• Buelldozer@lemmy.today
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        9 months ago

        Paid apps is where it went wrong. It stopped being something that happened organically and became a gamified P2W experience that catered to narcissists.

        • Asafum@feddit.nl
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          9 months ago

          And the narcissistic aggressive assholes made it 1000x worse for everyone else…

          So many “upgrades” were made to “protect” people but all that really amounted to was: people won’t see your messages unless they already like you (so no introducing yourself). Message limits so you can only send one new message a day, so for us guys who get ignored 99.9999999999% of the time we’re now stuck on the site 10000x longer. No browsing method, only swiping so people “disappear” once you’ve made a decision in that moment. Etc etc…

          Now sites like plenty of fish have fucking live steaming … Talk about narcissists… They even have messages like “not looking, only here to stream.” They’re just milking the desperate guys who throw money at them for validation or whatever…

          Dating, especially as a 30+ in 2024 is disgustingly depressing…

    • SparrowRanjitScaur@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      I don’t get all the hate dating apps get. I met my wife on bumble, so maybe I’m biased. But still, it seems significantly better than the methods previous generations had (blind dating, speed dating, getting introduced to random friends that might happen to have something in common).

      What’s the alternative? You just happen to get lucky enough to meet someone in your daily life that’s a good fit? One of the advantages of dating apps is that you get introduced to a much larger pool of potential partners than you otherwise would, which makes it significantly easier to filter out the wheat from the chaff and find a good fit.

      • Dhs92@programming.dev
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        9 months ago

        I think part of the problem is dating apps keep getting worse and worse as they try to squeeze as much profit out of their users as possible. Tinder just came out with a $500/month tier

        • brognak@lemm.ee
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          9 months ago

          Pretty much this. I remember OG OkCupid and it was rad. It was a site ran by data nerds who wanted to help nerds find each other, and they wrote pretty frequent blog posts about their findings and how they were changing things up all for like ~$15 a month. All that started eroding until they got bought out by Match and its a cesspool of microtransactions now.

      • BakerBagel@midwest.social
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        9 months ago

        Dating apps are designed to keep you on them. They cant make money of you use them for a few months and then delete it.

        Young people are actually using social media platforms like Instagram and Snapchat to date. People you sorta knew in high school or college, share some mutual interests, and then hang out from there and see what happens.

    • khapyman@sopuli.xyz
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      9 months ago

      I’m old enough to be in this relationship for nearly 20 years. It started on a dating site, in the early 2000’s Internet and that site managed to get two introverts into happy union. I think that would look rather different for more social butterflies.

      • spamfajitas@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        The apps hadn’t been so thoroughly ruined by Match Group yet. OKCupid used to publish interesting detailed reports about dating habits. Plenty of Fish wasn’t full of bots and scammers. The apps that charged you for basic features were largely avoided. The experience was weird and new.

        The dating app landscape as it is now is basically just whichever is the latest one until Match acquires it.

      • Rampsquatch@sh.itjust.works
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        9 months ago

        They did and still do. Anybody dating today regardless of their age is likely to try a dating app at least for a bit. Don’t buy into this generational division.

      • The Picard Maneuver@lemmy.worldOP
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        9 months ago

        I’m sure those who are still dating do now, but dating apps didn’t really start becoming popular until the mid 2010s, and millennials were well into their 20s already. Lots were able to take that last chopper out.

        • TheDoozer@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          It was more late 00s. I met my wife on OkC in 2008, and Match and it had been around for awhile at that point. It was still something vaguely embarrassing, and people didn’t usually talk about using those.

        • TheAlbatross@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          9 months ago

          Man, I wasn’t even trying to settle down in my 20’s a little. It wasn’t until my 30’s that I thought about slowing down with the casual hook ups and happened to reconnect with a nice man from high school.

          Do meet up groups not exist anymore? Does Gen Z lack any space to explore mutual hobbies and meet new people?

          • kibiz0r@midwest.social
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            9 months ago

            Does Gen Z lack any space to explore mutual hobbies and meet new people?

            Shared interests have pretty much moved online, free/cheap places for physical meetups are disappearing, and in a car-dependent world you’re not gonna meet someone randomly in-between your planned out destinations.

          • Kalothar@lemmy.ca
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            9 months ago

            I mean it seems the same as it ever was to me, newly single younger Millennial here and I’m seeing a Gen Z woman.

            Seems the biggest change in the last 4ish years is there are a lot more ethical Non-monogamy people, but I’m wondering if that’s just a youth culture thing.

            The woman I’ve been seeing says that she is ENM, but all her actions indicate otherwise to me. Which I don’t mind, Im not really non-monogamous, just pretty open and flexible with things. Also below age 25-30 have a lot more “doesn’t want kids” vibes going on

        • Droggelbecher@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          Those of us who are right on the cusp (let’s say 95-99) all use the apps but end up finding partners irl instead anyway. Either that or not at all. Just not on the apps.