Why did we do this to ourselves? It's quite disturbing because, at one point, it wasn't very common.

Online dating was something looked down upon and the main websites, at least in the Anglophonic world, was eHarmony, Match, and some other ones that really only catered to middle-aged people and divorcees.

I would say that it really got popular in the years between the 29th and 30th Olympiad (Beijing and London). Prior to this, before the Great Recession, for example, it wasn't really all that common, especially for people in their 20s.

There were not even that many press reports criticizing online platforms in general.

Yet, when it started growing, particularly with the rise of Tindr, people were very casual about it. Today, many people go on it but nobody really profits from it. Especially heterosexual people, which are the majority.

So why did this happen? Why did we let it happen? Is there a chance that it will diminish and return to the status it once had when people scoffed at eHarmony? It has become very normalized and I feel that it's honestly running out of steam and that in the next ten years or so it will diminish significantly.