by Movies want us to believe that falling in love happens in elevators, in Ikea showrooms, on top of the Empire State Building or on board doomed ocean liners; eyes meeting and life pausing as everything suddenly takes effect to the sudden swelling of the soundtrack.
Although the world is indeed a bubbling pot of chance connections, many of today’s great love stories have a humble beginning through a mobile phone screen.
Dating apps were an interesting novelty when they came to prominence in the early 2010s, with two of the most popular, Tinder and Bumble, emerging in 2012 and 2014 respectively.
In full disclosure, I have never used a dating app.
In a long-term relationship in my twenties, I instead noticed their rise from the sidelines, listening to my friends talk excitedly about games, and watching them scroll through images of men as relaxed as a kettle reflection in a catalog.
It was strange but refreshing.
When my dad met my stepmom through Match.com in the middle of the events, he lied to people that they had bumped into each other at a work conference. Any stigma in the past has largely been erased by the ubiquity of apps, a presence now expected for singletons.
In an increasingly remote digital age where we use our phones for everything from banking to ordering burgers, apps are now the main way to meet potential partners; relationships based on a flow of instant messages, random voice notes and ‘likes’.
But this societal change in the way we date and view relationships has come at a cost. Now bloated with users and burdened by cliches, the apps have long lost any sense of playful possibility; replace hope with obligation haunted by disillusionment and fatigue.
Tired of Tinder, burnt out on Bumble
“Endless flow, frustration of small talk, ghost, fuckbois hook-up, catfish scammers and bored polyamorous trying to expand their couple or group,” Ria Fend, a 38-year-old actress and graphic designer based in London, who says of her time on dating apps.
“The illusion of unlimited choice is dehumanizing and it’s too easy for people to lack accountability and treat you badly.”
Ria is far from alone in feeling burnt out. The superficial mechanisms of dating apps, which flatten a connection with a series of somnolence-induced swipes and profiles filled with unimaginative quotes pop culture, lost its glory.
Then there is the endless list of negative experiences, from bots and scammers, to ‘ghosts’ and ‘cases’.
Women in particular are often subjected to inappropriate messages, with a third being called offensive names or pursued by men after saying no, according to 2020. Pew research study. This has led to the creation of Facebook groups where women can warn others about men who have shown bad behaviour.
It feels like we’re getting very close to playing out a scene from the 1987 movie Amazon Women on the Moonwhere Rosanna Arquette prints the complete dating and sexual history of her blind date: “Seventeen times you lied to women, telling them you were really into sushi and Meryl Streep movies.”
It’s no wonder, then, that an increasing number of users are deciding to swipe the whole thing. A 2023 studies at US news outlet Axios and research firm Generation Lab found that 79 percent of college students were opting for old-school personal chat instead.
Ria agreed: “I recently chose to ditch the apps and go out to meetup groups and new social groups to expand organic real-life connections in hopes of finding a real person who also wants a relationship.”
Like many social media platforms, one of the main reasons why dating apps have become so unattractive is their attempts to monopolize the market by being everything to everyone at the same time, sacrificing user experience for greedy data guzzling, until they explode.
Writing for Wired, journalist Cory Doctorow coined a term for this: ‘enshittification’. Under the lures of capitalism, once-booming digital hubs are destined to become zombie-infested shopping malls, crying their way to collapse.
Where is the love?
In response, people aren’t just going offline to find love — they’re also turning to simpler, more specific apps, many of which aren’t meant to be dating at all.
Take Duolingo, for example: a language app in which you are guilty of a green owl who is very enthusiastic about continuing to learn stripes. There isn’t even a private messaging function, until recently The Wall Street Journal reported that there were still people trouver l’amour on them.
When I reached out to Duolingo to find out more about how this could be possible, they shared a story about a couple named Rob and Amanda, who met when one congratulated the other for his winning streak. They are married now.
Other fitness apps being used for romance include fitness tracker Strava and film-focused Letterboxd, where two movie lovers went viral in 2021 after starting a relationship over a shared love for David Fincher’s ‘Mank’.
Last December, we followed each other @box letter after posting five-star reviews of Mank. Five months later after 900 miles apart, we finally met up. Thank you Letterboxd and David Fincher! pic.twitter.com/xOuPUuPAa4
— Ben Crew (@BenjaminCrew1) May 3, 2021
The more individualized arrangement of these interest-based apps makes such success stories the exception, but their use in this way represents a huge gap in the market.
There is a clear demand for more niche spaces, where the pools of people are smaller and more genuinely interested, driven by creativity and action rather than soulless CVs, which are not expressed.
Some start-ups are already embracing this idea, such as Turn Up, a music-based dating app where users lead with their favorite bands instead of the usual ‘about me’ game.
There was even a dating app dedicated to cat lovers called Tabby on ‘Shark Tank’ last year, but its lack of success would indicate that it wasn’t for ‘feline’ people (this is why I never get any matches).
What is the future of dating apps?
A former investment banker, Shahzad Younas launched the Muslim dating app Muzz in 2015 after noticing a lack of decent options available for his religion. Since then, it has grown to become the most popular Muslim dating app, reaching over 10 million users worldwide in 50 languages.
Much of its success is due to the app being unashamed of what it is, says Younas, but also of the cultural differences involved in becoming a Muslim.
“In general, Muslims don’t date, we marry,” Younas tells Euronews Culture.
“On the mainstream apps, for the most part, you obviously have some serious people, but a lot of people who are happy so far, happy to engage with that kind of stuff. And that’s the kind of culture of apps. But for us, it’s the complete opposite.”
The app is very specific in its approach to matching people, asking them exactly how often they pray, how religious they are and when they want to get married.
Its predominantly European demographic, with the UK and France also comprising the largest audience, means that users are more willing to travel than the hyper-local nature of Tinder and co.
“You have a lot of people [app users] that don’t have much of a distant or country filter. They are willing to travel, and they are willing to slide people effectively in different countries in Europe,” says Younas.
By Match Group (owner of Tinder, Hinge, Match.com and more) shares falling 40 percent over the past year, the success of apps like Muzz suggests that the future of dating apps lies in a more targeted approach that fosters directness and encourages non-gamified communication.
“For me, that’s the real way to look at this market. How can you make this a more natural experience? Because I’m thinking, in ten years or five years, will people still be swiping? I do not know. I don’t know if that is the best way. There is definitely something of fatigue,” says Younas, who wants to be less forced into online dating.
“People often say that Instagram is the biggest dating app in the world, because people are looking at content and sliding into DMs and getting to know people that way, which I think is a bit more natural don’t literally slip people. And so one thing we’re looking at is, how do we really build a community beyond a community that’s looking to date and marrying?”
Interestingly, Younas has also found that their free video and voice calling feature has helped people find successful matches by filtering out stagnant chatter and cutting straight to who is serious. More than half of the calls to Muzz are initiated by women.
“A lot of women don’t want to give out their phone number, so it allows them to be safe on the app and call them. And if they’re not interested, great. You get a better idea of someone on a voice or video call, which is almost like the first step before meeting in person.”
While the future of dating apps is still uncertain, we’re at the point where most people’s needs aren’t being met, causing most to end up in a terrifying cycle of delete, reinstall, delete.
“It’s just a lot of effort. You put in a lot of time to get a date. It’s like a full-time job,” one friend tells me.
But we’re also a hopelessly romantic species, and as long as there’s hope, we’ll keep on sliding, past all the cheesy group-scam shots and hard-hitting irony, clinging to the chance to touch it that special someone. He is not No sleep in Seattlebut at least our fate is likely to turn out better than Titanic.
Personally, I will be returning to Duolingo. Que Será, Será.
