No, they used to be more or less good - they all had slightly different vibes instead of being the exact same thing with different fonts. Okcupid used to publish a lot of fun data and was kind of a middle ground, Match was known for being for more "serious" daters, and plenty of fish tended to be a little trashier - not that there wasn't plenty of overlap, that was just kind of the reputations they had. You could pay for things but you could also do just fine with free accounts, and the ads focused on how many people had had success with them.

Now they're all owned by the same company and it shows, and they've decided dumbing the experience down to the most superficial stuff and letting bots and people advertising OF or their MLMs take over is fine. I don't think any of them are worth the time they take to download at this point.

Can you be a bit more clear on what you mean by failing?

I've met my girlfriend on Tinder and had some nice dates / hookups because of it. Are 98% of the women not intetested because of my average looks and being overweight? Sure, but it's the 2% that made wit worthwhile. Tinder was getting more expensive depending on your age back then but I think I would use an app again if I needed to.

I've met some people that I would otherwise never have met, made some rich corporation even richer in the process.. 🤷

Without wanting to sound patronising, dating apps absolutely do work, but it's the users that make them work. If your profile photos are shit, or your chat is uninteresting or unfunny, you're not going to succeed.

I'm a middle-aged male divorcee who'd been off and on Tinder for about 4 years, and I'd describe myself as average-looking, but I met a number of women on it. Without the dating apps, my in-person shyness would have prevented me from meeting anyone. They were an absolute godsend for me.

Well, think about it.

They profit off their users by either charging them for a service, selling user data, and/or advertisement. If their dating app was very successful and quickly matched users together, they wouldn't be using the app very long and the company would lose potential profit.

This probably wasn't the case in the earlier days of the internet but it certainly is now. They want you hooked and coming back every day so they can get maximum profit off you.

Idk what to tell you. Are you following rules 1 and 2 of online dating cause while I haven't settled down with a woman yet, I've met multiple gfs through tinder and bumble. Some lasted years

They were "decent" 14 ish years ago. And they worked a fair amount. I know married friends who met on them.

That said the Internet in general has fallen off a cliff with enshitification...

I know people today that still use them and do ok.

"Free" anything is going to be complete shit.

Like anything else in life it takes work, during 8 months I was doing it I spent 10-15 hours on it. And that wasn't "scrolling" profiles. I was constantly tweaking my profile, looking for was to improve it. Also when I did "match" someone I worked on my greetings, interesting things to say, etc.

I would even keep snippets of texts. (The one I was on had a question/answer part.

Dating is a lot of work for many people.

I met my partner through a dating site. In the two years prior to that, I had used the site to meet over two dozen other women, which led to no long-term relationships but did result in a few short flings.

I can say that what helped me was expectation management. This was actually my second time using a dating site, and the first time around I was super picky, looking for "green flags." Correspondingly, I messaged very few women, and met even fewer (four in two years). The second time, I realized that someone having a sparse profile didn't mean they were a boring or lazy person. Sometimes it does, but other times it just means they aren't very good at writing about themselves.

I'll also say there's only so much the metrics of dating sites can tell you about someone and your compatibility with them. There's a level of response bias to the questionnaires on these sites, i.e. people answer the questions based on what they think a potential partner might like, not their genuine beliefs and preferences. You'll never discover your actual compatibility with someone unless you talk to them, so I took the approach of, "unless there are explicit deal breakers in your profile, I'll ask you on a date and we'll see how things go."

There's also the expectation management for the frequency of matches, responses to messages, dates, and beyond. Dating apps aren't magic machines that will get you hooked up in hours. They take work, and you'll see a lot of rejection (most of it just utter silence). There can be long dry spells. Sometimes you'll need to take a break because you've literally messaged everyone on the site and you need to wait for more members. And sometimes, they just won't work for some people. That sounds harsh, but it's true. Success for many of these sites and apps is highly dependent on one's physical attractiveness, and some people simply did not win the genetic lottery.

I married someone I met on one of those sites. But that was years ago.

Now that one company owns most of them, they're a lot less effective, as eHarmony basically gutted the interesting features of their competitors and let them/encouraged them to become bot infested OF pitch platforms.

Duolicious? That owl has been busy, I see.

No, they work

The first dating apps designed for straight people always had an unbalanced ration of men and women, which appears to have gotten worse over time. Early on a few people I know did find people, dated, and married. They were mostly people who had niche interests for our area and were successfully connecting with people at least a couple hours away who they never would have met in person.

But that was well over a decade ago and I don't know of anyone having success since those early years.

Well, sorta. As someone else pointed out the economic incentives for most dating app owners are diametrically opposed to the needs of the users. There is also a huge consolation in the market with the majority of the apps by user count being owned by a single company which leads to enshittification.

There are a few exceptions but they very much aren’t for everyone.

OKCupid from 20 years ago was great before it sold out. But it’s only accessible to time travelers.

Next are the more event based or hookup apps which tend to cater to kinksters, swingers, poly, and queer folk. I’m thinking of things like FetLife, Grinder and Plura. They work well for their audience since those communities tend to have events that people will keep coming back for even if they have successfully found someone on the app. In fact success finding someone might make them more likely to keep on the app and bring in their friends.

But for monogamous straight people? Dating apps are a hellscape.

Sorta related, if you’re really interested in using them and are a straight cis person I highly recommend trying them out from the other side. Create a more or less generic account of the opposite gender and see what kinds of messages, likes, or whatever you end up with. It will be mind boggling how different it is from what you are used to and give you an idea of what you will need to do to actually make a match.

I think apps and websites where you can see everyone without limits or algorithms are fine. Apps like those still exist. They are just like social networks with no gamification.

So I don't think it's the apps, friends. If it hurts no matter where you touch, maybe it's your finger that's broken...

I haven’t touched them in 5 years, but Hinge was the best of all of them. The thing is designed to make it as easy as possible to set up a profile packed to the brim with conversation-starting prompts, and then it’s stupid easy to start a conversation with someone else because you can respond to a specific prompt on someone else’s profile.

In my experience, it works really well if you set someone up to ask a question

grindr

faceless profile, blank, no information: "no pic no chat"

it's all stupid hypocrites looking for low-effort validation fix.

I think they are worse now than they used to be, but they do work for some people. I was always suspicious of the PII gathered so I stayed away from them. Craigslist personals worked back when they existed, and Reddit can work. An important tip: copyedit your SPAG (spelling, punctuation, and grammar) to hell and back before sending a response, since the slightest error WILL hurt your chances.

Dating apps are SUPER saturated now. Didn't used to be like that way back in the beginning. OKCupid was cool because it was free and had no limitations. Bumble is one of the better ones these days, as far as I'm concerned.

I think apps and websites where you can see everyone without limits or algorithms are fine. Apps like those still exist. They are just like social networks with no gamification.

So I don't think it's the apps, friends. If it hurts no matter where you touch, maybe it's your finger that's broken...

I think there was a time fairly early on when at least one was built to do the job it was advertised to.

I think more than half of Lemmy's members were born after that though.

I remember being shocked in the early 90’s listening to plans for a dating site. The focus was on collecting and selling demographics. Even the private info being collected was driven by what sold to advertisers more than what helped people relate to each other

Yes, dating apps have always been a fraud because making a social connection was always secondary to selling you

My partner and I found each other on OkC over 4 years ago. I had been on dating apps for maybe 5-6 years prior, whereas I was basically her first match

If you are male, then this video could clarify a bit: https://youtu.be/x3lypVnJ0HM Main point is that twice as many guys want a relationship comparing to gals, so you should really stand out in a quirky way to get noticed

They work. I don't know why people like to perpetuate that dating apps make suboptimal matches. Dating apps match people up on some basic metrics. It's up to the people to form connections. They dont have a magic ability to keep people from long term relationships.

If anything people might be more picky or idealistic because dating apps exist, so they'll likely not commit because of their high standards or FOMO. But that's more of a society issue not the dating apps themselves.

I mean I don't date, but I've never once heard of a person who met on a dating app and actually got together with them, I have heard of instant message platforms working though.

They work sporadically, but you have to fit a few fairly specific archetypes to get a significant amount of matches. There's more options that you can shoot for beyond hyper-attractive guy but not a lot more.

If you're a generic man looking to find a generic woman to have a generic relationship with, then the odds are stacked against you for most of them.

Yes they’re a scam