You introduce somebody to your attractive single friend there's a real chance they hit it off and form a relationship. You introduce them to 100 attractive friends, one makes more money, one has a mores table job, one is flirtier, etc then it's both exhausting and none of them seem like a great opportunity.

I think there are certain basic psychological facts that are anti-standard-economics that nerds (and therefore tech companies) almost always tend to be completely blind to. This is one of them.

Dating apps make money when users spend time (and money) on the platform. Users who find a partner tend to leave the platform, so dating companies are incentivized to prevent that from happening. Those companies then have more opportunities to up-sell those users on premium features, which they're more likely to purchase due to repeated failure and/or feelings of inadequacy.

At the same time, there's a bunch of people who aren't so popular who are now done checking a short queue of candidates, and willing to go with whoever shows up next above their bar.

But those people are still busy rejecting everyone in a seemingly infinite line of suitors. So we have a problem getting people to match.

Add to this that the sexes are not distributed the same way. There's a few ultra hot guys who will never not have a date, and there's a more even number of hot women who the less hot guys are waiting on.

If you're speed dating or doing any other real-world dating, your queues are a lot shorter. You will feel like your idea of the market is set much sooner, and you can start picking out a candidate.

I do agree that bandwidth is significantly higher in person, we’ve evolved efficient pattern detection, and wish it were more acceptable to meet up for a quick coffee immediately after matching. But a few bad apples spoil the bunch.

There’s an alternate explanation - that the fittest companies prioritize engagement and revenue until reaching some threshold of user dissatisfaction. The healthiest businesses often have customers who wish they could leave, but can’t.

1 - https://paulgraham.com/submarine.html

> (…) pictures also give lots of information about important non-superficial things, like your personality, values, social class, and lifestyle.

This is the one thing that puzzles me most about dating apps: where do all these pictures come from? People seem to have pictures of them doing all kinds of activities. When I’m out with friends doing whatever, no one is taking pictures. Even if they did, it’s not like we exchange pictures afterwards.

I genuinely don’t have any pictures of myself.

Are me and my friends weird for not documenting every second of our lives?

However, like the iOS keyboard, people will put up with some annoyances if the overall product is valuable, and swiping for a mate (or, back in simpler times, answering heaps of questions on OkCupid and doing lots of clicking) is easier than doing so through church/school/work/bar/other opportunities through consistent exposure. (To wit: I met many incompatible people through the usual methods and met my wife through OkCupid, so the dating apps aren't useless!)

Also, as a former speed-dating host, speed-dating has always been something people mostly did for the entertainment value. I never did the math on it, but if I had to guess, it probably had about the same odds of finding someone than the apps back then.

And it is worth being a little suspicious of the people who 'hate' dating apps. There are valid criticisms, but the people who are just bad partners are going to turn up somewhere and it might be that pool of people - they tend not to be big on reflecting on their own flaws with rigorous intellectual honesty and would blame the apps.

It felt a bit unnecessary. In any case, maybe it was just how totally random in age and interest the people there were, but the result wasn't like cramming 15 online dates into the span of a single one. It was more like 15 conversations with people I would never have had the slightest impulse to contact via an online dating app. Most of the conversations had what felt like a comfortable mutual vibe of "we both understand we could not plausibly be attracted to each other." Then again, in online dating, I've come to realize that most guys incessantly swipe right, while I almost always swipe left.

The spicier version: dating apps select for personality disorders, and as such, being on a dating app in the first place is a negative signal

For what it's worth, I think this has always been true of the web in general (forums, chat, social media, comments sections, etc.)

I've been in a monogamous relationship for nearly 16 years I would thus not be in a position to be a first customer.

I think it's pretty telling that the alternatives people talk about are always alternative strategies for how to meet lots of people. The most common pre-app experience, where you didn't meet lots of people and married a random person in your social circles rather than a best friend who gets you and shares your key interests, isn't something most people are interested in.

This leads into behavior, as you can spend however much time you want vibing and talking through text, but meeting and spending time together in person will invariably be different. This results in two major high-pressure, high-filter events as opposed to the one from initially meeting in person.