Comment by Seattle3503 a day ago
People come to dating apps for all sorts of reasons, and with different levels of investment. Pretty much every woman I know who has used a dating app has said she has gone on a dating app to alleviate boredom. That's probably not fun for the person on the other end if they are actually trying to find a partner.
If someone shows up to a speed dating event, that indicates minimum level of investment in the interaction.
> Looking for dates on there gave me a similar feeling as looking for a house on property sites. Yes, I really want a house and there are houses here. But I am still hating this experience of looking at houses.
I think this is an inevitable side effect of the business model. I signed up for these apps to find love, that's the "strategic" reason I use them. But 99 of the time, the actual reason in the moment that I opened the app is for a dopamine hit.
This is a double-edged sword because if the apps hadn't been addictive I just wouldn't have used them that much and I would have ended up with less dates. On the other hand, it obviously plays a part in the toxic underpinnings that make the whole experience so miserable in the long run
Hard to see how you can really address this with design. E.g. OkCupid didn't use to have this dopamine-driven property at least back in the day when I first used it. I found it fucking boring, I didn't invest enough time into it, and ultimately I never met anyone in person (sure, I think part of the reason was also the people I saw there also seemed boring, but that can't be completely orthogonal).
Looking for dates on there gave me a similar feeling as looking for a house on property sites. Yes, I really want a house and there are houses here. But I am still hating this experience of looking at houses.