‘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.

  • Windex007@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    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.

    • hedgehog@ttrpg.networkEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      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.