The digital supermarket of human solitude (dating apps)

Posted on Sat 07 December 2024 in reportage

I've always been mega curious of dating apps. Finding myself single in my late 20s, I live in a time when I can avoid being even one second with myself and immediately enter the supermarket of souls love-hunting from their sofas, eating chips and binge-watching netflix. There's all the prerequisites for a thrilling experience.

Bumble is where the cool people hang out, they said

I'm as expert in dating apps as I am in kangaroos' mating habits, but I think I've understood that Tinder is the new MySpace: that's where it all started, but it's not where the cool stuff happens these days. Cool people are on Bumble, I'm told, so that's the first I download. I have no idea how to display myself, how to give myself away as a person who is interesting, funny, emotionally competent, curious, longing for adventures and a nest at the same time ... all without saying any of those things. I must communicate that with less than 6 pictures, a short About me, and max 3 prompts. Prompts are things like "Let's debate this: ...", or "My personal hell is: ...", and you are supposed to fill them with something personal that will hook your prospective mating candidates (ex. "My personal hell is: you").

But here's the thing: anything I write sounds cringe. I write things, I leave them there a few hours, come back to them, and shiver. It's like if I were to convince a stranger on the street to go on a date, and she would tell me "Come on, impress me, convince me", and the best I could do was to poorly juggle 3 balls and probably break her glasses while trying.

My first About me attempt is: "Math graduate turned writer training to be Feldenkrais teacher. If I could meet you in the forest while you're looking at a squirrel, that would be quite something."
I know I'm trying to communicate that yes, I studied math; but no, I'm not your typical mathematician -- I am a writer (and while that's technically true, as I am a professional technical writer, I'm certainly not the pipe-smoker daydreaming guy wondering what my main character would do when finding out her wife is gay); and also look, I'm doing this crazy thing you don't know about: Feldenkrais. But hey, how am I gonna get that across? My summary just reads like a pitiful grocery list. Not to talk about that failed bit of poetry at the end.
I fill in the prompt 2 truths and a lie: "I judge people by how they load the dishwasher. I have a tatoo on my lower back. I like to look at trees from below."
More balls on glasses. Anybody could guess the lie.
My declared interests: time offline, hiking, yoga, writing, classical music.
Shivers.
I get the first-hand experience of what I imagined: shrinking my whole self to a few words is damn hard, if at all possible.

How does this swiping thing work?

I can't wait to start browsing through people, so I save whatever drama I've written, tell myself I will revisit it, and are finally admitted into the human bazar. I immediately start seeing a breadth people. It's like stepping into a new world. It's refreshing, and encouraging: among a veterinarian with a passion for mandarin and a tatoo patent, and a pedagogue working with quasi blind refugees with an interest in vintage cinema, there will be somebody for me too, I think to myself.

I start fantasizing about how it would be to date some of these people. I immediately start texting a bunch.

Babi (24) peeks half-serious from a door jab in a white mini dress. She looks 14-and-a-fourth years old, plans to graduate in 2026, has a collection of Harry Potter wands, is "fascinated by good conversations and wine", and defines herself as "polyamorous and kinky". Who am I to doubt it. I have no idea what a 14 24-year-old poly kink would find exciting, so I text her inviting her to look at meaning nr. 6 of the 2nd etymology for kink on wiktionary.
Barbara (28) leaves a voice prompt for I'll fall for you if, saying: "you tell me I have a cute accent, a nice voice, and you teach me how to play the drums". I text her that she indeed has a cute accent and a soothing voice, but that I hate noisy bongos. Maybe I can teach her some piano, or acroyoga.
I continue commenting on people at random: to a girl in nature, "I can really see how you're smiling from your eyes: was it a special moment for you?"; to musicians, "What is a recent piece you played that moved you?"
The thing is, all my comments fall flat. I'm not the most fascinating texter, I'm sure, but I also don't think I'm doing terribly. I'm quite early in the journey but I feel already a slight sense of rejection, of not being enough, of needing to be funnier than I am, of doing whatever to get a reply.

There's an infinite carousel of girls with pictures shot at the mirror.
Plia (26) has it in the toilet, with a washing machine on the background -- what is she trying to communicate? Is she a toilet agent? Is she is a washing machines nerd?
Dogpower (30) hopelessly pushes an empty cart in what looks like the desolation of IKEA Hong Kong at 11am of a monday, self pickup section.
Taza (28) is looking for four/threesomes, but not with gay couples ("Only dating with my boyfriend: FFM, MMF, FMFM").
Lo (25) "Loves horses, gym, natural living, the ocean", and I imagine her wearing pine needles riding an unsaddled horse straight out of the gym entrance, heading for the ocean shoreline.
A very surprising number writes "The Lord in the heart ✝️", and it makes me think that if all the fourteen deeply christian 25-year-olds would get their own dating app, both they and we would be happier. A prompt of one of them is: "What makes a relationship great is: praying together", which makes me question my assumption that religions had got out of fashion 30 years ago: she's looking for a pray buddy.
Franci (31) has four pictures and in all of them her gaze unequivocally says: "I will kill you and eat you during intercourse." I'll never find myself alone in a room with her, and I would cross the street should I see her 100m ahead on the sidewalk.
Giorgia (28) "In my past life I was most likely a witch who was burned in fire. In this life a digital nomad and a yoga teacher", featuring a picture of her on the shoreline with a wave that reaches beyond her head. She may soon discover what her third life may be like (and maybe it will finally be the one in which her father is not ashamed of answering colleagues when they ask "What does Giorgia do?").
Barbara (30): "It's also fine to take it easy sometimes with deep conversations." Who knows how it is when it's not easy then. 5 days of ocean sailing trips; 2 days of deep conversations to unwind?
Kail (31) "Being with me is like being at a Tivoli. There is good food and good companionship and you will have a fun time." What's not to like?
Angela (26) shows up with a really unneeded close-up of her washing her teeth, complete with purple brush and mouth dropping foam. My love is through the roof.

Sometimes what looks like a girl I could spend an afternoon with does pop up (and I probably mistakenly swipe her left), but largely it's either extremely blonde and extremely swappable scandinavian girls, or extremely troubled people that make it my way.

A worring number of people has pets, and explicitly writes things like "You must love dogs for it to work". I hate pets.
There is an absolutely alarming number of women with dogs in all forms: dogs sitting by their side at the restaurant; dogs that get kissed and seduced; dogs receiving kibble; dogs in bed; dogs so high having their paws on their owner's shoulders while they stand (do they even still classify as pets? It looks like footage from Avatar).
Mia (27) "Bulbo is my life, if you don't like red cats I don't like you.", and that's all we know of her: her life is a cat. They say mathematicians are mono-thematic -- at least my life doesn't destroy sofas and pots.
Helena (25) "You must like dogs, otherwise GTFO. Shower before a date". A woman that knows what she wants.
Pria (29) "I dare say I have Sweden's most beautiful dog." I dare say you can swallow it whole.
I find it representative of the loneliness we westerners have accepted for ourselves in this century, and of how much we think we can fill it with a pet.
A girl has three mice.
An astounding number has something with horses: they have one, they want one, they breed one, they pet one, they ride one. An ever more surprising number has pictures with goats, usually at very close distance. Where are these goats? I've yet to stroll through the city and find the opportunity to take a selfie with a goat. Where do they keep them? They must be somewhere.

After a while scrolling through people, it's quick to forget that it's people I am swiping right and left. People with their thoughts, emotions, sensations, movement. I start categorizing people in my mind, based on how they have filled in their prompts.
There's people who write things like "Let's debate this: white or red wine?" -- people who wouldn't find a personality even if they stepped on it and there was a layer of superglue on top.
Other try to be funny but come out so goofy that they induce more pity than sexiness: "My friends ask me for advice about: relationships I don't have".
Other try to be poetically mundane but come out just confused about life: "Dating me is like: eating pasta." I have no idea what to make out of it.
There's a smaller group who thinks that online != offline, and communicate straight out things they would never tell a stranger: "You should not go out with me if: you don't like spiders. I have 5 baby spiders at home <3 I also don't have any boobs anymore." The boobs part is quasi neutral, but 5 baby spiders makes me doubt I'll ever sleep at hers.
There's those of such practicality that I imagine would discuss mortgage conditions on first dates, "In free time active with among others art exhibits, running, and fishing". She'd probably be great for discussing home insurances and going to the friday opera and ordering non-ikea furniture; probably not as great for passionate [activity-of-choice]. I don't know how I could get infatuated by someone who declares herself, of all the things in the world, "interested in fishing and art exhibits". It's probably me.

I keep getting women who have absolutely nothing in common with me. I'm starting to realize I go through different phases: the app proposes different groups of girls but clusters them together.
There's the phase of very sporty girls: one is interested in "Basket and boxing" and I'm already scared; another flexes her bicep and has written Beast on top of it with Microsoft Paint; half a million show up in tight leggins and do weight lifting. Unless they are going to lift me and save me the monthly transport ticket, I don't know how to find that interesting.
There's the phase of composedly seated girls, with a glass of wine and the emptiness in their soul.
The phase of non-caucasic women -- and then what shall we do, christmas at mine and easter with food poisoning in Asia? Come on, it's already hard to make same-continent relationships work.

I hit rock bottom when the algorithm, evidently shouting I UNDERSTOOD NOTHING OF YOU, starts showing me heavily tatooed, largely overweight woman. What can I say: it's always been one of my most concealed fantasies. My worst nightmare comes true when I am exposed to extremely overweight woman holding dogs in their arms. It probably doesn't help that, after 3 days, I'm still unsure of which direction I should swipe to communicate my (dis)interest, and I know I have swiped right to dreadening heavy made-up girls and left to the outdoor-oriented of my kind.

We don't become whole through somebody else

I grow more and more fascinated by the display of humanity I'm seeing. I imagine a whole new universe for every profile I come across.

Way more woman than I need to see decide to display pictures of them with green face treatments/lotions. I can't help but think of Izma and her cucumber face mask in the Emperor's New Groove.
Carla (26) "My perfect first date is: exploding something new together. Or you show me your favorite place." A telling typo. I might make myself accomplice in quite some casualties.
Franci (30) is "obsessed with castles, pirates, vikings, and medieval stuff", 4 of very few topics in the world I could not have any form of conversation about.
Jessica (27) is highly christian and writes "I am dominant. Will ruin you and call you a good boy simultaneously." She questions all that I thought I knew about christianity and the adverb simultaneously.
Johanna (27) lists "Binge watching TV shows" among her interests. I regard that as a good reason to get in touch with a shrink.
Jinger (28) "I hate numbers and math but 161 + 1312". Are those the only numbers she likes? Is she still pondering over the result? Is it a meta-cognitive riddle? We'll never know.
Debora (25) shows herself in very stoned, compromising pictures; her prompts saying "I recently discovered that: I'm pregnant" and "I'm convinced that: you will be a great father". Don't know about you, but I ain't a social worker.
Bihal (31) describes herself as an "intersectional feminist". I google it and at the third page I still have no idea what that means. The explanations have far too many words for it to be a real thing anyway. She "lives for Freire and Foucault", and while I'm still okay with Freire, there's a very precise audience for Foucault, and that audience is not me.
Layla (28) writes: "Mbti -intj if it helps a quick impression". I have a degree in cryptography, but this code is beyond me.

I quickly run out of compliments and pay a month of premium subscription to Bumble, to be able to swipe right as many times I wish: the love of my life will well be worth 40 euros, right?
The result is that:

yes, I can swipe right as many girls I wish (whereas on a free plan you are restricted to a few tens per day).
no, I can't send more compliments. I'm not even sure how people receive them through the app, but I'd have to pay for them separately.
after one week, I have got exactly zero matches.
yes, it is a scam.

At some point, the sense of novelty wears off and it feels like I am seeing more and more irrelevant people. They look so alike I hardly notice I've gone from one to another. What they all have in common is they very badly scream I am lonely and I need to be loved, not understanding that to find someone who loves us we first need to be someone, and do things.

And here is a major point: we can't look for love. It doesn't work. The proverbs say it: "You meet love when you stop looking for it", "When the pupil is ready, the teacher comes". You can't force a relationship to bloom. Meeting somebody with the expectation (or even the hope) that they will become your next partner is a recipe for failure. As long as you have a goal-driven attitude towards encounters, you will keep meeting people that don't live up to the standards you've set, and you won't be open to meeting them, as they are, where they are. Both of you will feel enormous amounts of expectations and you won't have the space to actually connect. A healthy relationship needs to organically evolve, it needs to have the time to tiptoe into each other's life.

More importantly, we can't heal through love. If we feel lonely, depressed, purposeless; if we feel like there's a void in ourselves; if we feel like our job is not fulfilling, or our lives are boring, or we can't imagine going on vacation alone, we can't look at love as a measure of salvation. If you feel lonely, and you want to be loved, you first need to heal that, and then go out, whole, and become an even more enlarged of yourself with somebody else, but you can't expect to become whole through somebody else. That's too much to ask, and not a healthy basis for a long term relationship.

I've heard friends recounting experiences where either them or the prospective partner asked "What are we doing? Are we serious?" on the third date. They expect to make a somewhat long-term commitment based on having met that person twice in their life. And this is fueled by this positivist attitude born of dating apps, whose inherent promise is: there is a person out there who is going to become your best friend, and your lover, and your travel buddy, and your life companion, and your everything; if you haven't found it yet, it's just because you haven't looked long enough. You should spend more time here. And when people don't feel that promised sense of wholeness they've been promised, they assume it's not the right person. So you get people who date tens of people over the years, and never find that one person that makes them feel whole. And the reason is that you don't become whole through somebody else, you become whole by yourself, and then co-create something wonderful with another whole human being. But of course we in the West have got out of the habit of making effort, and we expect there to be a shortcut for everything -- it's much easier to keep looking forever, than to make ourselves whole.

No, a VPN won't protect your privacy.
No, wearing a face mask won't protect you from covid.
No, dating apps won't make you whole.

Yes you're on Tinder; but no you don't know what you want

After 5 days I give up and change app. I want to try the one that started it all: Tinder.
I immediately get the reason why other dating apps popped up. Anybody thinking that compulsory education has lifted spirits, that every person is special in their own way, needs only 4 minutes on Tinder to change their mind. The protypical Tinder woman is (fake) blonde, with an amount of makeup that only makes me dread the time she's gonna have to get ready and I'm gonna have to wait, with two shoulder bags, each containing other minibags, each containing smaller containers up until the atomic level, with fingernails so sharp that she probably does without knives in the kitchen (I'd be scared to let my bits anywhere close those daggers), and with a single layer of clothing left, evidently very ready to be taken off. There's really an astounding number of them. It's the closest thing to volontary porn I've seen so far. A percentage that should trigger a Health Ministery response is interested in wine and beer, and nothing else.

Tinder shows that there are 10 thousand people attending Fridays for Future, who shower short and cold and travel overseas by ferry, and 3 million millenials whose carbon footprint is enough to reach 5 degrees overwarming in the next 4 days, who also look forward to having large families of very polluting individuals.

I assume 30% lie on their age. Liv (27) has a picture with two ladies side by side, and I can't believe either of them is 27. They both look over 35. Either swedish girls age prematurely due to all the artificial winter tanning (which could well be), or I really don't see the point of pretending they are a decade younger than they are: who would want to look old for their age? Mystery. I also get that you don't want to pose as a model for your pictures, but you also don't need to take a selfie in bed with your worst possible mood and a sleep debt of 15 hours. Just show some pride. But this seems to be a recurring pattern in Scandinavia: there's a lot of girls aged 23+ who look 35+. What's up in this country? Telomeres shorten prematurely?

Tinder also allows you to browse for category, like you would in a supermarket. You can browse for "Nature lovers", or "Creatives", or "Thrill seekers", and so on. The categorizations are yet another unfulfilled promise though: it only takes a declared interest in "Walking" to be classified as "Nature lover"; there's very catholic people wishing for 16 people in "Short term fun". How about the category "Free tonight"? How can it know I am? It never asked me. Does it judge by the pitiful amount of hours I spend on the app, and infer that I must then have nothing at all happening tonight? It just casts a tiny shade of doubt on the quality of this service, you know, and reinforces the believe that anybody claiming to have met on Tinder have been bloody lucky, is lying, or is living an unhappy relationship.

A good number of them has its checklists.
Tresha (26) writes of her: "Allergic to onions (can you?). Won't join your 3some and despise hiking. Pictures are from 2024, loves: seafood, craft beer, riesling (?), the gym, superhero movies, my job, soccer, karaoke, documentaries, self-reflecting (?), ships and history podcasts". Beside the ignorance of the Oxford comma, I'm shocked by the amount of practicality that I had previously only found in the local newspaper ads from the 70-years-olds: "Orderly woman seeks man with stable economy and positive mood to share experiences and free time. Maybe some travel? I like wine, eating out, museums, knitting. No smokers. Allergic to cats. A plus if you like music because I go to concerts every week."
Sara (28) doesn't know how commas work and puts no pressure on her prospective dates: "The next person I'll be in a relationship with, will be my husband." The linguist that I am would also like to point out that, phrased as it is, it implies that she is already married.
Jill (27) defines herself as "Kind, fun, intelligent and caring. With me you'll never get bored. You shall be smart, funny and kind. Big plus if you like cooking and you may come to the gym every now and then."

And here is another major point: we don't know what we want. Having a checklist prevents us from meeting people where they are and from connecting with them. It's healthy to have some awareness of what you are looking for, but that's different from saying "I'm looking for somebody who likes music so we can go to concerts together; who likes camping because that's how I like my holidays; who is an early bird because I wake up early; who talks low because I don't like noise; who likes cooking cause I dread it". Guess what, maybe they will come camping even if they've never been yet, or they will come to appreciate music because you will share it with them, or you both dread cooking but will come to appreciate it together. They don't need to tick all the boxes. We are helplessly unaware of what we are going to appreciate in a person.

For me, I wish to meet a non-smoker who invests in herself (and not in her appearance) and has some amount of self-awareness. It's somewhat meta, and in the end I also know that that type of people is unlikely to enjoy spending sundays in shopping malls, eating junk food, or be scared by life. They are likely to have some form of connection with nature. I have no idea what will draw me to them: maybe their singing, maybe their dancing, maybe the anthropology thesis they're writing, maybe their soft voice, maybe her gentle touch ... who knows! If I go out saying "you shall fulfill this list", I won't even see the person I meet.

Isabelle (32) "I love the woods, electronic dance music (mostly techno), my car, washing my car, long walks, adventure, safety, my car, being prepared, mysticism, the gym, weird conversations." Well, at least I know where we'd have our first sexual encounter: in a very sanitized car.
Viva (26) shows up lying on the floor, her face shielded by a cloud of fire powered by a can of spray paint she's holding. Another that I'd be afraid to let close to my bits.
Sofia (24) "Professional back scratcher. Nothing serious, just looking for a husband." There's a surprising number of people who are in evident need of somebody to scratch their back, or that wish to scratch somebody's back. I wonder if it's a modern form of preliminary I've yet to learn.
Petra (28) "I lived in 5 countries. Want to find true love and ideally get married (and inherit, maybe?). The most important is that he is kind and decent person, stable in all sense. I prefer to live in south europe. Only serious intentions please."
Jery (25) is all into bubble tea. She wants her first date at a bubble tea cafe; she wants to be given bubble tea; she wants to give birth in bubble tea. I'd so much like to ask if bubble tea is carbonated tea, or what else. She's obviously intro astrology as well.
Gruya (34) self-describes as "Modeling, massaging, masturbating", and shows up while painting a canvas, while intently contemplating an upright circumcised plastic dick on a coffee table, approximately two spans high and a pot wide. I'm clearly never gonna satisfy her.

And what is all this deal about height? Fair enough: I wouldn't be enthusiastic about dating a 1.40-meters-high girl with foot size 45, but any quasi-regular proportions will work just fine. A lot of girls are looking for "tall guys", and I wonder how do they plan to kiss them? Do they plan on carrying a stool?

Tinder makes dating soooo goal oriented. It's by design. You are supposed to say if you want kids or not; if you are looking for "life partner", or "long term, open to short", or "short term, open to long", or "short term fun"; what personality type you have; what relationship type you are looking for (all the shades between cloistered monogamy and lustful polygamy). It's true that I may be up for intimacy with exciting strangers even if I wouldn't imagine spending an afternoon with them, while somebody else may not be in the same life phase (but who wouldn't? okay, separate story). But that's the thing, can I really have a hookup with somebody I wouldn't spend even an afternoon with? How am I gonna create an erotic experience with somebody that arouses me only because they're of the right gender? How are we going to play and connect if we fundamentally don't resonate as human beings? A (female) friend of mine recounted of her app dating experience as "You end up having a bunch of sex that's just meh. Sometimes it's good, but most often it's just meh". Another said "I often felt empty and drained after that sort of sex." I'm sure they're speaking on behalf of all of humankind, including the guys (who often don't have enough emotional intelligence to put it in words, but who surely feel somehow off too). Contrary to popular belief, hookups do require a great deal of emotional maturity.

Esther Perel teaches us that eroticism works as an antidote to human solitude; but we can't use the physical act of eroticism (i.e. sex) and expect it to work the same. It's another modern western shortcut. At the same time, you could be doing all that a whole love production would do (light candles, get flowers, give each other a massage, feed each other grapes in bed), and still fail at being present with the other person, at seeing them, at connecting with them. And you could be doing nothing of that, maybe only look at each other in the eyes, and feel one together. You don't know how it will go, but you do know that no amount of sex will fill the void of human solitude if that sex doesn't come coupled with human connection. You can't just put in the form and hope the substance will come.

Basically every girl on Tinder is looking forward to going on an adventure together. This tells two very important things:

they are not content where they are in their life, and longing their next adventure is the way they survive the boredom of their quotidianity.
how can you imagine going 5 days to Lapland with a quasi-stranger, sharing bed and meals before you even know all the ways in which they are wonderful and annoying? This is so naive.

But they are all about adventures. They want to go drinking piña colada in Puerto Rico, scuba diving in Thailand, safari hiking in Tanzania. They basically want to be everywhere except in Sweden, and they expect you're gonna be enthusiastic at the idea of you two taking an inter-continental flight to an unknown location to spend passionate days of proximity. Last time I checked, this was called a honeymoon, but these girls ask it of strangers. Many of them are also straight about wanting to get married and wanting children, and many of them are 33 when they say so, which means you're gonna have children within a year. The want somebody "who's ready to book the flights, pick the best spots and be my go-to for stealing hoodies and stealing my heart", or "Somebody who will ⛵ with me".

But again, as all things of life, things require preparation. However, we, in our liquid modernity, have become used to just showing up for what we want and being able to skip all that we don't want. We are used to shortcuts. You want to go on a honeymoon? You have to walk the whole path, you can't just show up for the honeymoon. You want children? You have to be centered in yourself, and make good team with your partner. Yes, it is romantic and poetic to look for a person to steal hoodies from, but you can't ask it or expect it of anybody. You can enjoy it if it happens, but you must not want it to happen. There's a subtle but enormous difference between expecting something, and working with what there is.

I also discover that Tinder (and probably all the apps) are great to get a mental picture of the average person in a new country. I learnt that the in Sweden it's "Walking my dog" and "Wine"; in Portugal it's "Sunset" and "Surfing".

Hinge, RAW, Kasual, and all the others

I don't wanna leave much unexplored so I go all in. There are so many more dating apps than I would have thought. Hinge seems to be another popular, cool one. Its main difference is that you don't emotionlessly swipe people around, but you have to send them a message to express interest. Finally something human, I tell myself. The audience also looks different, more peculiar.

Tya (28) has a reel of her, kneeling in the forest, taking down a mini-pine with a single rifle shot. It's funny that it's socially more accepted to be explicit about your gun passion than about skinny-dipping.
Shar (26) "I'm both monogamous and non-monogamous", and she also probably missed the class on the non-contradiction principle. Deja (27) poses while petting a screaming horse that's about to chunk her face off. It looks like the monster of the final level of an arcade game.
Maja (25) poses an interesting question: "Only serious relationships hate unserious guys preferably guys who were born in sweden but are not swedish" -- besides her aversion for punctuation, when do you stop being swedish? If my parents moved here when I was little I can't match with her, but they moved a few months before birth then we have a future? It makes no sense (and in fact, she doesn't know what she want).
Deta (29) is scared of microwave ovens.
Lilian (29) is a "tantric therapist", which apparently requires no further explanation, and is "very happy and free". At least she is, in this world of suffering.
Mati (27) "I'm a real nerd about: drugs". All right.
Coni (28) "Belgian girl. Holy trinity: tech, literature, museums. Amen." Okay.
Tresha (25) "What could we do together? Go see unhinged taxidermy in other countries." Sure. I guess she can enlarge my vocabulary.

RAW requires you to take a picture with both cameras (i.e. selfie + back) every time you want to see people. There's basically nobody on that app, and I'm sure they sell face pictures for training AI face models.

Kasual is supposed to be for encounters without commitment, and they haven't even tried to conceal its addictive gambling format: you play rounds with 4 cards, and you're allowed to flip one and see the profile behind it. Usually the people behind the other cards (that you get to see, but not in detail) are more interesting, which should encourage you to pay for the full service. All the more interesting-looking girls are likely fake profiles anyway.

AdultFriendFinder and Friends With Benefits have not one real person on them: they likely have one full time employee who replies to all chat requests and lets the conversation run long enough so that you finish the free credits and then pay for more. I text a bunch giving them my Telegram alias and they're all like "Uh, I hardly know you, we should chat a bit." You're never gonna meet anybody there, although people say they did work 10 years ago. OkCupid and Match may contain real people, but the free version doesn't allow you to filter by location nor distance, so obviously you only see people in different galaxies. They all just want your money.

Monetizing love and romantic encounters

There's one very important point I missed from the start: reciprocity. People need to also swipe you right before they can see anything of what you've texted them. And while this makes some sense, it also creates this feeling of saying "I like you" a thousand times into the void. You don't even get a "I don't" back; you just get silence, which is probably worse than explicit rejection. In a time when social anxiety is at its peak in young generations, there's nothing worse than being met with silence when longing for human connection.

These platforms own the space for romantic encounters, and make it as hard as they can for you to have any romantic encounter at all. They have monetized love, and have no interest in you finding love, or anything you are looking for. If you'd find what you are looking for, you'd stop using their service, which is clearly against their business interests. So why would they facilitate that? They only need a few success stories here and there (the occasional couple that met online and is now married with twins) to propel in each of us the hope that we will find the same there, that the online algorithms will help us find the one among the crowded bazar of human souls.

In the only month where I paid for a premium subscription both to Bumble and Tinder, I at some point made the experiment of swiping right everybody. I would just see faces flying by while by thumb automatically went right (including on guys). I did that for a few days, and that got me exactly 4 matches. With 3 of them I wouldn't have spent an hour, and the 4th never replied, but it did show that the winning strategy is to just swipe, and then judge if you get a match; but you can only do that as a paying user. That only enlarges the sense of rejection we create for ourselves, because you do get a dopamine kick when you're notified of a new match, and seeing they don't text, or they don't reply, is a depressing experience.

There would be tremendous value if these services allowed you to query for people with some constraints, and directly reach out to them. For example, I'd like to see girls without make up or fancy nails, with their real hair color and no heavy tatooing, my age +/- 4, who value nature and time spent outdoors; and I'd like to be able to text them. It's probably less than 30 people within a 50km radius. But it's not in the interest of these apps to allow me that, although they could. They just want my time, and my money.

These services have acknowledged that we live in the time when we feel most lonely ever, a time in which solitude reigns supreme in the West, and they are turning a profit on it. Match Group (owning Tinder, Match, OkCupid, Hinge) had 3.3 billion in revenue in 2023; Bumble close to 850 million. It is absolutely astounding numbers for fueling misplaced hopes and making people feel lonely. It's disgusting.

The more we use these services, the more socially inept we become, the more we unlearn how to connect with other humans, the more out of the world our expectations get, the more lonely we become, and the more we will need to be on these apps.

Yes, somebody got married thanks to Tinder, but the chances that it will be you are, sorry to break your dream, negligible. You're much better off asking a girl to dance next time you're out. You have to go out for that to happen, though. Do we still remember how to do that?

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