> What I'm saying is a might as well have dated random people for a year, it would have been the same result. The dating sites sell you on 'matching.'

Dating apps sell you on showing you more people you otherwise would never meet. The chemistry and "good match" are left to the two people to figure out via chatting and a date.

I think this is the right attitude (and correct description), but not everyone understands this. I have a friend who finally started using dating apps after I've pressured him for years. From my view, he is a decent guy who is reasonably good looking, but had no luck getting dates the "old fashioned way". He hasn't had any serious relationships success (i.e. anything greater then 6 months), but he is actually getting dates now. He still complains about the "quality" of the dates, but I honestly think a dating app can only match you based on so much, and from there you have to take over the work.

> I have a friend who finally started using dating apps after I've pressured him for years.

Dear God why would you do this to someone?

If the friend expressed that he wants to date, pressure/suggest dating apps make sense.

If that is not the case I agree with you.

Loneliness sucks, and for some people it can be difficult to try to meet new people in “real-world” social interactions.

I'm one of those people, but dating apps only ever made things worse. I can't imagine why anyone would want to use them unless they literally could not live with being alone. Fortunately for me I have decades of experience at that.

> I can't imagine why anyone would want to use them

I'll tell you why: Why be content only meeting the subset of women I can meet face-to-face in my free time when I can complement my social life with a dating app that helps me meet more?

I can do both.

I can only understand your confusion if you have zero success on dating apps and assume nobody else has any success, either. And there are people obviously having success on dating apps.

> Why be content only meeting the subset of women I can meet face-to-face in my free time when I can complement my social life with a dating app that helps me meet more?

Show me the data that says meeting many more potential partners leads to happier more fulfilling relationships, because I certainly haven't seen it.

Yeah, my attitude was always that I could filter out “definitely no” in the app, but there’s no way to tell a “maybe” from a “hell yes” until you meet in person.

Only OkCupid does; Tinder barely tries and even then it's hidden. For the most part the selling point is that you get introduced to people you wouldn't just meet in your normal social cirlces/events. Apps besides OkCupid have mostly moved to the model where you put in a few basic facts (age/sex, do you drink, etc), upload some pictures, a short (< 500 characters in Tinder) text blob, and off you go swiping. There's no attempt to match you on interests let alone any deeper compatibility metrics.

Also on the data collection front, the business model is more based around advertising, and just knowing you're single is all the info they need. They can bombard you with ads for events to go to, clothes to wear, etc. You're the most lucrative market if you're 18-35 and single.

Actually, they do try to match you on attractiveness. Also how much you swipe. If you swipe to like every profile you get different results.

This is what I meant by "barely". It still makes no effort to actually look for compatibility.

Don't most people use dating apps to essentially "randomly meet people"? My impression is that the dating app is simply a relatively new "place" to "randomly meet people." It's basically just like any other place to randomly meet people, like church, a hobby, a bar, a party, etc.