Dating apps are often a miserable experience for the participants, however for some reason they are quite popular and at times can be quite addictive.
Dating apps are often a miserable experience for the participants, however for some reason they are quite popular and at times can be quite addictive.
Dating apps are very much like games. It’s a big social game, and the reward is engagement.
To have a viable dating app it has to continue to have active participants. People need to feel dopamine using the dating app.
That being said the biggest issue is most of the dating apps are closed source. But the issue of opening them, to federation, are abuses spam, seeing people you don’t want to see etc.
Is swiping on people, and sending messages the ultimate in dating? Of course not. But it’s the current meta that’s emerged.
The big problems in the current model, engagement with people who are not photogenic. Being able to present people is more than a photo, with more depth. If the app does a very good job, and somebody finds a partner, they stop using the app, causing the community and ecosystem to die. So apps are currently incentivized to keep people engaged, but not off the market.
Humans are social creatures, Everything is a dating app one huge advantage dating apps have, is that more or less everyone is open to dating. And making connections.
I use lichess in order to find my mates
Checkmates?
Sometimes but mostly stalemates
Alovoa is free and opensource. Never used it though
I tend to agree with your points.
The key idea for me is that everything is a dating app. Social media are a great place to get to know someone and become interested in them. However, there is no straightforward way to transition that interest into a connection or a relationship. That’s what dating apps provide a way to broadcast your availability along with other parameters like your gender, age, location and interests.
An alternative would be toot on Mastodon or blog about that. That would inform people interested in your online persona that your dms are open for a chat. Of course, that comes with issues on its own…
Spam or unsolicited advances (aka dick pics) are a huge one, especially for women. One way to solve that would be for men do these kind of posts and women to react as they see appropriate. In an ideal society with gender equality, that wouldn’t be necessary, but at the moment IMO it’s easier to deal with men disguised as russian super models bating for your money, than angry men feeling entitled to your body.
Another issue would be the social repercussions of this information being publicly available. IMO that’s easy to deal with since you don’t have to tie your online persona to your real Identity. Also, you can have multiple online personas. Hopefully, society gets to a point where expression of sexuality is not taboo, until then there are safe ways to do it.
If you have your photos on your dating profile, you are doxing yourself effectively.
Good points, Great to hear your thoughts on the topic.