I kissed dating (apps) goodbye... .

2021-09-17 initial draft, published 2021-10-12

Yes, the title is a reference towards which future lambastation is reserved. Until then. For now, let’s talk about dating apps. Actually, more of a monologue as I’ll just give my thoughts and experiences. There’s probably really nothing new here and you may hear many of these ideas resonating across society. I’m just adding my say, even if only to reinforce the mix and acknowledge yes, I too was here, experienced that, and it was so.

Disclaiming Section

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Ok here’s the real difficulty. In this post there may be the idea that some people are more desirable in a relationship than others. On the one hand this seems obvious. We all know it’s true from our own experiences yet choosing people to be around is nothing less than discrimination. So, in this day and age of toxic PC we might pause to guilt monger ourselves. However, bear in mind:

Acknowledgement of this idea doesn’t necessarily imply any ill intent for the subject.
There is a lot at play here. Limited resources, time, energy and efficiency. We need to be wise, smart and ruthless.

If this idea challenges you try and use it as an opportunity for introspection and improvement.

History and contextualization

Maybe a few brief points for some background:

I’m a fair introvert and have never had a girlfriend, at least not in any formal or traditional sense. Put briefly, I think I spent most of my youth scared of / intimidated by and ignoring girls.
I joined Tinder in late 2017, in Johannesburg.
My experience of Tinder in Johannesburg was fairly pleasant, I would say overall positive. There were a fair number of high quality girls on there and I matched with a few of them – although only a couple a year, I did meet some of them and went on some coffee and dinner dates – which was a step out there for sheltered me.
I moved to Cape Town in late 2020. Since it was a new city, I didn’t really know anyone and I was fairly keen to meet a special someone I decided to try and stack the odds in my favour and bought Tinder Gold. I think this was the start of the downhill slide:
- For a start, with Tinder Gold you can see who likes you… . Horrible as it is to say my perception was that a) Not many people liked me and b) My perception was the sample of people who had liked me seemed to form a less attractive / lower quality¹ group than those I would generally want to be swiping on.
- It seemed that, even with Tinder Gold, it was harder in Cape Town than Johannesburg to get matches, get a reply from those matches (extremely rare) or meet one of those matches (total 2 over a period of 9 months). It was becoming clear that things were not working out. I suspect a few problems
  1. Capetonians are more inbred and cliquey, and more likely to meet and date people from their inner circles than someone they find on an app
  2. Tinder’s algorithm (may have) got worse over time, sending me as a lower attractiveness person down to the invisible portion of the stack. Speaking of which – I’d kept the same account from the start – Tinder’s algorithm, like all things digital, definitely benefits from a good reboot.
  3. I may have been shadow-banned early on, leading to my profile being practically invisible, who knows. You can search the interwebs for shadow-banning but my understanding is that an account flagged for moderation may be placed in some suspended state whilst pending review. There’s no solid or official info on this though, so there’s no knowing whether it’s true of if your account is in such a suspended state.

I’d also tried the other dating apps. OKCupid is the best concept and lets you send intros for free but lacks user base in South Africa. I never seemed to get a match on Bumble, Hinge also had a small user base and Badoo was… well by the time I got there I think it’s also a case of too many apps. It takes effort to set them up and use them, so you shouldn’t need five of them. Also, if the one with more user base isn’t going to work it seems less likely that you’ll get anywhere on a more minority app. The effort I put into my first messages to a new match I think also went down over time, a bit of a case of “Oh well, can’t expect a reply anyway so don’t bother too much”

I got banned from Tinder in early September 2021. So I didn’t really kiss it goodbye, more like it slammed the door on me but hey, close enough. To be honest, I was mildly surprised, I don’t really think of myself as the kind of person who would be banned from an app like Tinder. Let’s be honest, Tinder doesn’t exactly have the reputation of the app where saints meet to organize their tea parties. Who knows what’s next, maybe I can get banned from hell or something. I suspect who you offend is probably more relevant than how you offend. To be honest I was also slightly relieved though, I’d known I needed a break from the app (or, it wasn’t helping me) for a while but due to the easy access I hadn’t managed to properly ditch it. So a solid excuse to quit was more of a God send than anything worthy on the part of Tinder.

The pros

Similar dating motive. Everyone is there for (fairly) similar reasons. No need to check for rings (mostly) before asking someone out.
Wider sample space, you could encounter people you might never otherwise have
Less initial effort. You can start swiping quite easily. Flexible with regards to time and space (works during lockdown – or does it?)

The cons

Apps motive is making money rather than getting you a good match
Algorithms suck
Small user base
Sample biased / low quality
Rejection is still there, self esteem
Shopping experience for girls, over-valuation.
Time

In more detail

Dating motive

In general, people on a dating app are single and looking for a romantic relationship. This simplifies some things. You don’t need to be as concerned about checking if someone has a significant other before making a move on them – a fair concern for me in the real world. More realistically though, people are on dating apps for a variety of reasons. They might just be testing the waters, looking for a different type of relationship to you or anything else. In any case the sample of people is much more involved with the search of a romantic relationship than a sample of people obtained, say, from a shopping centre, so there’s less filtering to do.

Sample space

On the whole this is a con. It pains me to say this as I don’t like pronouncing evaluation on people but I need to be free to say what I observe and think, and I am also included in this mix. The sample of people on dating apps seems to me to be skewed in such a way that is has on average, lower quality people than a sample from the real world. Here’s a Venn diagram to explain:

Venn diagram illustrating the set of girls and their sub-sets.

Not everyone on dating apps is of lower than average quality as there will always be outliers – but on average – that is my perception. I could be wrong.

Let’s be honest, highly desirable people would generally be snapped up by someone inside their social circle. I would imagine that if this doesn’t happen it would signify either a small social circle, low desirableness or low intent to be in a relationship, none of which seem like good relationship indicators. So the mere resort to a dating app does in some way acknowledge a shortcoming in one of these domains, possibly explaining the skewed dating app sample.

Time and Effort

Dating apps tend to have low setup cost and you can be swiping before you’d have made it to the nearest pub. You can also be using them at times when people don’t normally hang out at pubs, and you can also swipe on people who are at a different pub than yours (useful during lockdown).

There are some problems though. In real life, you can tell if someone likes you or at least doesn’t find you repulsive based on body language alone. You can also tell that quite quickly. Over an app, who knows. Might take a month to match. Hours or days for the first few messages. Or to realize they’re not even bothered to reply. Then if you do eventually meet the real person is different from the app impression. So whether dating apps save time is questionable.

As my dating app experience went downhill I knew I needed to place less emphasis on them. The problem though is that you gravitate to the easy solution.

Rejection and self esteem (and app accountability)

An oft toted pro of dating apps is that they remove the element of rejection from approaching potential mates. The idea is that only matching with matches and hearing nothing back from the rest somehow removes the element of rejection.

Utter garbage.

For a start, I have a reasonable memory and if I swipe on a pretty girl I will remember it. So, if she hasn’t swiped back in a months time, that’s rejection. Now, do that a thousand times, and that’s a thousand times worth of rejection.

Add to the mix that many of the profiles could be stale. I’ve seen profiles of attractive girls several months later, so either they were done with their interluding relationship and back for another (unlikely, as the photos would probably have been updated, the context of the photo makes it more memorable than just the face). Or maybe guys just don’t like attractive girls and left them hanging. Or maybe apps just leave dormant profiles in the decks.

There are two issues here. Firstly, you can be rejected by a dating app profile that no longer represents the state of a real person or could even be a bot… .

Secondly, where’s the accountability on the part of the app? If it shows me a profile it leads to the belief of the existence of a potential mate. If that person doesn’t exist, or is no longer available, that’s basically false advertising, lies and deception. If apps wanted to be truthful, they would remove inactive profiles and show a heartbeat or other form of alive state. Yet none seem to.

I would also add that it would be better to get a rejection notification. From the app accountability perspective, at least we know then that the person on the other end is real. Rejection can also be constructive and a necessary wake up call, but I don’t think the the dating app approach (i.e., zero feedback besides matches) is helpful.

Let’s also highlight that this is not a simple system. If you’re on the more attractive scale, you’ll probably have people sending you a constant stream of affirmation and get a self esteem boost, or ego inflation, or whatever it is. Apparently this is why many girls are on dating apps. However, if you’re on the slightly less attractive end of the scale, you might have a constant stream of unmatched swipes and a corresponding knock on your self esteem. The people who think that dating apps remove rejection are probably in some neutral space in there or just not thinking or feeling hard enough.

I guess standardization and regulation of dating apps will need to become a thing. In my opinion, the potential for social damage is fairly plausible.

The algorithm, monetization and usability

Dating app algorithms are spoken about on the inter-webs with perhaps more effort than I’d put in so I won’t try and describe them too much. Let’s just say I think it’s a bit retarded. It’s basically saying these attractive people have lots of likes, so inundate them with millions more by sending them to the top of all the stacks… Makes a lot of sense.

One thing we can’t ignore is that most of these apps are monetized. I can’t help but feel their objective is to not work well enough that you need to buy paid features for any success. Back to the reboot idea, when you have a fresh app account the algorithm boosts you and you tend to get more matches per unit time. The match rate gradually dwindles (at least, for some of us), arguably motivating people to purchase paid features.

Now, there’s a story on the web about how some math genius hacked OKCupid to find the woman of his dreams. Quite an elaborate scheme. 12 fake profiles, bots mining data to be analyzed in order to optimally answer questions in order to better match target profiles… . The irony is, heck man it’s a dating app already! Why do we need to hack it to make it work? Next up: Mechanical genius hacks his car to drive to work! If that’s the extent you need to go to most of us mere mortals are pretty screwed. Even if you’re a maths PhD candidate with Python skills living in Johannesburg, you don’t have the sample size of US cities.

Advice

The problem with advice is it’s generally too hard to give generic advice that works for all people and situations unless it’s a really generic problem. So my first advice is don’t take any. This isn’t saying you should shun dating apps. By all means, give them a go, the algorithms may be better in your favour.

App accountability

After writing this I realized that a recurring theme was how little effort the apps make to provide any form of accountability / feedback / generally useful information. So here’s a summary in one place.

If it has the potential to depress or mentally affect many people, should it be regulated and standardized?
If we knew what represented “state of the art” in terms of mental well-being and dating apps, should that best practice be standardized and regulated?
There’s no accountability or intent to be truthful on the part of the app:
- You could be swiping on and rejected/ignored by stale profiles or bots. There are no useful metrics of whether a profile is active
- Your profile could be sent so far to the bottom of the deck by the algorithm that you are essentially invisible yet the app will give you no feedback of whether people are seeing or responding to your profile. There are no metrics of how many people saw your profile or how they responded
- Your profile could be shadow-banned so your swipes have no effect but you have no way of knowing… .

Conclusion

Dating apps:

A good stepping stone in terms of getting started if you’re closeted
Lack user base / reduced sample size
Definitely not state of the art
Could form a small part of a more comprehensive toolkit, although the struggle will be to keep it a small part since it’s the lazy solution
Could wreck your self esteem
Should probably be regulated and standardized given their potential effects on society. At minimum, metrics like how many people liked / disliked your profile vs time period. Otherwise you’re just swiping with the matrix.
The algorithms / luck / local conditions may be better in your favour, so by all means don’t take this as advice not to try these apps out
Probably better off without them in the long run

Footnotes

1
I don’t like the suggestion that there could be such a thing as a lower quality person. But let’s be honest, you know what I mean, and when looking for a romantic partner you need to be judgemental and discerning in terms of what works for you. I’m not suggesting that my perception of what determines quality / desirability in terms of a romantic partner is a universally shared perception. If this is too much for you to accept without taking offense, you shouldn’t be reading my blog. See the disclaimer section.

I kissed dating (apps) goodbye… .