead… if they are precisely targeted at a pretty specific kind of people, be it a religion, or a bdsm community, or a specific ethnicity, who knows… those can at least theoretically work at a larger geographic scale, because that kind of scale doesn’t also massively ramp up user count.
But there’s nothing stopping them from being bought out if they get too big.
…
Bonus!
Job application / recruiting sites are also basically dating apps/sites.
Its just person vs job instead of person vs person.
Broadly, guys on dating sites have been flooding women with match requests for years now, women have been overwhelmed by the volume and believe they can be very picky.
Now replace ‘guys’ with ‘job seekers’, ‘match requests’ with ‘applications’ and ‘women’ with ‘companies’.
Both scenarios result in wasteful amounts of energy going into ‘match-making’, which is horrendously inefficient.
You also had decent profiles where you could write more texts about you. That could give you an idea of who that person is. There is a difference between “Tea or Coffee? - Tea.” and “Tea or Coffee? - I like green teas but also some black teas like assam. I sometimes bake scones to eat with the tea.” A lit of modern apps don’t even give you the option to show your personality more.
I met my husband on Plenty of Fish 7/8 years ago. This baffles me, they don’t let you type your own content to show your personality? How are you supposed to get a feel for someone then?
Fetlife is like that too. “Find people with the same interests as you!”… select an interest: 120K people! Okay, let me filter by location? No. Filter by age? No. Filter by sex? Guess what, also No. So instead you have to hand scroll through all the entries. I don’t want to spend a lot of time connecting with someone with a common interest if they’re on the other side of the world.
They are making a mentally ill frankenspecies.
Fuck me that’s bad, last I used it was in 2019, and even then it wasn’t fantastic.
How do young people meet new people these days? I met my husband while at work. Became official via Facebook status.
I suspect that ordinary avenues for meeting friends in one’s 30’s is also available for meeting partners, only you have to acknowledge that most of the people you meet aren’t going to be single/interested.
I’m an extrovert. I talk to strangers in certain settings, especially where waiting around is normal. One of my best friends, I met in line waiting to get into a standup comedy show. I’ve met other friends in line for concerts and sporting events, too. I’ve also met friends sitting at the bar or some kind of communal table of a restaurant, and connected over the food itself. It just takes the boldness of asking for contact information and then texting “it was nice to meet you today, great talking to you” and then sometimes that becomes a friendship.
But pure strangers are hard to connect with in one interaction. Most of the friends I made after 30 were from repeated interactions over time: neighbors you see regularly, other regulars at the dog park/coffee shop, etc.
And once you’re in a mode where you can make friends, if some of them happen to be single and compatible, maybe you try going out on a date.
And yes, this means that sometimes you’ll meet people at the gym, or at their place of work, or other circumstances where it’s frowned upon to hit on strangers. But making the friendship bridge first can give you that read on the situation of whether they’re actually open to dating.
Interesting.
Is it just that younger people experience more social anxiety or that it’s now frowned upon to be hit on? I used to be hit on a lot between the ages of 19 and 25; it felt gross sometimes but it was the norm. There seems to be more anxiety these days to meet people face to face. I wonder if social media has anything to do with it.
Here’s the great part; you don’t! (I am American and only going outside for vital activities anymore)
Same. And you can’t meet women (according to women) at any of those vital places. The general consensus seems to be don’t ask them out at the store, the gym, a restaurant, whether they’re working there or customers, any hobbies where they just want to be able to live their lifr without being hit on etc. To add, the only things I actually do still leave the house for? Walking on trails where they’d rather run into a bear than a guy on his way to a secluded spot near the creek with a joint and a book, so that seems like a bad way to meet people too now, and where I may have once talked to fellow trail walkers now I just keep to myself there too. I could still go to a bar, but like, I don’t want to, and the last few women I met were pretty bad alcoholics whereas I just drink a little bit sometimes. And even if a woman did approach me at one of those vital places or on the trail, I wouldn’t act on the hints because I’m absolutely positive they’re just being nice and they’re not into me, without them directly stating their intent using clear language.
It’s great!
I’m British, trying the apps but yea other than that there aren’t really any other options for me.
Talking to aomeone might get you mugged
Increasingly, they aren’t.
“that’s the neat part! they don’t!”
I got out of the game right before tinder became a thing. I’m just as lost as you
