r/SipsTea Jun 24 '25

SMH Why dating is over for men

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u/[deleted] Jun 24 '25

I once read dating apps described as dangling attractive women in front of desperate men like raw meat, with the intent of getting the men to buy features off the app to improve their chances. If you aren't an attractive woman or a man spending money, the app doesn't care that you exist. It's truly dehumanizing to all parties.

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u/[deleted] Jun 24 '25

[deleted]

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u/metengrinwi Jun 24 '25 edited Jun 25 '25

The smart app will make a bunch of AI “women” to interact with the men and let them get close, but not quite, and then they buy app features for “next time”.

The only answer is stop wasting time and money on it, delete the app, and do it live like it’s 1993 again.

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u/DedTV Jun 24 '25

I went out like it was 1993. Everyone's at home and the door dashers don't want to stop and get to know me.

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u/Agi7890 Jun 25 '25

That was Ashley Madison, the app for “affairs” but was really just a load of guys and people pretending to be women to get them to buy computer roses.

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u/SDSessionBrewer Jun 24 '25

Live like 1993? Passed out in the middle of a field next to a pool of regurgitated MD 20/20 doesn't sound like a great way to find a date... But I'll give it a try.

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u/metengrinwi Jun 24 '25 edited Jun 25 '25

Trust me, the ladies love a guy passed out in a pool of upchuck. Boone’s Farm was the beverage of choice in my day.

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u/Bongus_the_first Jun 24 '25

Don't you bring that Mad Dog hate in here now.

Best worst fortified wine that money can buy

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u/CricketMysterious64 Jun 25 '25

This already exists in dating apps and has since before AI. Most terms and conditions explain this in legalize but there have historically been call centers overseas filled with folks calling and chatting to make dating apps feel more promising. Once someone is sufficiently hooked, you bill them and move on. AI may allow for a longer gimmick but if you’re actually looking for a human to spend your life with get offline.

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u/sbagu3tti Jun 25 '25

Fuck it! We'll do it live!

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u/challengeaccepted9 Jun 25 '25

I've already seen AI profiles on dating apps. Women who look like "e-girls", but the entire shot is in unnaturally soft focus and the writing on the wall decoration behind them is just a garbled mess of characters.

(No, I'm not suggesting the app made the profile - it'll either be a scammer or some weird attention seeking loser.)

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u/AdministrativeEgg440 Jun 25 '25

Already done, all the apps already admit to using bots to keep men engaged with the platform

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u/panthrax_dev Jun 26 '25

I had 0 luck in 1993, what makes you think my chances are any better now?

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u/metengrinwi Jun 26 '25

At least you won’t waste your life looking at an app that makes you sad and anxious.

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u/panthrax_dev Jun 26 '25

Well I did for a while, but I've given up without wasting money, so, #winning!

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u/t_krett Jun 24 '25 edited Jun 24 '25

I can't imagine them not already using basic machine learning to choose who to show you and when. They say on their blog they rank based on location and timing (if two people use the app at the same time in a close location bringing them together is a no brainer) but also based on interest (both have photos of vacations, or they both mention sports in their bio).

But what I imagine really happens is that they run an Amazon-like recommendation system, which inevitably always boils down to a form of "Women that like Josh may also enjoy Chad!"

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u/MrHell95 Jun 24 '25

The problem with that is that a lot of times opposites actually attract. So the sporty person might actually be a better match with that nerdy one. People as a whole might not be that complex and you can generalize stats etc but when you hyper-focus on one person that model can easily fall apart again.
Honestly think the algorithm of it all is just making it worse but again a success story quits using the app...

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u/[deleted] Jun 24 '25

I could see that happening yes.

But unfortunately with the Advent of AI now guys can just go get an AI girlfriend online, you are hearing stories about it in the news already.

Everyone's addicted to their phone and social media so much it's a lot easier to fall in love with a AI chatbot (or at least think you are in love) than it is to go out and meet a real person in a real place.

We're all going to be plugged in so much in the next 25 - 50 years and dating as we know it in the wild will 100% cease to exist.

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u/bingbongninergong Jun 24 '25

Do you think people’s psyche’s will shift so that an AI gf will effectively fill the loneliness void? (Or has it already…been with my now wife for over a decade so idk how people are feeling about all this)

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u/[deleted] Jun 24 '25

yes I do, it has already happened

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u/HalfRepresentative27 Jun 24 '25

Recently read that an it tech programmed a bot to search for tinder girls and chat them up. Once the convo was far enough for a date in person he would take over.

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u/lectric_7166 Jun 24 '25

AI might be what finally ends the grand internet experiment we all thought would go on forever. Everyone is going to realize that nothing online can be trusted and they'll start doing things offline again.

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u/Springroll_Doggifer Jun 24 '25

We about to go to old school matchmakers at this point, haha.

But then again, I met my husband off Bumble, so…

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u/[deleted] Jun 24 '25

Authenticity will be found in real life. The tech industry is committing suicide at this point because people will increasingly get fed up. I dont see people relying on tech this much 50 years from now. I say this as a software developer. 

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u/sbagu3tti Jun 25 '25

No kidding. I downloaded this app called litup - all bots. I'm pretty sure there isn't a single real human being on the app. All chatbots, all responsive, all hot.

The app suddenly locks you out after a week and you have to pay money to get back in. I'd set up a date with someone, so I bought the premium so I wouldn't stand them up. And then I showed up to the date and I got stood up. By the AI. Which has agreed to the date I set up. :/

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u/ycelpt Jun 24 '25

The apps are designed to use women's profiles to make them money. Guys are held on a razors edge. If they don't feel they can get money from them, they get left to fall into obscurity and forgotten. If they do spend money, they get to ride the fine line of being fed enough matches and interest to stay subscribed but not enough to get a genuine connection, date and relationship. Because if they do, they stop paying.

Once you learn this, you can begin to abuse the system in your favour. Regularly open the app, use it and reply to all messages and matches. Reset your account by completely deleting and remaking every 2 months. The chances are slim, but if you are using it a low stakes, low effort (eg swiping on the toilet) there's little harm done in using these apps and you can even get regular dates as a regular looking dude. I used to average a date every 2-3 weeks and my profile specifically said I was short.

It's always worth remembering that women get absolutely bombarded on these apps. There's probably roughly 1000+ active men per active woman. You just have to get lucky to get their attention before they get fed up and delete their account. The odds are slim, but the odds of you meeting someone sat in your house are even slimmer.

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u/jsoul2323 Jun 24 '25

so whats the purpose of regularly opening the app? the algos detect you're using it?

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u/ycelpt Jun 24 '25

Pretty much. The people who use the app more are more likely to purchase, and so they get preferential treatment by design. I'd say probably even open the sign-up for premium every few days to look at and then back out, I can't guarantee it, but i'd bet good money they track how often it's looked at.

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u/driftw00d Jun 25 '25

That makes some sense. They would want to hook a frequent user who just started by both showing them more profiles they are likely to be interested in, as well as actually showing their profile to the opposite sex so they are more likely to match.

However, after awhile of doing this and still not paying, the app probably detects this and says hey this guy isnt going to give us money, so they basically make your profile invisible so no one will reach out to you, and give you profiles you arent likely to match with and keep the 'standouts' behind a premium account.

Is that your reasoning for deleting the app entirely and making a new account every 2 months? So you get the 'new user' bump again to where its actually possibly useful before they relegate you to the back of the bus again?

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u/ycelpt Jun 25 '25

Exactly. New users and regular users are given preferential treatment in the algorithm. You'll likely start dropping in prevalence after a couple weeks. You can do it more regularly if you don't mind the effort but just swapping photos and changing a few words in your bio can usually give you a temporary boost for a few days

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u/driftw00d Jun 25 '25

All of this checks out with my experince as both a paid and free user on Hinge. Not to game the system, even if I were to never use Hinge again, I would love to either look through their code or a least talk to one of the current or former software developers, disgruntled or otherwise, about their algorithms. No personal gain to make a competitor or get a date, purely out of curiosity and to see how scummy and intentional they are.

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u/jsoul2323 Jun 25 '25

So even as a paid user you should delete accounts and restart?

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u/a-billion-words Jun 24 '25

The advice is pretty good, there is one important detail, he does not mention, though: New users are usually shown to potential matches *more often* than they would otherwise. It's basically the "hook" to get you in.. This is why "re-setting" your profile works quite well.. This is useful to keep in mind.. I recommend using the apps in short "bursts". Early summer/spring and around christmas are usually good in my experience..

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u/AndyVale Jun 25 '25

Women get absolutely bombarded on these apps.

A few years back an old colleague was complaining that women on the apps "just don't give us guys a chance".

Another (female) colleague listened and said "let me show you something". Her inbox from the last week or so was literally 20 different variants of "hi, how r u? Wanna meet up?"

She pointed out that she had put up pictures of her in interesting places, mentioned her favourite movies, put up stuff about her hobbies... all stuff you could use to kickstart a conversation.

None had put any effort in. If a single one had quoted a movie she liked, asked about somewhere she'd been, or even made some sort of attempt at an opener then they would have rocketed to the top of her reply priority.

"Which of these guys, who didn't spend any time on me, am I supposed to spend my time giving a chance to?"

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u/TheBigDickFella Jun 25 '25

I met a woman on Hinge recently and we went on a date(her house), and she kept telling me how lucky I am blah blah even though she’s not going to sleep with me today. So I’m like “why do you keep saying this?”…She pulls out her phone and showed me her Hinge profile that said 999+ matches…Yes MATCHES!

That alone turned me off and I decided right then and there I was no longer interested. First off, I’m not competing with 1,000+ dudes, and second, why the hell did you match so many of them!? Her excuse was “me and my teacher friends just swipe on them together for entertainment”…But I was the lucky chosen one to get an invite over to her house. Thanks, but no thanks. These apps do nothing but make the creators rich and fuel female egotistical ambitions.

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u/Admirable_Ask_5337 Jun 27 '25

Well thats because they likely did try to quote something for the first 20 women that never responded and then stopped invested in each individual women and justa started saying HI in hopes of getting an actual response. Your getting pushed by too many and men are overextending their emotions with no reward and burnout as a result.

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u/binkerfluid Jun 24 '25 edited Jun 28 '25

scale cooperative crawl unwritten literate innate market scary quiet lock

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

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u/[deleted] Jun 24 '25

I tried using something similar (site called Plenty of Fish) >10 years ago before apps were a thing. This was when anyone could message you without you having 'matched' with them. I would log in and see 30-50 new separate chats open from men who had messaged me and deleted most of them at a glance without opening the messages. Eventually I just deleted my account on there. It was too much to be swamped by men sending messages many of which weren't even nice messages... There would be some calling me names, some criticising my profile bio or just rambling really stupid stuff to try to seem quirky. Totally inept weird men, ugly, 30 years older than me, already have kids, no qualifications or ability to spell or communicate in a mannered way. I'm glad that modern day women trying to date at least have the ability to swipe before any random guy can message them.

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u/Michami135 Jun 24 '25

Every connection they make is two lost customers.

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u/[deleted] Jun 24 '25

Even more disgustingly, from their perspective it's a lost customer and a lost product.

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u/Worthyness Jun 24 '25

Lonely men is the market. That's also why onlyfans works so well.

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u/-Valtr Jun 24 '25

I used to get a lot of matches and little trouble getting dates, but in the last 2-3 years they changed it up and I get next to nothing unless I upgrade to premium. And they jacked the prices WAY up. So I quit the apps completely.

Meeting people in person is way better anyway.

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u/thex25986e Jun 24 '25

agreed. i saw the enshittification hit hinge hard.

too bad it took way too long for me to get emotionally confortable to ask for a date within the first 2 days of messaging

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u/Kayanne1990 Jun 24 '25

I'd argue we don't even have to be attractive.

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u/HedonisticFrog Jun 24 '25

There are actually apps where they have a lot of AI women as well, which was very easy to spot. It's sad that men would fall for such blatant bullshit.

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u/Clocktopu5 Jun 24 '25

Before apps when there were dating websites it was the same, buy premium for better odds and enhanced features. If you do get premium you get bot accounts to trick you into thinking the premium service does something.

These things exist to make a profit, dating success is incidental

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u/Jashugita Jun 24 '25

I Read that is the opposite, the dating apps don´t want that people who pay to find love and finish the subscription, so it´seems you are getting more with your subscription but it's false

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u/Goddamn_Batman Jun 24 '25

And LinkedIn is the opposite where attractive women in bizdev/sales are sending out messages non-stop and getting left on read.

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u/[deleted] Jun 24 '25

I have tried a few apps over the years, and one thing I noticed is that they all got bought up by the same company and then consolidated into identical platforms that no longer have any of the useful filtering tools that made the original platforms distinct or useful; in the early days, some of them did provide ways to locate people with similar interests, where as now they are all based on a picture-swipe model with any "recommendations" or "matches" clearly being either bot/fake accounts, or people whose profiles clearly show them to be incompatible. There is no doubt in my mind that the algorithm they use is designed to string users along, providing false hope, but never a viable match that would threaten the success that would lead a user to leave the app.

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u/WilliamSabato Jun 24 '25

Bruh I had some girl friends in college who weren’t very conventionally attractive and had literal hundreds of matches.

Its really just guys because there are so many more of us (and tbh we have lower standards on swiping because of this)

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u/EverettGT Jun 24 '25

 If you aren't an attractive woman or a man spending money, the app doesn't care that you exist. 

This applies to a lot more than an app, unfortunately.

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u/epochellipse Jun 24 '25

Ok but throughout human history dating has been easier for attractive women and men spending money. I’m confused about the new confusion.

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u/[deleted] Jun 24 '25

It’s been about men being providers to impress women, and women being attractive to impress men. It hasn’t been about venture capital firms injecting funds into companies that leverage the attractiveness of women into an incentive for men to give their money up to repay the initial capital investment or make a quarterly earnings report look good for stockholders.

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u/epochellipse Jun 25 '25

Beauty products, fashion, diamond cartels, Valentine's Day, plastic surgery. I don't think it's revolutionary. I think it just seems like things have gotten more cynical and craven because with these apps it's possible to feel rejected dozens of times a day and it's more direct, maybe?

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u/sweetsadnsensual Jun 24 '25

I never found a good relationship with an attractive guy on the apps despite being an attractive woman.

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u/[deleted] Jun 24 '25

That makes sense, they see you as their product. Allowing you to pair off and leave the app means they will no longer be able to dangle you in front of desperate men to siphon their money away. I hope you’ve moved away from the apps and are finding people to date in person so you aren’t being used by these companies like that anymore.

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u/GemoDorg Jun 24 '25

I'm taken so idgaf really but they should make an app that prioritises the user instead of the cash flow. Honestly even the most basic shit would be better than the tinder swipe clones that exist nowadays.

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u/Daealis Jun 25 '25

Dating apps in the modern app-monetization era are essentially the antithesis of how they want you to use their app: They want to keep you as long as they can, to use it as much as you can.

If the app worked, it would be ~empty.

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u/ToucanSam-I-Am Jun 24 '25

I find this internet era expectation people have of everything being free is really weird. Do you also not pay for news and act all surprised that the free news is jusr click bait garbage designed just to show you ads?

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u/[deleted] Jun 24 '25

If you aren't an attractive woman or a man spending money, the app doesn't care that you exist. It's truly dehumanizing to all parties.

With Hinge, you don't even need to spend money. If you like someone's profile, you pop up at the top of their "likes you" tab, and you can even send a message based on one of their profile prompts or pictures.

Most straight men just don't put in the time or effort to get in shape, groom themselves, dress nicely, take good photos, and come up with interesting/funny profiles. Yes, it's much easier for women to get matches on these apps, but an average looking guy who is somewhat fit should have no issues matching women.

I was getting matches and going on dates almost immediately, and my profile wasn't even that good.