As the lockdown continues and the fear of COVID carries over well after the fact, all of us live with the reality that online dating may become one of, if not, the only way to meet our significant other or next one night stand. Nightlife will likely feel a huge impact from the COVID scare and people will probably be on edge during the day, making daygame less ideal than usual. As for social circles, it will probably become harder to meet people and social interactions may as well happen online than anything. So this leads us down to the path of online dating and where it stands in 2020.
Almost eight or so years ago to this day, Tinder was launched and the world of online dating as well as hookup culture as we knew it would change. At that time, Tinder was very legitimate and if you created an account with good pictures, you would likely get matches and meet girls. Everyone who was just about anyone in the prime age groups of 18-30 or so was on the app, it was a revolution in some ways. Most people on it were actual people and every girl had a curiosity around it.
As years passed by, Tinder became more populated and got filled with bots and fake profiles. To accompany it, other online dating platforms such as Bumble and Hinge joined the market with Hinge even claiming that it is an app meant to be deleted. The dating app culture had taken off and it became one of the main avenues for men to meet women.
Soon after, dating apps became even more of a business model to where men were paying to use an app like Tinder to earn boosts and super likes to get their matches. Other dating apps started to copy the same model because after all, it is a business. The rules were more or less the same though, you had to use great photos and have an amazing profile to meet women. Now the space nonetheless got more competitive for men but in 2020, it has changed in another way. Keep in mind, dating apps are overwhelmingly male.
To really get the most out of dating apps, especially Tinder, you have to eventually pay.
The way that Tinder has been set up, it is even tough to restart your profile anymore. Most dating apps give you a boost for being new so you show up at the top of the stack for a lot of women out there but after that, you end up more at the bottom of the stack as you become more of a regular. Now as Tinder moved on and other dating apps too, you have to pretty much pay at some point to make the most of online dating.
Good pics and an awesome profile will still put you ahead of the competition but after enough time, you’ll start to witness that your overall profile sort of just dies down. I remember using Bumble back in 2015 and it was not the case, I had a free account and got a consistent flow of matches. Around 2018 or so, it became more of a money-oriented model where you had to pay for boosts to get your profile ahead on the stack.
If you tried to restart a profile on Tinder right now, you would have a tough go at it compared to many years ago. Tinder now asks for your Facebook and your phone number to make sure that you are not rigging the system, they harshly penalize people who have restarted profiles. Same goes for most other dating apps out there, they rather that you stay on the app and keep paying.
Is it worth paying?
The easiest way to see if it would be worth paying for a dating app or if it would give you the results you want is to upload the best possible pics you can of yourself. Even if you started your account many months ago, changes in bio and new fresh pics typically give you somewhat of a boost on how your profile is viewed. Ideally, if you did it right with the best photos as soon as your started your account, you had an idea of how you fare.
If the amount of likes you received when you first started your account is in the double digits or anywhere over twenty, I’d recommend paying for a dating app if you want results. Now those are liberal numbers but I am assuming here that you want to see serious results, at that point you are actually doing better than the average guy who cannot even manage to get to double-digits on a dating app.
You will undoubtedly see increases in the amount of matches you get and the kinds of quality matches your profile gets in front of. Without paying for premium versions of a dating app, you are getting at least twice as less matches than you usually would be getting anyways. For it to make sense though, you have to get matches when it is free and they have to be in the double digits, otherwise it is going to be a large waste of money.
The future.
I think that more and more dating apps will continue towards the premium and paid model at this point, it just makes more sense to do so and at the end, it is still a business. One silver lining is that it can actually be a great thing for the men who do have money and are willing to spend it.
As of right now, over 60% of users on Tinder are male and about 65% of users on Bumble are male as well.
By the premium model taking over, more and more men are going to be discouraged by dating apps and opt for other ways to meet women. Remember, people love free shit, they hate paying for stuff. Given how the economic outlook does not look too promising and how most guys are cheap, most men are not going to pay for a dating app. The few guys who are economically well off and do pay will be in a class of their own. Discouraged men will likely leave the app which evens out the ratios even more for dating apps.
One other alternative is that dating apps effectively become a pay to play model and they all turn into Seeking Arrangement!
