‘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.
‘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.
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.
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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