The Death of Dating Apps | Why Tinder, Bumble & Hinge Are Failing
Video Overview & Insights
Dating apps were supposed to make finding love easier. Instead, millions of users are abandoning them.
They've always been bad. I'm 39 now. Plentyoffish came out when I was 16. It doesn't matter about the app. It's all about the people, if you want to meet someone you will. But everyone wants to meet the "best of the best" they're not down for a 5, everyone wants a 10. A website is a website. People are shallow and because you can't learn anything about someone from a picture, they just go for the "best looking person" And usually the better looking they are, the worse their attitude.
Bumble has lost more than 90 percent of its peak valuation, Tinder is shedding users, and surveys show widespread dating-app fatigue among Gen Z. But why?
Drawing on evolutionary psychology, this video explores the "handicap principle"—the idea that meaningful signals must be costly to be credible. In traditional courtship, approaching someone in person required confidence, effort, and the risk of rejection. Dating apps removed those costs, making signals cheap and often meaningless.
It literally costs too much to try to date in person
As swiping becomes less effective, many singles are returning to speed-dating events, social clubs, running groups, and other real-world spaces where genuine human interaction is harder to fake.
Based on the Quillette essay "The Death of the Dating App" by Andrew King.
I disagree heavily with your underlying argument, the idea of costly signals. These apps are happy to charge you money for sending signals of interest, but the problems persist. Clearly, the problem is not simply the lack of cost in sending a signal.
Frankly, your analysis reeks of bias from the female side of the equation: it sounds like the tired old complaint that men just don't put in any effort, when in my experience on the apps, it's the women who don't put in any effort even after matching. They feel like they can just ditch you and move on as soon as things aren't perfect. The illusion of infinite choice, I would say, is a big part of the problem, not the lack of costly signals.
Read the original essay:
https://quillette.com/2026/05/11/the-death-of-the-dating-app-match-tinder-bumble/
F/O hypergamist
Timestamps:
00:00 Dating App Collapse & Zero-Cost Signaling Failure
They put up their charges because of the slump in usage so it’s costly to pay for premium and still have a poor experience in dating. Women still chasing the top 1% and rejecting the 99 because of unrealistic expectations of their own value.
01:29 The Handicap Principle
02:56 The Loss of Third Places
After reading the OKcupid report.
Fact of the matter, the majority of women never really liked the majority of men.
04:18 Can AI Fix Dating?
04:57 Why Real-World Dating Is Returning
You all think it was magical before the apps. It wasn't!! And the whole thing is one big experiment. All the data collected.
05:45 Conclusion
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WOMEN RUINED THE DATING MARKET
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Quillette is an Australian-based online magazine that focuses on long-form analysis and cultural commentary. It is politically non-partisan, but relies on reason, science, and humanism as its guiding values.
If you failed on dating apps you’re a MORON. They are a sure thing for meeting people. I met amazing attractive successful women. Married now to a…..you guessed it, hottie I met on bumble.
Quillette was founded in 2015 by Australian writer Claire Lehmann. It is a platform for free thought and a space for open discussion and debate on a wide range of topics, including politics, culture, science, and technology.
Quillette has gained attention for publishing articles and essays that challenge modern orthodoxy on a variety of topics, including gender and sexuality, race and identity politics, and free speech and censorship.
Speed dating is horrible
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I genuinely dont understand then men who swipe on everyone. Im very selective and only swipe on people I genuinely think look and sound interesting to me
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Again this analysis too is erroneous as it is based on the assumption that flirting is natural to human beings. If it was natural, most men and women would be good at it, or at least moderately capable, plus they would enjoy the process. Most men and women hate flirting, they hate the process - women actually like it but they hate being flirted by random men they are not interested in (unless these men shove money to them). Well all that is because flirting - and I mean flirting as we understand it societally - is not a normal human behaviour but rather a minority one performed by lower value individuals. Precisely because it is not a normal behaviour, most men and women have an aversion to it.
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Modern dating turned me gay. I stoped dating women at all 🥰
More User Perspectives
As an average looking, average height guy I never got a bite using dating apps.
@lambo2655They used to work well. Now it seems like they actively work against you.
@SleevecakeI finally got a match after a long drought only to find out she is dryer than a desert. “Oh wow that’s interesting” “Oh that’s good” “I guess” “That’s cool”
@trophy8174Online dating, where women who are 6s think they are 10s.
@Nordic_Skyapps should limit swipes to 10/day, including both left and right. they should ban still pictures, instead require to take a new picture when the user opens the app.
@buenos4799Being more engaged in community and govt will bring people together in something that really matters. And for me it's easy to separate the narcissists from the decent people. Plenty of immersion amongst the narcs during both career and social life...
@newellpjDating apps make you realize that arranged marriages make sense.
@theBlackJohnGaltman dont swipe right on almost every woman because it costs them nothing, in beginning man are way more picky, its just that after some days without matches or likes, they try everything to get at least one match, so they swipe right every woman, but only out of desperation -- not because its costs nothing
@MateowableSo do men in Afghanistan have to invest much to signal a women that they want her?
No. They took her rights away.
I belong to the bottom 90% of men looks wise. I decided to focus my time on building my business and getting kids via a surrogate. Best decision so far.
@ViatoremDiEfaMy red flag began immediatly after the 1st 3 seconds of the item. The moment she said. “You upload that nice picture of that wedding 3 years ago “.. as if it was nothing. Girl that sounds like catfishing to most men
@joey1990eliIf only they were banned
@TheSaxon-r5oIf you app makes money on dating failure and renewals, then it is quite a silly long term model. Social media will fry a female brain too.
@DrewYoung-h5jGetting the match was never the hardest part. Keeping the conversation alive, building attraction, and turning it into a real date is where most people struggle.
@startthedateThis gives me hope for the next generation...they want real experiences 🥂
@return2innocence221Just go out in the real world and chat someone up
@bluewave7120Online dating opened up woman's mind but made em translucent and now men do see through and have lost the fantasy of sacredness.
@Android5653AndroidThe problem has always been scarcity on the man's end, and abundance on the woman's side. There are more men then women in absolute numbers on those apps, and men tend to like profiles and initiate convos more, creating even more abundance on the woman's side. If guard rails are not artificially set up, the apps will keep creating misery. Hinge kinda does it by forcing a maximum amount of conversations in parallel and by putting more emphasis on profile prompts. It's the only app that still kinda works, but it still has major flaws such as not punishing ghosting and not rewarding honesty.
@nighteyes360The main problem is catfishing, and I don't mean the scammers. I mean regular people.
Noone trusts in pictures anymore.
Women look far worse IRL than online.
Every profile is polished and looks the exact same.
No authenticity. It's creepy.
As someone who became unwillingly single after over 20 years of marriage while over 50, I was there before dating apps and I can tell you it is much easier today than 30 years ago.
There was no "3rd spaces". Outside of school and work, there was nothing. I met my ex wife by sitting next to her in a plane, where the odds of sitting next to a single woman was very small, it took 12 years to meet her. Maybe I would get a new date every 6 months back then. It took that long to cross paths with someone.
With dating apps I was easily getting a new date every 6 days. It took me 7 months to meet my new wife, and I turned down many others that would have married me if I asked. I don't mean older women, the youngest I went out with was 22 and the oldest was 40. Mostly early 30's.
Speed dating? A room full of btchy women complaining no good men (Chads) show up. No thank you.
Dating apps make finding someone to date super easy. But you have to know how to use them. It is a science, not an art. I did some experimentation, developed an algorithm, and refined it. Worked great.
Can you actually get the "coup de foudre" from a pic on an app? If not ...so where's the chemistry?
I don't get the whole dating app thing really.
When I was dating in the early 90's I met women through friends at group gatherings. Several times a week, we would all go to the beach or dancing or a movie or have a BBQ or camping, comedy club, concert, etc. There was often potential dating partners because friends would bring their friends or, say, your best friend's new girlfriend would want to set you up with one of her friends and specifically invite them. There was still asking a stranger to dance at a dance place or chatting up a girl in a bar (how I met my wife of 30 years). Interacting with strangers was easier too because you could always rejoin the friend group if you were rejected or made a fool of yourself. In any case, I was seeing friends several times a week and interacting with potential dates at least once a week.
I wonder if "kids these days" don't get together with large groups of friends nearly as much. An old guy saying maybe a social illness is caused by social media is a cliche. But I can see if people connect with their friends over social media more and face-to-face less, then the pathways to coming across potential dates would be less. Also if people are gathering in small groups of 2-3 rather than larger groups of 5-20, the opportunities would probably be less. My question then is, the people who are having trouble dating, are you doing things with friend groups and are those activities the sort where you would interact with other people outside of the friends you are with?
Men: Pay to (maybe) win.
Women: Pay someone to filter out those endless likes and abusive messages.
Online dating apps havent failed. They have succeeded. Women can now be as promiscuous as they want. They barely need to exert any effort whatsoever. Just create a generic profile and wait for the cascade of dudes to DM you. Have fun!!!
@chewfaceBrilliant video very well done and some excellent research and interpetation
@MrJanes-cl5sjpeople were already able to find love on the internet similarly to how they found each other in real life.. loitering about their workplace near closing time. it just never progressed further than that on the internet because there's extra physical distance and monetary expense involved.
@kamerondonaldson5976Thank women for the situation were in. Give them unlimited choices and then they think they're a 10 because they get 100 messages a day from panjeet in india who has a picture of chad in his bio
@MidnightPolaris800This is nonsense. You don’t date on the app, you still have to meet in real life.
@ned8549When 100 males are competing for a few average-looking women then it's gonna fail.
@JumpJehoThis is not the main problem. Lol, but shout out to the research but the real problem is family. You was not taught by your family and people do not want family so then why would someone date. You can get sex outside of a relationship.
@shadeedmuhammad8107The online dating showed me faster than what I already saw in real life dating: That dating is senseless today. Women are hardly interested in men. They care much more about salary, house, car etc. You could also say it is just business for them. So I am out forever and no matter online or offline. The problem are the diferences between men and women and in a modern liberal world the woman uses these differences and is always a step ahead but speaking of equal and that women have such a dificult life and men got everything easy.
Yes alright. Good Bye.😂
This woman is a liar.
@MBeist-vi7hoThe scammers are 99% or the problem. This video really overlooked the main problems
@Perambulator219By the way, if my last comment sounded like over critical, it's a very successful tactic.If some of the females are genuinely trying to generate mate suppression. Get your competition to spend on its resources on making itself.Look , worse behaviours , and you guarantee , they will have very little success in the mating game, all this while use sneakly , ignore your own advice
@ColmCarenIt's completely missing the point of your own argument. Everybody has a brand which they're selling the value of the brand is like any other value has both utility and luxury. The female brand is badly damaged. Blue hair nose rings tattoos are definitely not luxury. And as for the utility of somebody coming home to\n A disruptive, self opinionated, self evaluating member of either sex is a complete waste of time. Boat, sexes could express luxury for one thing. But elegance or luxury is absolutely not available on the female menu. Nora females , much proposition in terms of utility. I've heard enough. It's not the boss babe, who rules himself out from where to go. It's the constant referential to other females values / judgement system. Just as no proposition of use joining guy , other than minimum interaction
@ColmCarenWhy would any self respecting guy pay for speed-rejection?
@AnswersonapostcardIn my opinion all online dating apps are wastage of time and money.
@ZeeshanAhmed-gz3sn