The dating app paradox

Originally responding to a flagged comment that stated you were weak for not talking to people in person:

You’re not wrong, but the in-person dating pool is small and the stakes are high. I am very recently divorced, dating single for the first time in nearly 25 years after finding my wife stole $300K from the family and had been carrying on an affair for 18 months while I thought our finances and love were at an all time high.

Dating apps at 45 are a literal fucking cesspool. Like any online community, there are norms and nuances which are incredibly difficult to come up to speed on and, frankly, are miserable to navigate.

That said, finding those who are open to in-person dating interactions is almost impossible these days. We’re missing The Third Place and folks have been trained to use apps to date and thus are unlikely to engage in person.

That said, I was super fortunate to find a beautiful single woman in my apartment building who was not only receptive but has been a really great friend and person to “date” in the traditional sense as I knew it 25 years ago.

But, I was incredibly fortunate and I’m not sure it’ll work long term; putting me right back into the dating apps potentially. Where not wanting to parent additional kids (my own or someone else’s), eventual marriage, or even something super serious or super casual is attractive to me. I am not in a place where sex after 1 to 3 dates is something I desire. Nor am I interested in having super deep emotional conversations or thoughts about some sort of future together before I meet someone.

That said, to poo poo dating apps is a Luddite view of the world. They do work and people are using them. We have regressed as a social society in the last 25 years and these apps offer a wide dating pool for people to explore without The Third Place or the uncomfortable experience of navigating these waters in person and potentially the offensive and negative experiences in-person interactions can create.

Best of luck to everyone out there. I hope you find what you’re looking for and the pains and anxiety that come from either method.

If you're interested in this sort of thing, I can recommend creating an account on your dating app of choice with the opposite gender.

The experiences are as different as night and day - and the different user groups have completely different requirements of the product.

The article is interesting, but IMHO they've really missed the key asymmetries that make good dating apps so hard to build.

Match the similar view or opposite views? :)

For anyone like me, wondering what a Third Place is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place

> And that creates a problem for the sellers of used cars that are actually good. These sellers are like, "What the heck?! I KNOW my car isn't a lemon! It's worth way more than what you're willing to pay!" And so they refuse to sell their used car and exit the market. The result is a market where lemons become more prevalent.

Lots of truth to this. These days, dating apps seem to be exclusively for the desperate, horny, and desperately horny; as the article says, the younger generation doesn't even use them.

Even if you're just a "normal" person not in that top ~20% of attractiveness/desirability, and have no chance of matching with those top 20%, that top 20% still needs to use your app. Otherwise, everyone else using it starts thinking that the app is made for the undesirable. Nobody wants to think of themselves as undesirable! And everyone wants to swipe right on a 10/10 girl or guy and hope they somehow get lucky.

When the only attractive people left on your platform are OnlyFans advertisement bots, your dating app is pretty much fucked, no matter how many genuine 6/10 romance-seekers you have.