{"id":61,"date":"2026-08-12T23:18:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-12T23:18:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/justindaigle.com\/blog\/?p=61"},"modified":"2026-08-12T23:18:13","modified_gmt":"2026-08-12T23:18:13","slug":"sensibility-versus-the-tinderization-of-dating-eight-years-later","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/justindaigle.com\/blog\/?p=61","title":{"rendered":"Sensibility Versus the Tinderization of Dating – Eight Years Later"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Oh the irony of reposting this almost three years since last time!<\/em> History may not repeat itself, but it sure does rhyme…<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had come to terms with the reality of letting go of my old posts and starting over. But today’s news makes this one still relevant all these years later, so I felt like reposting it with some commentary. I can’t resurrect my posts en masse, but I can pick out the ones I want. And if I had one worth preserving… it’s this one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Apparently Bumble is getting rid of its signature rule that required women to message first.<\/a> Supposedly some incels got pissy because it was “sexist” against men? What the hell, incels? I rather like letting the ladies take the responsibility of the initiative. Makes things easier. I thought y’all’s biggest complaint was that dating was too hard? Then again, if incels were smart, they wouldn’t be incels. I struck out with hundreds of women before my first relationship. I strike out a lot less now. Practice makes perfect. Falling further into your creepy incel rabbit hole forums ain’t gonna get you laid. Acting normal and learning to play to your strengths will.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So what have I learned since then? Reddit is still a pretty good bet. Craigslist found me a couple of relationships, and now that they’ve turned into puritans, Doublelist picked up where they left off (but it’s still lacking, and I still wouldn’t mind making my own, if I could ever get off my lazy ass – I have a domain for it and everything… but honestly I never use like two thirds of the domains I impulse buy). Tinder and its clones are still worthless for anyone trying to find a genuine relationship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Damn…<\/em> I think it’s fitting though that I chose to use the word cancerous<\/em> of all things. Because of, you know, Cancer, the crab? So you know how every living thing evolves into a crab (well, not quite, I guess)?<\/a> Every dating app evolves into Tinder. OKCupid was the victim back then. Today it’s Bumble. Honestly, I didn’t have too many other goals to this post beyond bragging about still being right, all these years later. Dating apps still haven’t actually tried to get people to find matches successfully. And why would they? They operate on the same business model as a casino – if you win, they lose. They want to retain paying customers, and people in happy relationships aren’t in their clientele. I suppose this is the single biggest thing I’ve learned since then – the “why” of Tinderization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet what I don’t understand (and what I should aim to understand if I intend to make something similar) is why Doublelist doesn’t hit these problems. Reddit and Craigslist aren’t meant for dating, so they don’t require a customer base of exclusively single people to come back. I’ll think about that one, but probably not too hard. I could happily operate my version at a loss, because I’m not really looking to start a business. It’s a hobby project made for the needs of one client – myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With all of that being said, I’m quite well pleased with how well this aged. I only felt the need to disagree with myself on one sentence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The original unedited<\/s> post with a singular important edit follows.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m back.<\/em> After almost three years of posting nothing at all, here I am. Ready to put thoughts to the metaphorical paper in hopes of people reading them. It\u2019s been a long time coming, but this is an issue I can no longer stay silent on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tinderization <\/em>(noun) \u2013 The act of destroying online dating by shoehorning Tinder-like functionality into unrelated dating apps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ll say that it looks like I\u2019m not the first person to use the word \u201ctinderization,\u201d but a cursory Google search shows others who have independently coined the term use it with different intent. As such, I\u2019ll be sticking with the term, under my definition. Suffice it to say it\u2019s a loaded definition \u2013 after all, I did say it\u2019s destroying<\/em> online dating. Quite clearly, this is a topic I\u2019ve some strong opinions on. I\u2019ve presented my thesis, and I don\u2019t think I managed to stutter: Tinder ruined dating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tinder sucks. Here\u2019s why.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Swipe left. Swipe right. Does nobody else think it\u2019s positively absurd<\/em> that dating has been reduced to these trite concepts? And then of course there\u2019s \u201cfollowing rules 1 and 2.\u201d For the uninitiated, those are \u201cBe attractive,\u201d and \u201cdon\u2019t be unattractive,\u201d respectively. Well, what about the rest of us? The rebels. Those who care not for rules. Those who are best summed up in multiple paragraphs, as opposed to a handful of Snapchat photos. Here\u2019s the problem for us: In and of itself, it\u2019s easy to ignore Tinder. It\u2019s a raging dumpster fire. In and of itself, Tinder doesn\u2019t matter.<\/em> It\u2019s a dumb app for dumb people. For masochists who enjoy being reduced to a set of photos, followed by a short bio that\u2019s half emojis and half the names of the airports in the cities they\u2019ve lived in. While on that note, what the hell kind of person considers that to be the most interesting thing about them? If you don\u2019t have anything more interesting to say about yourself, you must really be a blank slate. About as bland as hospital food. Thanks for letting me know right off the bat that you\u2019re probably worth avoiding. Seriously, what conversation starter were you fishing for? \u201cHow\u2019s the airport in NYC?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it\u2019s not just Tinder.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And this is the problem. Tinder isn\u2019t just<\/em> a raging dumpster fire. It\u2019s cancerous, too. Look at OKCupid. I used to like the way they did things \u2013 A detailed profile, with all kinds of intricate questions about a person. And they still have that. Except now, you can\u2019t message someone unless they\u2019ve matched with you in their Tinder-like swipe-left, swipe-right drivel that they\u2019ve added and since buried everything else underneath. I haven\u2019t used it much, but as far as I can tell, Coffee Meets Bagel uses roughly the same system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m not sure what it is. I\u2019m only 25, I thought. Am I getting old? Do people not want depth in their relationships anymore? Granted, I\u2019ve never been all that in touch with what the average person wants, because as far as I can tell, the answer is always \u201ca steaming hot pile of garbage.\u201d I think the question on my mind, and on the minds of however many sensible people are actually left on this planet, is\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where do we go from here?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

POF? I gave this one a try, and even shelled out for a few months of premium membership. Then I got confused by their instructions for unsubscribing and lost another $30 until I just deleted my account. From my time on there, all I\u2019ve found out is that they should rename their site \u201cPlenty of Bots.\u201d The entire time I\u2019ve had their (buggy, unpleasant) app installed, I would get notifications that someone \u201cwants to meet me.\u201d Inevitably, it would be a profile with short, one-word descriptions and a handful of photos. And of course, if you\u2019d message this person, you\u2019d promptly get a link to some shifty sex cam site. The whole thing is terrible, but props to them for not following the idiotic Tinder trend, at least? Try curating your site a little (or a lot, rather) better though.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reddit? I actually met one of my exes on reddit, as well as someone I dated briefly but never entered a formal relationship with (TL;DR, she had a lot of problems and wasn\u2019t over her ex, who she quickly went back to). Considering the dating subreddits are exclusively text-based, you\u2019d think this would be exactly what I\u2019m looking for. I\u2019m familiar with exactly two of these \u2013 R4R (the big, global one), and, since I live near Atlanta, Atlanta R4R (which has mostly devolved into casual hookup posts, since the section of Craigslist previously devoted to this recently shut down). And considering I\u2019ve had decent luck here before, you\u2019d think this would be a no-brainer. After all, I spend almost all of my day on reddit anyway. But here\u2019s the problem: reddit is a notorious sausage-fest. And it seems to be devolving into more and more of one. What\u2019s the point of crafting a brilliantly thought-out post, if your target audience isn\u2019t there to read it? I suppose I\u2019ll continue to yell into the void that is R4R for now until I come up with a better solution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Real life? This platform is confusing. It needs an instruction manual, which it seems to be sorely lacking. For instance, I can\u2019t find the \u201cdating\u201d section. I only ever really browse three sections of this one: My apartment, my job, and wherever I happen to be eating. None of these seem to be conducive to meeting other people. I\u2019m gonna just write this one off as \u201cneeds documentation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why not make your own?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If all else fails, this is what I\u2019m inclined toward doing. After all, I\u2019m a developer! Any problem that can\u2019t be solved with code doesn\u2019t matter. So I can either find someone by writing code, or reach the conclusion that finding someone doesn\u2019t matter\u2026 right? At this point, it\u2019s really just a matter of deciding what I need to make. A website? An app? Both? And how can I make such a thing as \u201canti-Tinder\u201d as possible? I have some thoughts on this, which I\u2019m keeping to myself for now, in case I do decide to actually implement this, but I could really use some inspiration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In closing, online dating right now sucks. And the suckiness is spreading. I think it\u2019s time to nuke it all from orbit and start over. Thanks a lot, Tinder. You\u2019ve ruined meaningful connections forever. And thanks a lot, other millennials, you\u2019ve enabled this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Online dating sucks because people suck.<\/s> Online dating sucks because its business model requires it to suck. Rant over.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Oh the irony of reposting this almost three years since last time! History may not repeat itself, but it sure does rhyme… I had come to terms with the reality of letting go of my old posts and starting over.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/justindaigle.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/justindaigle.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/justindaigle.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justindaigle.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justindaigle.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=61"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/justindaigle.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63,"href":"https:\/\/justindaigle.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61\/revisions\/63"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/justindaigle.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=61"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justindaigle.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=61"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justindaigle.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=61"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}