‘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.
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.
Seriously it’s all just carbon copies of each other.
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.
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
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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.
Attractive ppl have their own app it’s called raya.
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.
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.
It’s the title on the article.
When I posted an article I got a message saying it would be deleted unless I altered my title to the title of the article on the site. I didn’t care for the article on the site but rather the content. I haven’t posted since so I don’t know if that has changed, but I was kind of turned off from posting do to that.
That was in the News thread though.
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.
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.
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”
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.
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.
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.
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.
But I rewrote it in the comment you just replied to based on the accurate wording 😅
lol. I didn’t even realize you had rewritten it again. Further driving home the point that the order makes little difference.
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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
app sponsored AI bots to lure people into paying premium
sorry but what do you mean? Can you please explain?
The apps can literally just use AIs to pretend to be real people convincingly to get people to pay for a premium membership to presumably be able to arrange a meetup. After they pay for premium, they’re ghosted, and it’s too late to get their money back.
Among other things
Or have the AI pretend to be the other person for a pair it calculates to match. After the two meet they’ll figure out there was an AI middle man catfishing them both. They’ll have a laugh and live happily ever after.
lol or “pay to win”. Pay to have an AI reply for you that will guarantee to get the conversation going
yes, and how long until this be known? If the company self-sabotage itself so profoundly it will just be the end of the company. I’m not saying that their end goal is to survive forever, but this is incredibly shortsighted.
People would still use the apps anyway or use them specifically to talk to AIs. An AI-driven app that is honest about what it is would probably do a lot more to help than anything else, come to think of it. 🤔
Pretty much what pinkdrunkenelephants said earlier, but more likely just fake profiles that are filled with “interesting” random tidbits. On the off case that they match, some conversation might happen and I’d actually bet on the bot eventually ghosting or coming up with an excuse to leave the person and wishing them luck, which more easily avoids being found out and also has a good chance of keeping the person in the app.
Join blah you have 3 premium messages waiting…
still not get it. You imply that these “premium messages” will be messages by AI bot accounts ?
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.
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.
So pump n dump has more than one meaning here.
Welcome to capitalism. It may not be the best system…but the oligarchs say it’s the only one we can have (until NeoFeudalism).
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.
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Yeah and honestly ironically I think such an app could also have success with lesbians if it wasn’t for the fact that it would include a lot of “surprise my boyfriend wants to join/watch”. I know plenty of women who want casual sex with men but decide that the risks aren’t worth rushing in.
And yeah not all or even most gay men are the grindr audience, but their casual sex scene is an enduring part of their culture. And it’s because horny dumbass 21 year old men who are attracted to men can just fuck other horny dumbass 21 year old men.
Though I do think there’s been interesting cultural shifts they’ve developed due to grindr. Namely many have begun employing safety techniques traditionally used by women on dates.
And I’ve noticed that part of the queer backlash against grindr and the like is that it doesn’t build culture or community like the things it replaced. You go to a gay bar, get irresponsibly drunk looking for a casual lay, maybe you find it, maybe you find someone who isn’t your type that you chat with all night, maybe you find friends old or new. I hate that our and their in particular main cultural hub is bars, but that’s something really important for community building that living on the apps will cost you.
Grindr went through a period where it was really shit, but in the last two years or so it has gotten a lot better.
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.
I know rejection is scary, but its not reallyna reflection of you rather then a reflection of someones preference. You could be a greek god and still get rejected.
Keep trying, but in the meantime also focus on you. Do what you need to do to love yourself, and then the rest will follow
I appreciate the kind words! I’m personally doing well dating wise. With one exception it’s all been people met through apps though.
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.
I have several unpleasant memories of asking people out in college that I’d been spending time with, only for them to be like
’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.
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.
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’
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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.
If you’re demi how are you judging people based on images?
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.
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
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.
What does WLW mean?
probably Woman Looking for Woman
I was guessing White Lesbian Woman
ye that works too
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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.
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.
I can’t stress enough that I understand the mechanics at play. I am a software engineer. It’s literally my job to step back and understand how systems work.
I’m saying my initial failure, and the failure of most users, is choosing to compromise their authenticity for short term gains, if long term connections are your objective.
Look at any dating app forum. They’re all obsessed about min-maxing your profiles. They’ve got repositories of pickup lines. They’re all running under the faulty premise that you want to maximize the number of matches.
That is a great strategy if you are looking for a hookup. That is a great strategy if you’re looking to maximize dopamine hits.
It is an intrinsically self-defeating approach if you’re looking for a steady long term relationship.
If you’re looking for a steady long-term relationship, there are a few factors that have to align, and one of them is you. If you’re not getting matches at all, it’s discouraging.
And my understanding is that the algorithm for apps like Tinder (as opposed to apps with compatibility algorithms, like OkCupid) make it less likely that you’ll be shown to a given person the more that you’ve been swiped left on. That means there’s a good chance you won’t be mutually shown to someone who would be a great match because your profile (including your pictures) isn’t broadly appealing.
When dealing with an app like this, if you have no quality matches, working to improve the appeal of your profile and get more right swipes, even by people you aren’t interested in, is actually your best strategy to get more quality matches.
My personal experience anecdotally confirmed this, though I haven’t used Tinder in over 5 years, so maybe they’ve improved. But back then if I put something in my profile designed to weed out bad matches, I got fewer matches, period - including of the people I wanted to match with. And I’m not talking lines that are generally looked down on, anyway, like “swipe left if X.” Specifying the kind of dating I was looking for meant I got fewer matches from people who were also looking for that.
What worked for me was to figure out how to signal to the people I wanted to match without being unappealing to the people I didn’t, to swipe left on any obvious bad matches, and to try to have organic, authentic conversations with as many matches as I could, even if those conversations didn’t go anywhere, because Tinder rewarded that kind of engagement.
I guess I can still only speak anecdotally, but the moment I stopped trying to be broadly appealing, my matches tanked by like 50x.
But the quality of the matches from that point on skyrocketed. Basically every match turned into a LTR. Then a marriage in the ultimate case.
But maybe I’m just good looking enough that despite my best efforts, the floor on my appeal was still high. (/s)
Anyhow, if you’re planning on completely abandoning the platform anyhow… Why NOT change the approach? What is the worst that could happen? Meeting people IRL and on an app have never been mutually exclusive endeavours. Shackling yourself to a modality if interacting with the service because someone told you it was the best way of doing things or that you’re gaming the system is some kind of Andrew Tate Neil Strauss thinking. If it isn’t serving you: change it. Don’t double-down on a losing strategy.
And, sure, “abandon apps completely” is A way to change things up… but I hope people could learn to incrementally experiment and innovate rather than have step 1 just be burn it down and walk away.
Still a valuable anecdote IMO. But a 50x decrease is substantial, especially for guys. Some guys might not have ever had 50 matches. More importantly, do you think you wouldn’t have had, or noticed, your high quality matches if your profile had stayed more broadly appealing?
The impact depends on the app, too. OkCupid has different algorithms than Tinder, and those might punish a particular person less. So switching apps up might work really well for some people.
But it’s also an unfortunate reality that dating apps are less useful than they used to be, largely because the companies are more focused on monetizing them than on providing the best experience possible. If you’ve tried a few apps, a few different approaches on each app, have had people review your profile and so on, and it’s still not working, then you should definitely focus your efforts elsewhere.
More importantly, do you think you wouldn’t have had, or noticed, your high quality matches if your profile had stayed more broadly appealing?
It was my goal to arrange an in person date pretty much ASAP assuming there weren’t any massive red flags in chat. And, I certainly wasn’t drowning in matches with my initial approach either, I absolutely had the time to go on a date with every match I got… Not like anyone was in danger of falling through the cracks. So, I don’t think there was any danger that I wouldn’t have noticed good matches.
I don’t know. Maybe I’m also burying the hook here but I’m NOT college aged anymore. I was in my early 30s when I switched it up. There is a pretty big demographic shift of singles in that age range that makes it less unfavorable for men. Maybe it had nothing to do with my approach and I just coasted to greater success on the prevailing winds and have been wrongly taking credit for it. I dunno.
Without a doubt though, my own relationship with the apps themselves improved significantly when I stopped treating it like a game to win. It’s so much easier on your mental state to stop micromanaging your image and just faithfully represent yourself knowing and coming to peace with the fact that a lot of people won’t like you. Maybe it was age, but maybe it was just the maturity that came with age. Maybe you can get that maturity without necessarily having the age. I don’t know. I don’t have enough lives to do a properly controlled experiment.
Dating sucks, though. I don’t ever miss being single. My heart goes out to all y’all.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
For what it’s worth that’s been my experience on Hinge.
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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
Yes can confirm maybe 80% or more of single male friends were on dating apps. I found my wife on tinder.
I found my wife on tinder.
I hope you guys are doing okay now. Infidelity is a hard thing to get past.
How wide we talking here?
Fixed.
They were definitely using Tinder when I was in college
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
Some coincidence
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…
I remember back in the day if people found out you were on a dating website, you were basically totally ostracized. Then people realized, well shit, if I’m going to be ostracized for looking for love online, I might as well do it on the free website (POF). But POF basically became the “drug addict and single mom machine”. Then dating apps came out and it became trendy and cool because you didn’t have to actually connect with anyone and you could be aloof and detached and have NSA sex with strangers. Now everyone hates dating apps again. Normalize talking to people about real things in public!
I’m not sure if this applies where you are but since covid it is HARD to talk to people irl. I’m chatty and will strike up conversations everywhere I go. Before covid most people engaged. Since they look at me like I’m grow>ng a second head. Dating apps have always worked well for me though. Damn well.
I remember people would lie about how they met because they didn’t want to say they met online. Oh how the times have been-a-changing
Depending on the context, my partner and I don’t like sharing that we met on an app either.
I had a girlfriend that I met on a dating app and her mother was really hung up on the whole dating app thing. She never liked it if we told people that we met on a dating app.
So we both started coming up with ridiculous stories about how we met. I think at one point we claimed that my girlfriend was a Chinese mail ordered bride despite her not being Chinese and having red hair. Used to do it with a straight face too, used to really confuse people.
If y’all met at a brothel or while at the Jan 6th rally, I’d get it. I don’t get it for most other things though.
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
2 to 1? Lol! I bet it’s more like 7 to 1.
There’s nothing they can do about that…
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.
They do, that comment was about there not being enough women on dating apps compared to men
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.
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.
Why is that wall needed? Can you expand on this more?
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.
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?
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That’s not what I said
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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.
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.
