Why do I find dating apps so f*cking exhausting?
It’s not you, it’s them.
Q:
Dating apps are the way to meet people, but if I’m being honest, I hate them. Every aspect of using them feels awful: the endless swiping, judging people on very little information, the bore of small talk, trying to sort out chemistry – never mind how hard it is to be queer and non-monogamous, looking for connections that work for me! Are there better dating apps out there? Or what’s the alternative?
A:
Dating apps are having a moment—and not necessarily in a way that’s ultimately good for them.
Gen Z is turning away from the apps, preferring DM slides as a way to connect in the digital landscape, a trend that we can assume will continue as Gen Alpha ages into dating. Millennials have been at the forefront of digital innovation for our entire lives, and as dating apps collapse into one another, there’s less and less interesting about them. And Gen X—well—when has Gen X ever cared about anything?
It feels like dating apps are now scrambling, trying to figure out how to stay relevant in a cultural moment where, increasingly, who we are and who we want to be isn’t the audience for whom dating apps were created.
If I had to wager a guess, I’d say we’re in a limbo stage before the next wave of change: whether that’s going back to more organic, in-person ways of meeting or technological innovation that brings dating apps back into the milieu of what’s cool.
So not only are you not alone in your frustration with dating apps. But also, it isn’t you. It’s them. It’s the apps.
Now, if you’re in a place where you’re like, “I’m done with this sh*t, and I want to shake up my dating life with other options” (I don’t blame you), you’re in luck: I’d love nothing more than to work with you on this.
Click below to send me an inquiry about what you’re struggling with (let it all out!) and what your goals are, and we can chat about how to make some real change in your life:
So let’s talk about it: What the f*ck is going on with dating apps that make them feel so exhausting to so many of us?
Let me count the ways.
1. Dating Apps Weren’t Made For You to Succeed
Let’s use Weight Watchers as an example. No, it’s not a dating app (can you imagine?), but it does run using a similar model.
If Weight Watchers worked – if it could design a diet that would allow people to lose weight and keep it off – it would, arguably, go out of business. Instead, Weight Watchers stays in business by failing you – on purpose.
Let me explain: Weight Watchers’ business model is that you sign up for their program, inevitably probably lose weight (as a calorie deficit will do for almost anyone), and so convince yourself that (!!!) Weight Watchers “works.”
Then, when you "fall off the wagon” (I prefer to call this, you know, feeding yourself) and gain the weight back (and more), you apply the mindset of individual failure: The program worked; it’s just that you couldn’t stay on it.
Which leads you to what?
Sign up for Weight Watchers.
Cha-ching!
Dating apps aren’t terribly dissimilar.
I would like to believe that the folks behind dating apps believe deeply in the magic of human connection and want people to find friendship, love, and even successful networking on their platforms. And there are a couple of apps that I think do hold that ethos, at its core. But they’re few and far between.
In reality, dating apps stay in business through a very simple model: The more users they have seeing and interacting with the ads on the platform, the more money they make from advertisers. Oh—and if you hate ads? Well, just pay them a huge chunk of cash per month (compared to what they’re making per ad view anyway), and you can swipe ad-free!
Dating apps need you to feel like they “work,” like there are folks available to you, so that you keep coming back to them.
Part of the exhaustion, then, I think, is that we’re constantly pushed to use a system that ultimately doesn’t give us what we want (whether that’s a relationship or a consistent hookup who treats us with respect), thinking it’s our only option for finding such a thing, and feeling like if we just were better at it, we’d succeed.
We blame ourselves instead of the platforms. That’s how they get you.
2. Dating Apps Were Made By Men, For Men
Of course, this isn’t true for all apps. But it’s becoming true for more and more apps as virtually all dating platforms currently operate similarly to Tinder, an app that was created by cishet men, for cishet men, to find women for casual sex.
Part of why you feel exhausted with apps is because they were never made for you in the first place.
If you’re a marginalized gender, if you’re queer, if you’re non-monogamous, if you’re looking for connections that amount to more than “wham, bam, thank you, ma’am,” the mainstream dating apps aren’t actually designed to work for you.
Look no further than how the apps deal with gender to see how obvious this is: Tinder’s gender options are “man,” “woman,” and (insert throw-up emoji) “beyond the binary.” While you’re welcome to identify yourself more specifically, you can only choose to see people within those extremely broad, not-at-all queer-friendly categories.
Even I, a cis woman, ran into a problem with this recently: Only three of the mainstream-ish dating apps (OK Cupid, Feeld, and HER) allow you to filter in trans men and mascs while filtering out cis men.
What?
Or what about the recent change from Hinge, making sorting folks by preferred relationship style (monogamy vs. polyamory) a premium feature?
These awful choices make dating apps less and less easily accessible for folks, like queers and polyamorists, who are already on the margins.
Apply a basic analysis of power and oppression to dating apps, and it’s obvious why we feel so tired: They operate as a microcosm of the systems that oppress us.
3. We’re Fatigued By the Digital World in General
The Internet has been on the rise for a long time. From the mid-90s when AOL started entering homes (ah, the nostalgic sound of a modem connecting) through the 2010s and the proliferation of social media, we’ve become more and more dependent on our online communities.
But when the pandemic hit and everything moved online (including our jobs and our friendships), what first sparked an innovative desire to make things work (who knew we could have Zoom burlesque shows?) turned very quickly into exhausting: “No, I don’t want to FaceTime. I need to get off my screen.”
As the majority of people have started moving back to in-person events (an ethical question we can tackle another day), the allure of the Internet has faded—fast.
It’s almost like it was building, and then in 2020, completely crashed.
Insert a sudden rise in in-person events, like speed-dating and mixers. I’ve seen apps popping up (like TimeLeft and 222) that offer to match you with new people and fun activities to get you out in the world. And I’m noticing The Feels, an in-person dating event focused on somatic connection, popping up in more and more major US cities.
In general, we want to get the f*ck offline. And cultural curators are noticing, given us options to meet new people in hybrid ways.
Online communities have been a godsend for so many of us who are marginalized. I’m still connected with folks I met on LiveJournal back in the early aughts! But the more time we spend online, the less magic these spaces seem to hold.
4. We’ve Developed a Laissez-Faire Attitude Toward Dating
When did it become cool not to care? (Oof. Now I’ve offended Gen X twice in one essay.)
There was a lot of concern in the early 2000s about “hookup culture.” Most of that concern was centered on the ways in which it tends to benefit cis, straight men and disadvantage—well—anyone else (gay men notwithstanding? they’re the hook-up culture kings queens).
But something we didn’t quite foresee is how hookup culture would develop into a deeply hands-off attitude toward dating, especially as connecting went virtual.
But I think they’re related.
Hookup culture taught us to distance our emotional reality from our sexual connections, separating sex and romance to an extreme. Don’t get me wrong: There’s nothing wrong with hookups, with purely sexual connections, or with sex without love. But there is something wrong with how we’re doing it.
Because we’ve essentially washed our hands of any commitment to human dignity.
Indeed, when I’m navigating and negotiating connections online these days, I always make a point to say that while, yes, I’m open to hookups, I am only interested in sexual connection that still prioritizes direct communication, conflict resolution, compassion, and respect. (Why do I have to say this?)
And hookup culture seems to have seeped into the entirety of the dating world: No one wants to put in any effort to connect.
How many times have you asked a person you matched with what they’re looking for, only to receive a non-committal response of “I don’t know” or “going with the flow?”
How often have you been mid-conversation with a match just for them to stop responding (hell, I’ve also been that person)?
Part of this has to do with how dating apps lure you in: by creating a false belief in endless abundance. Dating apps make you feel like the next best thing is just a swipe away. Something I think is perfectly encapsulated in how people will match with you and not send a message; they just keep on swiping after the quick dopamine hit of a match.
Part of it has to do with our general digital exhaustion. We don’t want to be on screens all the time. We don’t want to be using the Internet as a main source of connection anymore.
And part of it has to do with the insidious ways that cisheteropatriarchy, vis-a-vis the evolution of hookup culture, has rooted itself inside of us: Who needs deep human connection when I can just get laid?
5. The Dating Pool Is Getting More and More Avoidant
Okay, so let’s say that all of the above doesn’t apply to you or, at the very least, is stuff you’ve spent a lot of time thinking about and trying to work around.
Let’s say that you truly try your best to connect with folks in a deep and honest way, that you’re putting in the effort to chat with your matches, that you’re ready and willing to meet out in the world to feel out the chemistry, and that you have a healthy relationship with what it is you’re looking for.
(First of all, wow. Good for you.)
Now you run into the next problem: Whether you’re dating online or IRL, the older you get, the more insecurely attached – and specifically, avoidantly attached – the dating pool becomes.
Think about it: The majority of people are still following a timeline set up for us generations ago, wherein we settle down into marriage and family early on in our adulthoods. And so, in our thirties, in our forties, who is left in the dating pool?
Oh. Right. People who haven’t been able to find that.
Obviously there are plenty of caveats to this generalization. Queers may be less likely to follow the scripts. People get divorced. Non-monogamous people exist. But overarchingly, what kinds of people are we going to find who are still single at 38?
In a million ways (or at least the five I laid out here), we are dealing with a group of people on dating apps who are there because nothing else, not even the apps themselves, is working.
No wonder we’re all f*cking exhausted.
So maybe it’s time to give the apps a break and trying going inward for a bit to sort out what we truly want and how to achieve it. If you’re ready to do that and want some support in the process, I got you. Send me a message here, and let’s work out how to move you forward.
In solidarity (unfortunately),
Melissa