In hindsight, it reads like a cry for help. “You know full well a vow of celibacy isn’t the answer,” the billboard ads pleaded. A video promised, “we’ve changed so you don’t have to.”
This ad campaign in early May was supposed to be the dating app Bumble’s solution to flagging user interest. Instead, it was met with a backlash that, while hardly the final nail in the coffin, certainly felt like a sign that we’ve got our collective hammer out for the decades-long social experiment that is online dating.
Bumble HQ
— Arghavan Salles, MD, PhD (@arghavan_salles)
“We don’t have enough women on the app.”
“They’d rather be alone than deal with men.”
“Should we teach men to be better?”
“No, we should shame women so they come back to the app.”
“Yes! Let’s make them feel bad for choosing celibacy. Great idea!”
Bumble swiftly apologized for the campaign, and said the quiet part out loud while they were at it. “Our ads referencing celibacy were an attempt to lean into a community frustrated by modern dating,” read the statement. “And instead of bringing joy and humour, we unintentionally did the opposite.”
You know things are dire when even the apps themselves are saying there’s a problem with the way we’re dating in 2024. The proof is in their bottom line: Bumble Inc. and the Match Group, which includes Tinder and Hinge, the two companies that dominate the category, have reportedly collectively lost more than since 2021.
The laundry list of online dating complaints is as endless as the number of swipes it takes to find someone worth matching with, inspiring an entirely new, miserable lexicon: Ghosting (disappearing without explanation), breadcrumbing (stringing you along with tidbits of attention), benching (sidelining you while they pursue a better option) and paperclipping (sporadically re-entering the chat with something banal like, ‘Whatsup.’)
To their credit, the apps have attempted to respond to customer complaints. To address safety concerns, Tinder recently introduced a “Share My Date” feature, which allows a user to share where they’re going and a photo of their match with someone they trust.
Hinge launched “Hidden Words,” which allows users to filter for “unwanted language,” an attempt to solve for the abuse and harassment that is alarmingly common.
Bumble, in a change that may have been overshadowed by the hoopla over the ad campaign, evolved its signature “women make the first move” feature, which allows users to set a question for all their matches to respond to. It’s an attempt to correct the disproportionate amount of “dating labour” women undertake in this process, such as driving conversations with men who never return the “now you ask me a question” volley.
Is it all too little, too late though? We’re certainly at an inflection point, says Treena Orchard, a Canadian anthropologist whose new book, , chronicles “the darker side of dating apps” through both a social scientist’s lens and her own experiences as a Gen X dater.
“At the beginning, it was a game and there were no rules,” says Orchard, an associate professor at Western University who researches sex, gender and health. “I think the apps have just worn us down. They’re not effective, and we’ve used them long enough to be like, ‘I don’t want this anymore.’”
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She points to Tinder’s 10th anniversary last year as a turning point in the collective conversation. “There was a barrage of stories of people saying, ‘my longest relationship has been with the app — and it didn’t treat me very well,’” she says.
Navigating this brave new world of mating behaviour is wrapped up in a larger reckoning with the technologies that have radically changed how we socialize over the last decade or so. “People are talking about a ‘return to ,’ or finding ways to engage with each other that are not necessarily mediated by tech at all,” says Orchard, pointing to the rise of old school ways to meet people like speed dating and even classifieds.
“Gen Z hasn’t been satisfied by the apps for a while,” she says. “Years ago, my students were like, they’re a joke.” If this cohort does use them, it’s more like another form of social media or a search engine. “They’ll notice someone on campus and they’ll try to find them on the apps — that’s the opposite of the way the apps were designed,” says Orchard. “Then they’ll go and try to find that person on LinkedIn. They’re triangulating different sources of information to try and get a more clear or fulsome sense of this person.” Rather than match through the app, they might then go up to them, or ask a friend to introduce them. “They’re making the platforms work for them.”
Meanwhile, Millennials are the first generation in history where almost all of the couples present at any given dinner party met on an app — while the singles are considering giving up on dating altogether because they’re so burnt out by looking for love in the digital age. “They seem to be the generation that’s been sacrificed the most in terms of the mass use of all these technologies, and the resulting loneliness pandemic,” says Orchard. “Millennials have a tense and complex relationship with technology.”
Dating apps in particular leave an emotional toll that feels unique to our era. “The turmoil, the violence a lot of people have experienced: fetishization, manipulation, Tinder Swindler type situations,” says Orchard. “People are becoming more confident in talking about the emotional fallout, and the desire to live a different life.”
Orchard predicts that two hundred years from now, sociologists will be fascinated by the “productivity” of this system that enabled complete strangers from vastly different backgrounds to connect. “For myself, I know I would never have met a lot of these men, and a couple of them I fell in love with, and for that I’m grateful,” says Orchard. “These apps also played a role in my healing journey of , and creating community.” She sees these as some of the positive aspects of digital dating that should be worked into app design going forward.
In future, Orchard thinks apps will stick around but people will use them more judiciously, in combination with more “grassroots” ways of meeting potential matches. “You don’t need the dating apps to find someone, and it’s worth finding different ways to put yourself out there,” she says, acknowledging that this can be easier said than done. “As much as things are falling apart, there can be revolutionary change underneath.”
In the closing pages of “Sticky Sexy Sad,” Orchard shares takeaways from her deep dive into online dating, like an encouraging note a parent might tuck into a lunch box. “We can collectively push back against the boring, problematic design of dating app platforms that harvest our data for free while getting us hooked on the dark magic of the swipe,” she says. “Let’s take charge and make our dating galaxy more satisfying, fun, and dripping with glitter.”
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