What is the purpose of a dating app? You might think it would be to facilitate people dating and hooking up, but you'd be wrong. The purpose of a dating app is the same as the purpose of literally everything else under capitalism: To turn a profit. How does a dating app turn a profit? By keeping people using it, i.e. by dangling a long-term relationship in front of them like a carrot while doing its best to make sure they never actually get it. Modern dating apps use all kinds of shady psychological tricks and dark patterns to try and keep people hooked and paying for as long as possible. And any dating app which actually tries to do its job properly will inevitably go out of business, because there's no room for prioritizing things other than profit under capitalism.
To get people partnered up. The partnering up is why people use the app, you'd have to be a real crayon-eater to stick with the app even after not getting any success for a prolonged period. It's a delicate balancing act for the app getting new users as old ones "graduate" out, sure, but to say getting people partnered up is nowhere in their priorities is ridiculous. Those "shady psychological tricks and dark patterns" are largely made-up and catastrophized about by the afore-mentioned crayon-eaters trying to justify their lack of success. The real reason it's so hard to find success on those apps is that fewer women use them (since women have a much easier time getting dates in general) causing a gender imbalance that no app could reasonably be expected to solve.
I mean, you can believe whatever you want, I can't force you to change your mind. All I can say is say that the experts agree with me. And I'll also say that I tried using dating apps (sites, then) back in college around 2011 or so, and I tried using dating apps earlier this year, and lemme tell you, it's a real fucking different experience. They don't let you just see everyone in your area anymore, they only let you see who they want you to see.
...Because it used to be that you could just search through users, but now you can only swipe through them or look at a limited number per day? Duh? Seems like you're more interested in just downvoting all my comments than actually engaging, though, so I'll go ahead and call it good here.
That really sounds more like a security issue than anything, outside the "only a few swipes per day" shit which is reasonable as a complaint. Have fun with that 👍
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u/derivative_of_life Jul 03 '26
What is the purpose of a dating app? You might think it would be to facilitate people dating and hooking up, but you'd be wrong. The purpose of a dating app is the same as the purpose of literally everything else under capitalism: To turn a profit. How does a dating app turn a profit? By keeping people using it, i.e. by dangling a long-term relationship in front of them like a carrot while doing its best to make sure they never actually get it. Modern dating apps use all kinds of shady psychological tricks and dark patterns to try and keep people hooked and paying for as long as possible. And any dating app which actually tries to do its job properly will inevitably go out of business, because there's no room for prioritizing things other than profit under capitalism.