The Way Single People Meet is Broken
Part 4 of The Great Dating Divide
So far, I’ve concluded that women don’t value men and that men, frankly, aren’t valuable right now. But let’s say we fixed these two things with the snap of our fingers. Would many things change for the better? Of course. But, one broken aspect of our world would remain: how single people meet.
I think I can create a comprehensive model of how people meet is broken just by the statistics that people have pulled from Tinder, the most popular dating app in the world.
I want to give a shoutout to mazeoflove.com. Because I really liked their article on Tinder statistics. And to not seem like a dick for literally just copy and pasting all their compiled stats about Tinder.
Anyway, here I go in the true nature of modern journalism, copy and pasting other people’s work.
“Tinder Statistics
Tinder has 71.1 million users worldwide, with over 50% being Gen Z.
In 2022, Tinder generated $1.79 billion in revenue, up 9% year over year.
Tinder has 10.8 million paying users, with average revenue per payer of $13.75.
The median match rate for women on Tinder is 36%, and for men, 1.8%.
On average, it takes 57 matches for a meetup and over 285 matches for a relationship.
About 76% of Tinder users are male and only 24% female, a 3:1 gender ratio.
The average user checks Tinder 11 times a day, up to 90 minutes total.
27% of engaged couples meet on Tinder, while 39% of all relationships start online.
1 in 4 active Tinder users is either married or in a relationship.”
From https://mazeoflove.com/tinder/ by Brenna Harper
We are going to go through these statistics piece by piece. Not all, just the most fun and telling ones. I should note that I’m not a Tinder user. I don’t do well there. And the reason I don’t do well is because of a statistic that is not on the list.
Most women on Tinder swipe right on only 1 in 20 guys. For all you geezers, swiping right is akin to liking someone in the hopes that you match with them. That’s a 5% right swipe percentage. That means 95% of the guys are getting rejected by women. I am in the 95%. I do better on apps like Hinge, where I can send a message first to attract a woman. Because, as you can tell, my charisma really shines in my writing.
That means I can’t succeed on the most successful dating app in the world. But the reason I will be using Tinder to write this section on how couples meet is because a) Tinder is the most successful dating app b) their statistics are the most available c) because their statistics are fairly like that of what we have from other dating apps and d) because 39% of couples meet online (and that number is only getting bigger). As a result, we must look at the way that most people will meet to find their love if we are to analyze how modern dating and relationships are broken. We must be predictive as well as prescriptive.
50% of Tinder Users are GenZ.
Expect this number to grow, not shrink, with each generation. And despite the fact that people are getting burnt out with dating apps (Psychology Today), younger generations are turning to them more frequently to find love. Dating apps are here to stay. They just suck. And we should make them better (more on this in Part 5).
The median match rate is 36% for women and only 1.8% for men.
Match rate is how often, when someone swipes on a profile, they can expect to match with that person. Women on Tinder are 20x more likely to match with a man they are interested in than men are to match with a woman they are interested in.
Unless you’re Barney Stinson, I’m unconvinced that men would be rejected by 98.2% of the women they approach at a bar or coffee shop. That means, their ability to connect with a woman online is far less than in person (I’m guessing, but probably true).
This is a harrowing prospect for men. Not only are dating apps addictive to use, but they offer worse outcomes than meeting in person, on top of the fact that they build no real-life skills in overcoming approach anxiety (fear of meeting new people) or developing charisma.
The reason the match rate is so lopsided is because women are way pickier than men when it comes to looks on dating apps. Women are less willing to swipe right on a guy. They spend less time per profile scanning through the pictures and prompts that a guy has posted. Men, on the other hand, are less picky when it comes to choosing women on dating apps. They swipe right (like) far more often than women. And they spend more time examining a girl’s profile.
We learned that women, in Part 3, care less for looks and more for status and charisma when it comes to mate selection. Men, on the other hand, care more for looks. You would think, then, that the swiping rates would be reversed. But they are not. How come?
In Daniel Kahneman’s book Thinking Fast and Slow, he describes the System 1 and System 2 modes of thought in human psychology. System 1 is your quick, intuitive, and emotional mode. It’s the mode you utilize when making snap decisions. A ball just bounced into the road, recognizing a familiar face, and deciding on someone’s race when you first meet them are examples of System 1 thinking tasks. It’s also your less rational mode of thinking. If a ball bounces into a road, you might slam on your brakes. But you also might swerve into the path of the person coming after the ball because you freak out and don’t have good reactions. When you see a familiar face, you might quickly say “Hey, Dale! Long time no see!” But really it was Dave, Dale’s twin brother, who you’ve met before, and you also realize quickly after greeting him that they are not, despite your flawed memory, identical twins. And you might think that that woman across the bar is South American. But when you go up to her, thinking you’re cool with your 2 months of DuoLingo Spanish, and say “De donde eres?” in the most American-Spanish accent possible, she replies in an Eastern European accent, “Vwhat?”
System 2 is the mode of thinking that you use when you take your time to decide. System 2 tasks could be solving a complex math problem, preparing for a board meeting at your firm, or writing a blog on dating and relationships that you have absolutely no qualifications to be writing about.
With that psychology lesson out of the way, one can imagine that quickly swiping your thumb across a screen left or right employs your System 1 mode of thinking. Women on swipe apps (and probably all dating apps) are not using the same filters for mate-selection they would normally in person. They are not internally asking questions about his status and charisma as he engages her in conversation at a bar. They are mindlessly swiping without any regard to who the guy is behind the pictures (guys are doing this too, they just have low standards for who they would like to meet to hook up with).
In person, women use their System 2 mode of thinking for mate selection. In the digital world, their System 1 mode tricks them into making irrational decisions. They reject guys who would otherwise be a good fit purely based on looks. Then, they only select for the same 5% of guys all women want to be with (sexually, that is). When one of these women meets one of these guys, it usually doesn’t turn into love. She will wonder why she can’t get a text back after their first date. But what she fails to realize is that his phone has 100 other girls who will have sex with him that night. And she told him she would rather wait for sex.
All men must be pigs, then, women declare.
Because of the response to Part 1, I know what a tiny percentage of women are probably shouting into their computers right now. “You’re saying women are irrational!? How dare you!” But men are also irrational. They irrationally choose too many women. Like I said, they have lower standards for sex, but possibly higher standards for long-term mating. But that doesn’t matter. Because it’s not helping them get matches.
Men, getting so few matches, feel one of two ways. Either they are ugly (possibly true) or the system is rigged against them (…also possibly true). But, when 39% of all relationships now start online, they feel like they are being left out of the game (yes, Jason, you are being left out). And you can’t have 95% of guys feel like they don’t have a shot at love. This will not make for a functional society.
Sound bad? It gets worse.
On average, it takes 57 matches for a meetup and over 285 matches for a relationship.
Who here has been on 285 first dates? Maybe one of you reading this has. And frankly, if true, I feel bad for you if you have been on 285 first dates. Because that means you’re really struggling to find love.
Dating apps don’t map to reality. And the sheer volume of people you need to connect with on dating apps to find love trumps reality by an order of magnitude. It does not take 285 first dates to pick a person you would like to commit to. But it takes 285 matches (mutual likes) for a relationship to develop from a dating app. And with guys only matching with 1.8% of the women they like on Tinder, how long would it take them to find love? Answer: an unreasonably long time.
About 76% of Tinder users are male and only 24% are female, a 3:1 gender ratio.
These figures aren’t dissimilar to other dating apps. All dating apps sport gender ratios heavily outweighed by guys. That means two things: men must face more competition than the real world (real world is more like 50/50, if you didn’t know) and women must fend off a disproportionately high amount of male attention.
Furthermore, the gender ratios on dating apps cause compounding issues with match rates. Since women are so unbelievably selective on dating apps, and there are so many men to choose from, the sheer volume of male failure on dating apps is greatly exaggerated.
To illustrate what this means for the female and male experience on dating apps, watch this simulation using similar dating app statistics.
In sum, men get no matches while women get more than they can handle. And the “more than they can handle” problem is an actual problem. Women feel overwhelmed by dating apps. They get so many messages from guys that they can’t choose one. This paralysis by choice is a real thing. It may seem better to have abundant choices. However, it more often than not makes people choose nothing at all. Psychologist Barry Shwartz discusses this phenomenon in his book The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less. When women have more choice on dating apps, it drives indecision. They’ll have an inbox of 100 guys. Meanwhile, the last time they went on a date was a month ago.
On the other end of the spectrum, guys are jumping on any chance they can get.