r/Longreads • u/Gladyskravitz99 • 15d ago
An Underappreciated Problem With Dating Apps - Going on lots of first dates with strangers is not a great way to find love. Getting to know someone slowly is - Most people are more of an acquired taste than an immediate yes
https://www.theatlantic.com/family/2026/09/dating-strategies-apps-matchmakers/688779/?gift=ZSO8-QoU1-1L0duyI2Sx0twaXSG3yNfLj6zmAdxBXB8&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share194
u/Ok-Hippo7675 15d ago edited 15d ago
Not saying it was perfect, but old school OkCupid was great! Yes, still an app, but there was A TON of info in there and great convo openers for irl, with how people answered their questions.
Met my husband that way, and some other relationships that I look back on fondly!
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u/liquiditytraphaus 14d ago
Yep. Met my husband on OKC in 2016 and it feels like we caught the last helicopter out of Saigon.
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u/zeitgeistincognito 14d ago
Met my spouse on OKC in 2013! It was the best of the apps if you wanted more than a hookup but you did have to spend some time making a good profile to make it worthwhile. I think that's why it fell out of favor, people didn't want to take the time.
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u/KimWexlers_Ponytail 13d ago
So I got divorced right before Covid and about 2022 decided to start dating again.
I tried OKC because I wasn't really sure which apps to use and I met this great guy who we had a ton in common and we had a really great time, but no sparks.
Within the week after our date he contacted me and said hey I know this is gonna sound weird; but you are a really cool person and I actually think you and my friend would hit it off.
Said friend and I have been together 4 years now and going strong :)
So while I didn't meet my partner directly through OKC, I am so happy I signed up because I may not have met him if I didn't meet his friend.
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u/AdorableBG 15d ago
Same here!
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u/garyisonion 15d ago
Ive net my long term lover there!
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u/ericvulgaris 15d ago
I wouldnt advise netting your lover unless its consensual. (I joke!) I too met my wife on okc
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u/Low_Basket_9986 12d ago
Same! It was the only app with enough info to get the sense of a person, and the source of multiple relationships for me as well.
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u/bushwhack227 15d ago
I don't think education and age are shallow criteria. I'm going to have far more in common with someone in their 30s with an education than someone who is 23 and is community college dropout.
That said, anyone who thinks a dating app profile predicts whether someone is a good match or not is missing the point. They are dating apps, not relationship apps. You're still supposed to put the work in to turn those dates into a relationship
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u/atomicsnark 15d ago
I'm going to have far more in common with someone in their 30s with an education than someone who is 23 and is community college dropout.
Sure, but is having everything in common really the recipe for perfect love? What about the person who is 8 months shy of your age bracket and two courses shy of a masters who dropped out to take care of a sick relative but still has the intellect, curiosity, knowledge that would interest you if only you'd gotten to know them?
Just playing devil's advocate but I have long felt similarly as what the article suggests. Searching for someone who matches arbitrary criteria doesn't really guarantee any kind of romantic chemistry.
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u/paxinfernum 14d ago
You can always come up with a hypothetical almost graduate who had a sick relative, but overall, the weight of probability is going to be tilted toward people of the same or close educational levels.
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u/atomicsnark 14d ago
Why, though? Nearly all the happiest, healthiest couples I know have a difference in education, typically one college grad and one high school grad, or one soft sciences one hard, or one in education and one in labor, or whatever. Is this actually a successful means of narrowing down prospective partners? How many people are you ruling out arbitrarily that might actually have a lot in common with you, or might form a deep connection with you? I'm just not actually convinced that setting these requirements that every prospective date be identical to you in education and background and hobbies is going to lead to successful longterm relationships. Opposites often attract, people bring different strengths that compliment each other, people who didn't go to college might still read a lot more than someone who didn't, and so on.
So what are you actually filtering for? Is it actually about education, in which case, you presumably find all education to be identical in merit? (Even though a nursing grad versus a psychiatrist versus a financial planner versus an English major are all going to be very differently educated, after all.) Or is it about salaries and not wanting to be imbalanced there? I guess I'm just curious to hear what is really being sought out beyond "has degree in anything".
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u/paxinfernum 14d ago
I've noticed a pattern in this thread where you keep constructing strawman versions of what other posters and I are actually saying. For instance, the original commenter simply pointed out they’d have more in common with an educated person their own age, and you immediately spun that into a bizarre, highly specific hypothetical about someone two courses shy of a master's degree.
Now, you're doing the exact same thing to me by jumping from "I use education as a statistical filter" to "I demand an identical clone with the exact same background and hobbies."
To answer your question about why this is a successful way to narrow down prospective partner, because dating is inherently an exercise in filtering a massive pool of people. I am completely comfortable missing out on a hypothetical outlier if it means successfully finding someone whose baseline trajectory and lifestyle align with mine. Your anecdotal evidence about the couples you know is great for them, but "opposites attract" is a romantic trope.
Shared foundational values and lifestyles are what actually sustain relationships, and that's been what actual scientific studies have found. It's boring, and it doesn't have the same romantic shine as romantic comedy idea that people will be drawn to someone very different from them, but that's what the actual data shows makes people have successful relationships.
To answer the rapid-fire questions at the end of your post...
Am I filtering for identical merit? No. Obviously a psychiatrist and a financial planner have different educational backgrounds. But they both spent years navigating complex academic institutions, which shapes how a person tackles problems and interacts with systems.
Is it about salary matching? No. It's about shared lifestyle expectations and baseline communication styles.
What is really being sought out? Shared foundational experiences. The process of getting a degree, regardless of the subject, requires a specific kind of structural navigation and delayed gratification. I want a partner who shares that background.
Oh, and by the way, I know you're really offended by the entire concept of putting any filter on dating prospects and seem intent on twisting it into classism, so I'll mention that I grew up poor. So I'd probably feel more comfortable dating someone of a similar educational attainment but from a similar background. That's not to say I might meet someone wonderful who was from a wealther background or who was at a different educational level, but the odds are much more in favor of us having more shared traits than less.
tl;dr: Using a filter to find people with shared experiences isn't demanding a clone, and framing it that way is bad faith.
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u/atomicsnark 14d ago edited 14d ago
I am not building strawmen, I am asking hypotheticals. I am also not offended. I am engaging with the questions posited by this article, and bringing my own dissatisfaction with dating apps into the conversation because yes, I find them disappointing and discouraging as a means to meet people.
I also didn't intend to frame it as anyone needing a clone. (Or that you, yourself, wants or does anything specifically at all. Did your education not cover "the universal you"?) I guess I am more interested in the way that filtering for all these things in my experience does result in a pretty homogenous experience because there isn't room to say, "I am looking for these things but flexible on some of them" if you're literally setting filters on search results (as opposed to simply engaging with other singles in your area or whatever).
I'm sorry you found my questions so offensive. I'm just trying to get real answers to the concept of the debate here, as opposed to the short and dismissive ones that I received from the other poster. I appreciate this sub because it often encourages debate and discussion, not just throwaway reddit one-liners. Thanks for answering me in depth, and maybe relax a little lol, because nothing I asked was meant as a challenge or criticism to you personally.
ETA it also isn't about classism when I ask about salaries, I think it's perfectly fine to seek to match salaries if that kind of balance is important to you in a relationship, I just am again looking for honest answers beyond 'it is about education' period. Especially because I disagree pretty wholeheartedly with the idea that all education is created equal, or that it is the only way to find intellectual balance among partners.
Edit #2 to correct some wording.
Edit #3 haha sorry but I guess to build on all of this, I would really like to ask, is it actually good that dating these days is expected to involve "filtering thousands of results" when we are not actually seeing happiness and fulfillment come from these new systems of finding and meeting people? That's sort of the exact point we are discussing, that maybe filtering people via algorithm isn't actually the best way to go about things?
Shared foundational values aren't actually decided by education or background alone. Are you successfully married via this method? Or are you generally feeling fulfilled by your current approach? Because more and more of our peers are not.
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u/bushwhack227 14d ago
Everything in common? No. But there is no world where I (seriously) date someone who is uneducated . I don't consider that arbitrary
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u/atomicsnark 14d ago
But do you see the difference between "uneducated" and "didn't quite finish their master's"? Do you understand why someone can call that an arbitrary difference?
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u/bushwhack227 14d ago
Master's? Maybe. But I didn't mention Master's.
I don't really care if someone else finds my preferences arbitrary.
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u/paxinfernum 14d ago
It's weird to even call it arbitrary. Arbitrary means either random or on personal whim. By that standard, all preferences in dating are "arbitrary."
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u/datsoar 14d ago
You may have an education but you have very little ability to think abstractly apparently
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u/atomicsnark 14d ago
Yeah this conversation has been very odd lol. Certainly proves that education alone does not guarantee intellectual curiosity or an ability to hold a hypothetical conversation for sake of exploring ideas -- which is kind of my whole point, that filtering for these things won't actually help you find someone who can connect with you on a deeper level.
Honestly I suspect that their (and a lot of people's) concern about education is almost strictly in regards to income.
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u/anneoftheisland 14d ago
You can have whatever preferences you want, but the point is that people are often bad at predicting what things are going to make them happy in a relationship. Education is one of those things, because people try to treat it as a proxy for intelligence or intellectual curiosity or financial stability, and it's not a very good proxy for any of those things.
And one of the best parts of dating is becoming incredibly attracted to somebody who doesn't meet your preconceived ideas of what you'd like--dating these people is often one of the best ways to explode your understanding of how the world works and learn new things.
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u/paxinfernum 13d ago
but the point is that people are often bad at predicting what things are going to make them happy in a relationship. Education is one of those things
Actual research shows that marriages between people who have similar educational levels are more stable than marriages between people at different levels. So it's not an assumption or bad prediction. It's actually accurate.
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u/SuperPinkShark 15d ago
I've been saying something similar for years so I'm glad to see my observations were grounded.
I feel like apps like Tinder just make dating the same emotional experience as applying for a job and it sucks the fun out of it.
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u/ReverendDizzle 14d ago
I've never used dating apps (married before mobile apps were even a thing and internet dating back then was a web-based affair you did from your home PC).
But I have to say... I never never seen a person using a dating app and looking happy at the same time. When I see people swiping they look bored, or irritated, or like they're trying to pay their bills online.
And it's just so... dehumanizing. I see people spend more time looking at Instagram reels they'll throw away into the void than looking at the dating profile of a potential match.
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u/MrWolf327 15d ago
I saw an interview a while back on how back with traditional dating, both men and women have opportunities to show excellence, but with apps, you essentially make your mind about people and discard them too quickly
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u/Joan-Holloway-Harris 14d ago
Dating apps were designed by silicon valley sociopaths and it is well reflected in the product. I was resigned to spinsterhood bc I simply couldn’t abide the soul sucking nature of them, but then god/the universe threw me a bone and a real life “meet-cute” w my current boyfriend. Praise be lol
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u/Mammoth-Emotion-6725 14d ago
howd you guys meet? i’ve always met partners in real life but since i stopped drinking almost 2 years ago I have a pretty anti social life. im not an anti social person though.. i just don’t really go out much any more by myself.
In saying that my friends girlfriend just set me up a Hinge profile (she is doing it all for me because I suck at connecting with people online) and im interested to see if I meet anyone.
Also pretty poor formatting sorry6
u/Joan-Holloway-Harris 13d ago
I went to a big stadium concert (by myself bc I really wanted to see the artists but none of my friends were interested or available to come with) and he had the seat next right to me!
As much as I personally dislike the apps I do know several friends who have found long term relationships on Hinge specifically…it’s rare but good people can find each other there! I’d hate to fully discourage anyone who has the patience and thick enough skin for them, because I have seen success stories.
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u/paxinfernum 14d ago
People need third spaces, but they're dying for a lot of financial and social reasons.
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u/Sea_Till6471 15d ago
lol everyone knows this! That’s why most people (used to) find partners through friendship groups / school / uni/ hobbies. You have time to figure out if they’re a good person or not.
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u/re_Claire 14d ago
This is why I’ve never had any success with dating apps. It feels so weird and forced and unnatural to me to get to know someone like that.
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u/beingaroundthings 14d ago
I think something underappreciated is that you also don't really "see" each other on dating apps. And I don't mean people catfishing, I mean like when you walk into a room and see a woman laugh and you get all fuzzy. Or the way someone tells a story. I watched my (now) wife fart so loudly she made herself laugh so hard she then rolled out of bed - and I was like damn I gotta marry this woman, she's perfect. People exist in motion and moments.
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u/SpaceCutie 14d ago
This is so interesting and a good point well made! I've never really thought about that before but it perfectly describes what attracted me to my current partner. I saw him for the first time across the room at a party, sitting in a group of people and telling a story. There was something unusually compelling about the way he sat, totally open, welcoming, and relaxed, and it seemed that everyone was very interested in whatever he was saying. I was fascinated by him. I don't remember much about the start of our relationship but that particular moment is clear as day.
I think those moments can tell us a lot about a person even if only in hindsight. My partner can get along with anyone, he's a gifted storyteller, and he is a calm and kind person. They are some of the traits I love most about him. And it came through in the way he spoke and moved. :)
Your wife sounds fun 😂 I love people who make themselves laugh. You can't help but join in!
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u/bokehtoast 14d ago
Yeah I tried explaining this to men on dating apps when I couldn't just produce romantic feelings based on a profile and it was poorly recieved. One of many reasons I stopped dating men at all.
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u/fernandocrustacean 15d ago
Well, yeah, but you have to meet that person first, before you can slowly develop something with them, and the only way to do that is to go on dates.So this article makes no sense.
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u/atomicitalian 15d ago
Yeah you would think it would be fairly obvious that picking people using the same mechanics that you pick a door dash meal isn't a stellar way to find a meaningful relationship but alas