Online dating is “broken” but somehow millions of people are dating 🤔

alotofironsinthefire · 2026-02-24T02:01:05+00:00

Just because the house always wins at the casino doesn't mean some people don't walk out with extra money in their pocket.

I mean as someone old enough to remember how they work in the beginning, yeah they're broken.

But just like any scam, some people still can come out on top. Especially if you know how to play. The problem is lots of people don't, they get hurt and they get upset

ReasonConfident4541 · 2026-02-24T05:42:24+00:00

??

All the statistics and data show they only work for a small number of men and large portion of women

Where's your source OP?

Downtown_Werewolf_44 · 2026-02-24T07:08:14+00:00

if online dating didn't work, ir wouldn't work for anyone

It's weird how some people around here can't get the slightest kind of nuance.

Secret_Entry1840 · 2026-02-24T01:59:40+00:00

Right. It’s about baseline instant attraction. I’m screwed.

This-Register · 2026-02-24T02:15:52+00:00

I mean you're not wrong about the patience part. Many people just don't have the patience to play the game these days

Reasonable_Mouse789 · 2026-02-24T02:20:25+00:00

Online dating teaches you at a granular level exactly which people want to kiss you, and after how much effort, if you participate long enough on a platform with enough people, especially around holidays like Valentines Day.

The reason it’s “broken” for men is because there are more men than women on the apps. Why are the women still there, even though guys are available? What is it that they’re searching for that they can’t get in a system where they have abundant options? Many of the women are definitely trying to “date up”.

The reason it’s “broken” for women searching for relationships is because guys can just have sex with them and dump them with few social consequences, if the guy doesn’t actually want them.

The most jading part of online dating is how much looks matter for both genders. Improve your hair & have a fresh haircut, replace glasses with contacts, wear self tan if you need it, grow a minox beard if you need one, exercise, bulk or cut with a calorie tracker, eat protein, wear good clothes, wear shoes that make you a bit taller, and take good pictures for your profile. Review your pics upside down to see “what you actually look like” in them, and remove the less flattering pics. In theory, even if you “catfish” a little, I think it would still be a smart idea to overcompensate. Technically, while catfishing people more attractive than you is a bad idea (by looking a bit better in pics than you actually are), if it gets you a higher quantity of matches you’re still actually attractive to in person, then I guess technically it’s still a win? The high quantity of people you’re attractive to talking to you is the only real requirement to be successful.

LMAO_Llamaa · 2026-02-24T04:58:25+00:00

Free markets assume transparency. Dating apps are opaque algorithmic casinos.

Lift_and_Lurk · 2026-02-24T02:13:44+00:00

Because “met online” doesn’t not exclusively mean “met on OLD”.

Way more people are meeting and becoming friends on discord/social media group/hobby servers and school- professional interests groups and then eventually meeting up. And from there the real life turns into more DMs and chats one in one, then one on one meetups.

Your entire premise is flawed on the idea that the only way people meet online is thru OLD and not thru the social media versions of social networking

MarioWilson122 · 2026-02-24T08:08:16+00:00

Well, when that is said people are speaking in general. Something can work and still not be the case for majority of people, so that argument will still be used. Especially if men are having to date way down to have options. Which is another thing that will make people say its broken. Since its harder nowadays for men to get their equal or in a good number of cases struggle to. So that would definitely still fall under that aswell. So in conclusion its defiantly broken the way things currently are, so what you said is untrue.

DrankTooMuchMead · 2026-02-24T02:24:48+00:00

I can't tell if you are speaking from the perspective of a woman, or the top 10% of dudes that actually get responses.

Ill share my experience, back in 2008 when dating apps were just starting. I tried eharmony for like a month, to no surprise got no responses based on my average (at best) appearance, and gave up on it.

Then I continued to better myself. I lost weight, but most importantly, I learned how to talk to women in person. The ability to interact with women is so important for guys and life enriching. It is what a guy in his 20s is supposed to do, and I try to get the word out how important social skills are. Its what women judge us guys on more than anything.

anonymousppd123123 · 2026-02-24T03:53:27+00:00

I got 3 raises last year and got promoted to my dream job. The job market is doing great

Due_Appointment_1188 · 2026-02-24T12:57:37+00:00

Men often can't articulate why they don't like the apps, or why they're not seeing results.

I'll tell you why. Online dating sucks for most men because it requires presentational skills. Skills most people in general don't have, but towards which girls are often naturally more exposed to throughout life than men, so they have more experience.

Unlike most women, you can't just sign up for an app and see results, you need to know photography, posing, staying consistent in the gym for at least a couple years, skills that take a really long time to learn and click. Few can actually be fucked to go through the process.

That's why you hear so many guys say that it's easier in person, because irl you skip over a lot of the presentation. Not all of it of course, there's still style, grooming, skin care, and whatnot, but you skip over photography & posing which are the tough to learn, and annoying to suck at.

wtknight · 2026-02-24T15:38:37+00:00

Online dating is broken compared to real life dating in the sense that average to below average women can “match” with high value men in a way they can’t in real life, because in real life women actually can see high value men pursuing high value women. With online dating, even high value men appear “available” to average women, and high value men can take advantage of this and match with them if they want easy sex. This ends up turning off average women to the apps, when in a real world scenario average women naturally unconsciously learn to “settle” for the men who are in their actual league.

Perhaps some of this does happen on dating apps, which is why some average men might eventually have success with them after a lot of work and patience. But I think that overall it’s an inferior process to real life socializing. Dating apps really only benefit high value men. They could possibly benefit high value women, but these women will have to put up with a lot of unwanted interest, and I don’t think that most high value women really need to use them in the first place. Mostly dating apps are high value men “scamming” average women, or average women knowing that they are getting scammed and just using them for casual sex encounters with men out of their league.

isuckthemtoes · 2026-02-24T03:00:14+00:00

This post is so stupid it gave me a fucking headache

esdebah · 2026-02-24T02:32:59+00:00

To be honest, they used to be better. Certainly OKcupid used to be really useful. It still offers a lot as far as allowing for better dating profiles (which I can promise REALLY helps if you're just regular looking) but a lot of functions are paywalled. Pity.

Ok-Ninja-8165 · 2026-02-24T05:30:44+00:00

Most people don't use dating apps. Online doesn't mean dating apps only.

jorts-enthusiast · 2026-02-24T13:25:31+00:00

Those who aren’t successful in OLD have the option to not use it.

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BobtheArcher2018 · 2026-02-24T02:03:48+00:00

All societies have needs with respect to mating and family formation. Thus far, the widespread monogamy paradigm is the best way to meet these needs. Ultimately, dating apps work or don't work to the extent they support this mating paradigm unless some new alternative is found. That some people--even the majority--are still dating is by no means sufficient for the monogamy system to be healthy. Do dating apps support a high and stable hetero pairing rate compared to the alternative or not?

toasterchild · 2026-02-24T02:12:06+00:00

I met my husband on a dating app but that doesn't mean I don't think dating apps are generally scams. Just because it's a scam overall doesn't mean it never works. It has to work just often enough to keep people buying but not so much they stop buying.

FriendlyCapybara1234 · 2026-02-24T02:20:44+00:00

Ok, so why is the supply and demand so unbalanced?

AffectionateBelt6125 · 2026-02-24T02:25:14+00:00

Women can line of multiple dates because.....they are women with a pussy.

Logos1789 · 2026-02-24T02:39:30+00:00

The issue isn’t the gender ratio; it’s that women use it and get off of it once they find someone (quickly).

There’s only about a 7 percentage point gap between the genders in any use of the app, despite the snapshot at any given moment showing mostly men.

Whiskeymyers75 · 2026-02-24T02:43:04+00:00

Having multiple dates lined up doesn’t mean it works. The apps are greedy and are designed to push people away from commitment. I’m guilty of it too. I’ve done a whole lot of pump & dumps, a handful of flings and made a couple friends with benefits. But I’ll be lying if I said I wasn’t looking for a unicorn if I was going to ever commit again and the apps are to blame.

You have a whole lot of lonely men, starving for attention that women will not give them. So they pay a fortune on premium subscriptions and micro transactions. Why? Because they’re looking for commitment from a man like me which they probably aren’t going to get. The more thirsty your average man gets, the more money the app makes.

UnarmedRespite · 2026-02-24T02:49:15+00:00

I mean women also say dating is broken. I don’t think it truly is broken because as you noted people still use it largely. But I don’t think the popular sentiment is due to supply & demand

BL4CK_AXE · 2026-02-24T04:06:37+00:00

I only read the last few lines of your post, but most of our social contracts as humans (and the laws built on them), really don’t support humans being commoditized or being treated as “demand”. We shouldn’t be accepting that model in any non contradicting society.

Junior_Ad_3086 · 2026-02-24T04:28:51+00:00

people's brains are not wired to deal with large numbers of other people (or various other things for that matter), it's a result of having lived in tribes or small villages for most of our ancestors' history. i'm old enough to remember dating before apps and social media became mainstream and dating through social circles, school, college, work etc. was (and still is to some degree) quite different compared to online dating. people are more realistic about their options, more concerned about their reputation and factors other than looks matter more when dealing with people in person.

some of these things tie together too. for example, the girls in my high school didn't share the most handsome and popular guy in their class or friend group, but many women are doing that on the apps to various extents (mostly unknowingly). part of it is the illusion of choice for women that comes with dealing with such large numbers of people, the other one being the lack of social repercussions for men to lie or to date women they wouldn't want to be tied to socially. people keep saying that OLD is just 'the market' or whatever but the interactions people have on the apps are greatly influenced by them making uninformed decisions or facing no consequences for bad behavior. AWDTSG groups are a direct result of some of these issues although they are problematic in other ways.

i've used apps in the past and they're great to date casually, to meet people when traveling and so on but i'd never look for a long-term relationship on an app personally. dealing with strangers when dating brings various other issues too, like everyone being on their best behavior and trying to hide red flags when they meet in the context of dating off the bat versus seeing a more authentic version of a person in real life first. it's much easier to vet a person when you know people who know them too, by sharing some sort of social circle for example.

WebNew9978 · 2026-02-24T06:15:07+00:00

Is OP trying to say that online dating works good/fine because a lot of people are meeting each other through it?

If the user base skews male-heavy, outcomes won’t be evenly distributed. That’s not evil. That’s supply and demand. Add swipe data + multi county or state competition and you get a hyper-competitive marketplace where a small percentage of profiles get a lot of attention. That doesn’t mean it’s broken. It means it’s competitive.

I can’t imagine that the founders of online dating ever wanted to be turned into some sort of competition and supply vs demand. I also can’t imagine the founders would approve on how some men are getting shadow banned for being too ugly. Or having to pay to see who liked you only for that like turns out to be a bot or OF woman asking you to support her.

used it for about two years. Had plenty of good dates. Eventually found a great partner. It wasn’t magic. It was just vetting + patience.

So you were good looking enough to find your SO on there.

Axis_Control · 2026-02-24T06:20:15+00:00

I honestly think that online platforms other than dating apps are actually better than dating apps.

Dating apps are often used by men just for hookups so they aren't exactly the best.

Top-Spring9697 · 2026-02-24T06:57:21+00:00

Online dating and social media is the culmination of what was gradual and then became drastic change in how people socialise. It is only the capstone of the modern era, but when you look at the broader view, it is very different from what was customary or normal for the vast majority of people who have ever lived.

Imagine "dating" in the 18th century. Most people lived in rural areas or small towns. They knew and could only get to know a limited number of people, something firmly restricted by the slowness of transport and communications. It was possible to travel from the countryside to London or York, or to go abroad, to Amsterdam, Milan, the American colonies, Malaya or Canton - and yet very few people would have the opportunity.

Most importantly, most people met through their social circles, something which encouraged good and discouraged bad behaviour. If you were known to treat others badly, you would acquire a reputation that could only be outrun at the pace of a horse-drawn coach or sailing ship. "Ghosting" was not really possible - the closest analogue was "shunning" or "avoiding," which ran the risk of quite likely running into the person you had treated lightly in the street, at the church you were obliged to go to, or the market, or being malevolently gossiped about by people who almost certainly knew people you did. Because you almost certainly lived in the same town as your parents, grandparents, brothers and sisters, you were quite afraid of this prospect.

You could not do as you wished - you (man or woman) would have to consider how your actions would seem to others as arguably your very first priority. This was not always a good thing for you, but it did make how you would behave rather different.

But then came the steamship and the railway. The telephone. The automobile. The aeroplane. The computer. And nothing was the same again.

aslfingerspell · 2026-02-24T12:18:18+00:00

People say the economy is bad but everywhere you go you'll see employed people.

Only the single best candidate gets the job but if only the absolute best person is good enough why is unemployment a single digit percent most of the time?

People talk about "mass incarceration" being a problem but most people aren't in jail or prison.

DMmeClownPics · 2026-02-24T14:45:20+00:00

Man, dating apps don’t really work for women either. I just get flooded with low quality matches that are the equivalent of men throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. And before someone says I swiped right on these low quality matches, some of them I did, sure, but most of them are men who use paid version which allows them to bypass me choosing them. The ones I actually swipe right on I usually never hear from even if we match, which leads me to believe that they are just mass swiping and then sorting through matches later. Or they have already given up by then and uninstalled. Either way. When I say “low quality matches” I don’t mean the men. I would have to actually meet them to find that out. What I mean is that they are not men who have actually read my profile, or even necessarily looked at my pics, and truly have any interest in meeting me or going out. They’re playing a numbers game, and the only ones that interact are the ones who are hoping to squeeze a few nudes out of someone so he can rub one out and go to sleep. Not my idea of a good time. I didn’t even find Tinder to be useful for getting laid. It was a total waste of time and effort.

Outside_Memory5703 · 2026-02-24T15:10:20+00:00

Online dating fails to do the desired impossible (relationships for average women/lots of casual sex for average men), so the majority find it disappointing compared to the expectations

waffleznstuff30 · 2026-02-26T14:02:56+00:00

I think people still meet off the apps.

I think dating apps themselves are like a slot machine. You pull the lever and maybe once you may win? Or you just wasted some money and have nothing to show for it. It's like saying someone I know made a big win off of gambling. It does happen. It doesn't happen all the time but it does happen. I think the same can be said about online dating. And also you factor in the schematics of it all. Emotional Availability. Mutual shared values. Mutual attraction. Interest. And you think about the "human" element to all of this. The chance you may meet YOUR person. So someone in alignment with you. Someone who shares your interests. Someone with chemistry. Also someone who has the capacity to receive you and isn't just using the apps as an instant validation tool. You will have to have a lot of bad slot machine pulls before you actually may hit the jackpot. And the apps are designed to be that way. If they actually set people up based upon compatibility, types, interest, and emotional availability. It wouldn't have users. Because people would pair off and it would lose two users.

I truly think there is something to be said about meeting people in the wild. The vibes are better. It's more natural. It's less forced you get a read on them before you start to date. When you meet someone online you don't have much to go off of.

Title	Online dating is “broken” but somehow millions of people are dating 🤔
Author	WoodenHuckleberry693
Upvotes	0
Comments	108
Date	February 24, 2026 1:56 AM UTC (4 months ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/PurplePillDebate
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/PurplePillDebate/comments/1rd1k76/online_dating_is_broken_but_somehow_millions_of/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/PurplePillDebate/online-dating-is-broken-but-somehow-millions-of.1574113 https://theredarchive.com/post/1574113

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