article: Gen Z Is Leaving Dating Apps Behind

[mikedee]

I do well with women in general, Im 6.2 and often considered as tall, dark and handsome. I've been with several hb9s, hb8s etc. almost all met irl.
However, my experience on social media is pretty disappointing. I have good pictures (I am a pro photographer so I take my pictures myself), profile is interesting (height mentionned) and I get very few matches. When I do get some, most of the time the girls are attractive but always less attractive than on the pictures, which turn me off a bit. We date once or twice and it fizzles out.. I had some good results when I created a Tinder account 3-4 years ago before pandemic when I moved to Moscow, I had tons of matches with very very attractive girls, but again very few (almost none) lays due to culture and typical hypergamy of Russian girls.
Now I'm in Prague, I dated a few, no lay, waste of time.

Of course women are pro hypergamists which plays against us, but I think the main problem is how the apps are designed, they are designed in a way that you get very few matches and want you to pay for premium options. Then repeat the cycle:

Some nice matches, no lay but hope, less matches but still hope, no match no hope, buy premium, some nice matches, no lay but hope, etc.

The app simply doesnt show your profile enough, if nobody sees your profile how can you get matches?

Its a business. I dont have any dating apps installed on my phone right now, might reinstall them in the future for fun, I dont take OLD too seriously. If I want to get laid I know what to do: approach women in real life.

 

[AmsterdamAssassin]

I know a lot of you enjoy dating apps, but I think that they are mostly good for hookups, not for finding someone truly worthy. Most women on these apps are (or become) messed up and entitled.

 

[Bingo-Player]

Tinder has evolved into some sort of dystopian reality that feeds off misery and confusion

I can remember when tinder first came out 10 years ago it was brilliant they had all kinds of cool features like "tinder moments" where people could upload photos for 24 hours but only matches could see them

I had about 1k matches at one stage and a lot of girls used to post VERY risque stuff on tinder

Underwear pics , lingerie pics , even sometimes full nudes

you paid for absolutely nothing it was all free and worked well

Then they started fvcking about gamifying it and introducing ridiculously complex algorithms designed to match people that are completely incompatible both physically and in a personality sense

It drove a lot of women off the platform and started nerfing the amount of matches men could get per day

Today it genuinely looks like an arcade game , I deleted it after 24 hours utter trash

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I do pretty well on Hinge routinely getting dates and sometimes sex , but the overall quality of women on there isn't fantastic and I often feel as though I am selling myself short

 

[SW15]

I know a lot of you enjoy dating apps, but I think that they are mostly good for hookups, not for finding someone truly worthy. Most women on these apps are (or become) messed up and entitled.

The best use case for dating apps is short term sex (casual sex situationships and 1-2 night stands).

The men who are going to get the short term sex from the apps are 90th percentile + men. Men below the 90th percentile are going to be fighting for scraps in most cases.

A man who is in the 70th-75th percentile is an objectively good man. That's the type of man that will be dealing with a lot of ghosting/flaking from swipe apps. That's the type of man who would struggle to get matches and struggle to get matches to convert to sex/meaningful relationships. He's likely to have a lot of "one date, no sex, no second date" type interactions.

Men who aren't in the 90th percentile or higher are better off focusing their time on some combination of non-bar approaching (daygame), approaching women in nightlife venues (night game), or doing social circle type activities. Doing that combination is also a tough path but also more likely to be fruitful for men with any type of goal.

It's possible for a woman to enter the world of dating apps with reasonable expectations and then develop heightened expectations/become entitled as a result of seeing her abundance on the apps/her DMs on Instagram. A woman who regularly goes out to nightlife venues (2-3 nights per week) as her sole method of meeting men would not experience the same type of abundance that a woman would get from solely placing herself on a dating app.

 

[corrector]

I am always amazed at how much I have in common with the gen Z experience despite being gen X. Even other gen Xers on here are quitting OLD.

 

[Captain Redbeard]

I haven't used any apps for 5+ years at this point. I find it interesting that many people mention dates from OLD not leading to sex. When I did use tinder, I was screening heavily for casual sex. In fact every match that I met up with in person led to a lay.

The best use case for dating apps is short term sex

Agreed.

I can remember when tinder first came out 10 years ago it was brilliant they had all kinds of cool features like "tinder moments" where people could upload photos for 24 hours but only matches could see them

Haha I remember I was so pissed when they got rid of the moments... great times. I think that was when the app really started to go downhill and I left soon after. A week or so ago, I was out with a buddy and he showed me his tinder.... half of it was girls advertising their onlyfans page, the other half was not attractive. No wonder men are leaving the app

 

[SW15]

I find it interesting that many people mention dates from OLD not leading to sex. When I did use tinder, I was screening heavily for casual sex. In fact every match that I met up with in person led to a lay.

My most common interaction on swipe apps (and websites before them) was the "1-2 dates, no sex, no extended relationships" interaction. I also was not happy with my quantity of matches on swipe apps and a lot of them weren't resulting in in-person dates. I used Tinder, Bumble, and Hinge.

I think Gen Z observed a lot of what I described happening above with Millennials and chose not to do this. Or some Gen Z's have had that experience themselves.

 

[buddhafukko]

I think the apps were intentionally engineered to damage pair bonding. If you look into it you find the same corporations own most all of them. Like porn sites. They are an effective social-engineering control mechanism.

 

[Captain Redbeard]

I also was not happy with my quantity of matches on swipe apps

Matches were at one point plentiful but then the introduction of premium subscriptions became the death of that. Though I don't have firsthand experience for just how bad it has become.

a lot of them weren't resulting in in-person dates

This was always true. Certain women more interested in validation than actually dating. I didn't keep track of stats but I certainly met up with less than 10% of my matches (5% is probably a fair estimate).

I may fire up Hinge early 2024 just to see if my area has anything semi interesting.

 

[Gamisch]

No surprise really. Our generation was at least trained to chase p00sy. This generation never learned to run game.

Imagine growing up getting no likes on a dating app..like ,being 14 the way to 20 never getting likes. This will mentally damage a man beyond repair. Our generation needs all kinds of mental gymnastics to keep some sanity and give this dating environment a a place. At least we can look back at many ,many adventures with plenty of women.

I know of dudes who never been with a woman without paying her...it's sad really..

Matches were at one point plentiful but then the introduction of premium subscriptions became the death of that. Though I don't have firsthand experience for just how bad it has become.



This was always true. Certain women more interested in validation than actually dating. I didn't keep track of stats but I certainly met up with less than 10% of my matches (5% is probably a fair estimate).

I may fire up Hinge early 2024 just to see if my area has anything semi interesting.

By now, the introduction of especially Tinder is a urban legendary type of story now. We all reminisce about how EVERY man and his brother would get date ,and actually within his bracket..i matched with nothing but hb7+, and yeah..times were good.

They pulled the perfect drug dealer shyte on us: they got us hooked and then changed the conditions .

 

[Solomon]

I know a lot of you enjoy dating apps, but I think that they are mostly good for hookups, not for finding someone truly worthy. Most women on these apps are (or become) messed up and entitled.

IMO Apps were never good for anything beyond a hookup, I remember the days you had to type a woman a message on POF or OKcupid and be creative, Apps got rid of them and made it soley about looks.

TInder glory days were when you had unlimited swipes once they got rid of that it killed the app.

 

[SW15]

IMO Apps were never good for anything beyond a hookup, I remember the days you had to type a woman a message on POF or OKcupid and be creative, Apps got rid of them and made it soley about looks.

You mention POF and OkCupid. Dating websites primarily used on computers were a little bit different than the dating apps used on smartphones.

There's even a good case to be made that the dating websites from the time they were de-stigmatized (mid 2000s) until the creation of swipe apps (2012) were best used for casual sex and not for longer term relationships.

My response rate to messages sent on POF and OkCupid was higher than my match rate on swipe apps. After match rate, then you have to consider response to messages rate (Tinder/Hinge) or Female First Messaging Rate (Bumble). Both of those rates would be lower than a match rate.

Looks are number 1 on apps but they were also quite important on dating websites. OkCupid put out plenty of data in the late 2000s/early 2010s that showed that looks were number 1.

TInder glory days were when you had unlimited swipes once they got rid of that it killed the app.

The early days of Tinder (late 2012-2013) were when it was most useful.

Our generation was at least trained to chase p00sy. This generation never learned to run game.

I don't know your age offhand but I think you are a 1980s era Millennial. You're in the first half of the Millennial generation.

I am a 40 year old man who has been in unmarried relationships and seducing women for 24 years.

In thinking about 1999-2005 as I experienced it (the last 2 years of high school and college -- this is when I was initially coming up), it was expected that men would approach women in person. While online dating websites existed in 1999-2005, they were mostly still stigmatized then as something only losers did. One of the biggest debates I remember from the early 2000s was whether or not dating websites were de-stigmatized. Neil Strauss' "The Game" was published in 2005 and most of the experiences from that are from roughly 2002-2005. There's a reason Strauss, Mystery, and other PUAs were mainly doing approaches in bars back then and weren't spamming messages on Match then.

In-person approaching has been de-emphasized and has faded a bit since the early 2010s or so. Gen Z has come of age with technology more mature. Millennials came of age for the most part as technological innovations were maturing. Gen Z members are less likely to have a lot of the in-person interactions skills that can help in the early stages of dating.

Imagine growing up getting no likes on a dating app..like ,being 14 the way to 20 never getting likes. This will mentally damage a man beyond repair. Our generation needs all kinds of mental gymnastics to keep some sanity and give this dating environment a a place. At least we can look back at many ,many adventures with plenty of women.

I agree that not getting Likes and not achieving any sort of success in tech-based dating will mentally damage a man. It would take a lot of psychological treatment to address the psychological issues that would stem from getting immense amounts of rejections on apps. These rejections can take on the form of a low match rate (most common) but also ghosting during messaging and the "1-2 dates, no sex, no extended relationship forming" type interactions too. All those events are mentally damaging.

 

[BoomToTheMoonAlice]

Couchsurfing was the best dating app when it was big. I used it to meet so many women. The best part, it wasn't a dating app but the expectation was that you were already sleeping over.

 

[I_have_BDE]

You mention POF and OkCupid. Dating websites primarily used on computers were a little bit different than the dating apps used on smartphones.

There's even a good case to be made that the dating websites from the time they were de-stigmatized (mid 2000s) until the creation of swipe apps (2012) were best used for casual sex and not for longer term relationships.

My response rate to messages sent on POF and OkCupid was higher than my match rate on swipe apps. After match rate, then you have to consider response to messages rate (Tinder/Hinge) or Female First Messaging Rate (Bumble). Both of those rates would be lower than a match rate.

Looks are number 1 on apps but they were also quite important on dating websites. OkCupid put out plenty of data in the late 2000s/early 2010s that showed that looks were number 1.



The early days of Tinder (late 2012-2013) were when it was most useful.



I don't know your age offhand but I think you are a 1980s era Millennial. You're in the first half of the Millennial generation.

I am a 40 year old man who has been in unmarried relationships and seducing women for 24 years.

In thinking about 1999-2005 as I experienced it (the last 2 years of high school and college -- this is when I was initially coming up), it was expected that men would approach women in person. While online dating websites existed in 1999-2005, they were mostly still stigmatized then as something only losers did. One of the biggest debates I remember from the early 2000s was whether or not dating websites were de-stigmatized. Neil Strauss' "The Game" was published in 2005 and most of the experiences from that are from roughly 2002-2005. There's a reason Strauss, Mystery, and other PUAs were mainly doing approaches in bars back then and weren't spamming messages on Match then.

In-person approaching has been de-emphasized and has faded a bit since the early 2010s or so. Gen Z has come of age with technology more mature. Millennials came of age for the most part as technological innovations were maturing. Gen Z members are less likely to have a lot of the in-person interactions skills that can help in the early stages of dating.



I agree that not getting Likes and not achieving any sort of success in tech-based dating will mentally damage a man. It would take a lot of psychological treatment to address the psychological issues that would stem from getting immense amounts of rejections on apps. These rejections can take on the form of a low match rate (most common) but also ghosting during messaging and the "1-2 dates, no sex, no extended relationship forming" type interactions too. All those events are mentally damaging.

Okcupid was always trash. Pof always was trashy too but when you did see a decent girl you could get replies if you wrote her. Match llc bought it and now you get like one free message a day. Everyone has left it.

Before covid match was a great site with hot women. Now mostly fat ugly or post wall. Match also has more paywalls and likely chased everyone away. That and match llc being sued has given them a bad name as well

 

[Smok1nAce]

dating in general is dead.

 

[SW15]

dating in general is dead.

People still need to have sex so dating isn't going to completely go away.

There are so many men still on the dating apps causing the lopsided ratios.

The average man is still a thirsty man simping through the use of a tech-based platform.

Most people also think in-person approaching is down.

 

[AmsterdamAssassin]

People still need to have sex so dating isn't going to completely go away.

I see a great future for cuddle/sex robots with AI.

 

[Solomon]

dating in general is dead.

Dating is a fool's errand in 2024
For top tier/Players/Game guys women will come straight to your house
For regular guys you have to take her out and spend money

 

[mikedee]

Dating is a fool's errand in 2024
For top tier/Players/Game guys women will come straight to your house
For regular guys you have to take her out and spend money

BS, not true. Incel mentality.

 

[BoomToTheMoonAlice]

Dating is a fool's errand in 2024
For top tier/Players/Game guys women will come straight to your house
For regular guys you have to take her out and spend money

WHY? Where does this idea come from!?!