I met my wife on one of those dead websites that started out before Tinder was a thing and it's weird because we were one of the few people still there. I had no such luck with Tinder or any other apps at the time. That was 5 years ago.
I don't think it was the tech bros that tossed that aside, but the users. I was there at the beginning when Facebook was just college students, but then they opened it to high schools, and then when my Aunt Joyce friended me it was basically over. Once your family is watching you who the fuck is going to be updating their relationship status
I absolutely know people who started relationships through early Facebook. It was only open to college kids, and the whole site was designed to find likeminded people near to your existing friend group. Anyone remember the "six degrees of separation" feature that would show the chain of friend connections between you and another user?
If most of the dating apps weren't owned by the same group we might be in better shape. Like, it's no wonder they're all kind of samey, expensive, and ineffective - match group owns like all of them.
Capitalism is pretty bad, but it's way worse without competition.
Friend of mine met his now wife as the very first woman he matched with on whatever app he used 10 years ago or so, and he can't fathom why I wouldn't give it a shot now.
You got fuckin lucky JOHN and the apps were free and weren't enshittified to keep you paying money to stay on the treadmill forever. Never mind that where I live now, I can throw a rock into a crowd of random people and have a 1/10 shot of hitting a cousin.
I think Lemmy dating would work much better for people living in North America. Americans seem to be the biggest demographic by far.
I live in Northern Ireland, the chances of finding other people from here on Lemmy are already slim, let alone a girl from here who is a similar age to me and up for a date!
Imo it's also sort of hard because of the size. You'd have to find really small communities so you're running into the same people and have the opportunity to foster relationships. easier on smaller instances or communities, but if you're just browsing /all it'll be harder to notice the same people.
unless, like, a dating specific instance or community popped up. tho I can see all kinds of issues in that
Idk, meeting an absolute stranger that you texted with for a day or so with the pressure and expectation of romance just sounds like a recipe for failure.
Starting a romance with someone you already have some history with or share a community with seems more plausible. I used to click with someone and then immediately run home to find out if they were available or not so I could find out if it was safe to develop a crush.
How was eHarmony different that tinder or bumble? I never used it.
eHarmony had you take a huge personality test and then they'd match you against people all across the country that their algorithm said you were compatible with. It was pretty depressing when you'd spend 2 hours talking a test and eHarmony would be like "sorry, there's not a single match for you in the entire country". But that was because their system didn't run very fast, and matches would start trickling in over the next few days.
I'm mostly thinking about before the days of "swipe right/swipe left" but you put in information about your personality and you got recommendations based on that.
It wasn't so frantic or based on getting every match you could get, it was about getting matches that were most likely to click with you.
On my brief 4-6 month career on Tinder many years ago, one of the only "successful" dates was someone who was trying to force it as much as possible. In their defense though, I feel like the apps encourage this.
It was here I learned that it was a huge turn-off for me and that I prefer to meet people organically.
It works for some people. I'm glad I'm in a good relationship and don't need to deal with that stuff but I also have a friend who met various women through the apps for a period until he met a certain special one, you could see it in him that week. And now years later they're happily married.
Exactly this… I used those swipey apps for a few years. Went on lots of dates. Had a few I could’ve taken further. Had a few I wanted to go further. It all was pretty shallow though.
Eventually, I just went with someone I actually had known for years.
This, 100%. Anyone in their mid-thirties will know just how great MySpace was for casual dating in your teens. It was back when the internet was still a wild west, and having a decent profile and an All-American Rejects song playing was enough to have women reach out.
Exactly this. Myspace was great for meeting new people. They even let you search for people in a given area by age, gender, interests, etc. Facebook, from what I remember (deleted mine years ago), was actively hostile towards you meeting people on their site, to the point that if someone added you that had no mutual friends, the site would ask if you knew them in real life.