this post was submitted on 15 May 2025
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Online dating is fascinating in how bad it is. It's like 80% the fault of capitalism, and 20% users just doing a bad job and making it worse. People write messages no deeper than "lol" and "nm hbu" and then wonder why they don't have any interesting conversations like on the tv
Because of the meta. If you show too much enthusiasm too fast, it comes off as a red flag. Thus the low energy game of conversational investment chicken.
If you're actually trying to date, then enthusiasm being a red flag is itself a red flag. If you're just trying to hook up then yeah, follow "the meta".
That's kind of fascinating. and sad. It sounds kind of self-defeating- If the other person is reasonably well adjusted, they're going to take feigned disinterest as just regular disinterest, and move on. (Or think that the other person can't hold a conversation, and move on.)
Maybe this creates a self-selection effect where the people who are afraid of being enthusiastic eventually meet each other? That would probably be best for everyone.
This is primarily an issue for guys, typically girls have way more matches. If your match happened to hit it off with someone else first, or they only check when they're drunk, or you just got lost in the sea, after a few times putting in effort and getting ghosted, you start to be a bit more frugal.
On the other side, you're used to being flooded with messages, so you never really have to put in much effort until things do start to get interesting.
I see why that would happen but it seems like a self destructive strategy. The other person wasn't there for all your other attempts. This is your first interaction with them. If you half-ass it, all they see is you're doing a bad job at conversation. You only get one first impression with someone.
Right, but after enough failures the defeat becomes demoralizing. I'm not saying it isn't self-destructive, but human nature frequently is.
Yeah, can't disagree with that.
When I give people dating app advice, I tell them if they don't have the emotional resources to full-ass it, delete the app. Half-assing it is likely going to make things worse.
But humans aren't rational creatures.
I wonder if this is the app, or the age group? As a late 30s guy on Hinge, I don't have a ton of trouble finding at least a few people to have a decent chat with every week, and it's led to a decent number of dates and even a few long term relationships.
The opposite worked for me, but both of us were feeling like we'd try one more time then take a break. This was on OkCupid before they got bought out by Match.