In 2017, having freshly moved to Dallas and with few friends and acquaintances, I decided to hop on the dating app Bumble to meet a girl and hopefully start up a relationship with her. Sure enough, I was matched with a girl not long after joining, we went out on a date, and she would go on to become my wife, and we now have a son.
I'm what the public would likely call a "success story" from the dating app world, but I'm not entirely sure that the dating apps themselves would consider my relationship a good thing. In fact, I think they'd count that as a loss. I actually succeeded and came out positive. I beat the house.
I'm using casino terms here because that's exactly what these apps are beneath all the smiling pictures of couples and talk of love. You're supposed to join, and put yourself out there to be judged, weighed, and measured (both metaphorically and literally), and then feel that dopamine surge whenever you match with someone. You're supposed to feel the thrill of a conversation being started and then, if things go well, a date. Who knows, maybe it could lead to a relationship.
The apps certainly seem to hope not, but that's what they want you to hope for, and they especially want you to hope for that if you're a man.
When it comes to men, I can only describe these apps as "predatory."
According to the data, men constitute the majority of users on dating apps, making up about 60 percent, and this number can actually get higher on certain dating apps. This already creates huge problems as competition alone puts men in a pool where women are spoiled for choice, and it shows.
According to SwipeStats, women's average match rate is 30.7 percent, where men's is 2.63 percent. This means women are more likely to find a match up to 15 times more than men. This is, in part, because of the supply/demand disparity, but it gets a little worse when you consider that women are far more choosy than men are by nature.
SwipeStats notes that women's swiping behavior is far more selective:
- Men swipe right (like) 16,368 times on average (median: 5,096)
- Women swipe right 2,283 times on average (median: 989)
- Women pass (swipe left) on 41,100 profiles on average (median: 19,553)
- Men pass on 28,086 profiles on average (median: 10,051)
Now, this is an issue, but it's a natural one. Women should be choosy as nature wired them to be.
However, beyond here is where we leave the numbers game and start getting into sinister territory. Some of these women who do match with men may do so for nefarious reasons. Sometimes it's just to boost their own egos to match, flirt, and ghost, but sometimes it can result in leading a man on for what amounts to free food.
According to a study published on ResearchGate, Brian Collisson of Azusa Pacific University and Jennifer Lee Howell of the University of California found that a higher number of women than you think only matched to get a "foodie call":
A foodie call occurs when a person, despite a lack of romantic attraction to a suitor, chooses to go on a date to receive a free meal. The present study examines predictors of a deceptive form of the foodie call in the context of male–female dates: when a woman purposefully misrepresents her romantic interest in a man to dine at his expense. In two studies, we surveyed women regarding their foodie call behavior, dark triad personality traits, traditional gender role beliefs, and online dating history. We found 23–33% of women surveyed had engaged in a foodie call.
All of this is mental poison to men.
According to a study published on Psychology Today, users of dating apps have significantly worse mental health than those who don't use them:
The meta-analysis showed a clear link between dating app use and worse mental health. People who used dating apps had worse psychological well-being than people who did not use such apps. Whether this effect is caused by people with worse mental health using dating apps to a greater extent than happy people or by dating app use leading to mental health problems is unclear. Probably, both things happen to some extent.
And here's where the casino aspect comes in. You're already throwing yourself out there and swiping right on women, hoping to find a match, but consistently being rejected. Your profile isn't getting the attention you think it should, and you're desperate for a little ego boost, and the app developers know this. So they have ways you can pay extra for a boost to your profile's visibility.
These programs can be found on almost all dating apps. Tinder Gold/Platinum, Hinge+, Bumble Premium, etc., and all of them are pay-to-play aspects of their site that promise you greater chances of finding someone for an extra fee. This "boost" is temporary, which does artificially boost your profile for a time, but it takes the algorithmic boost away, leaving you wanting more.
So you pay again, hoping for a prize that you may or may not get, but honestly, you likely won't.
For dating apps, this is the best outcome for them. You continue desperately swiping, being a user of a program that works against you, and then the hope is that you'll use it long enough to develop a dependency that you will then pay to deepen. All the while, you're getting more depressed, lonely, and if you're lucky, you'll just be that. Hopefully, you never get hooked by a woman who just wants to use you for an expensive meal.
If you know someone on these apps, convince them to get off them immediately.
