If you get a message from someone you never matched with on Tinder, it’s not a glitch — it’s part of the app’s expensive new subscription plan that it teased earlier this year, which allows “power users” to send unsolicited messages to non-matches for the small fee of $499 per month.
That landscape, in fact, is largely populated by apps owned by Tinder’s parent company: as Bloomberg notes, Match Group Inc. not only owns the popular swiping app, but also Match.com, OKCupid, Hinge, and The League.
Match Group CEO Bernard Kim referred to Tinder’s subscriptions as “low-hanging fruit” meant to compete with other, pricier services, though that was before this $6,000-per-year tier dropped.
Why pay $500 a month to get blocked? You can get ghosted for free already
This thread is full of people laughing at people who would pay for this, but I actually kinda empathize.
I got REALLY lucky and met my now fiancee on a dating app. It took about 2 years of trying to meet her, and in that time ithink I had maybe 5-7 dates. ALL of those were on OKCupid, back when it let you message people without matching. I am not the most good looking person, but I could get a good first impression through a message.
Tinder though? It killed my self confidence when I used it. I never got a single date from tinder. It is designed tonot get you dates, unless you’re SUPER attractive, especially if you’re a man. A lot of it is that there are so many more men on dating apps than women, I know that objectively. But it SUCKS when you’re actively looking for a partner and swiping every single day to either never get matches or get matches who are bots.
For a lot of guys like me being able to get a good first message in feels like the only chance, and if you’re seriously looking and starting to feel desperate (and these apps are designed to make you feel desperate) then dropping $500 for a month of being able to get a shot may not actually seem crazy.
These apps have designed a “dating economy” around themselves that tells people that they are not attractive or a desirable partner if they aren’t getting matches, then deliberately tailored their algorithms to manipulate people into coming back every day for a chance to meet someone. It’s slot machines, but with romantic relationships, and it convinces people that dating is like gambling. And these apps want you to feel like they are the only way to date, and if you’re not “winning” and getting dates they make it clear that it’s YOUR fault, and if you drop a little money you’ll get some matches.
Yes, some creeps will pay for this to send dick pics, but I think most people who will pay forthis are actually desperate and convinced that it’s their only chance at getting a date. It’s disgusting these apps are allowed to do what they have done. And I say all of that as someone who won the damn slot machine jackpot and came out with a long term partner.
I personally think these apps are doing some serious harm to our society and need to be regulated but that’s a different discussion
I used to use OKCupid, and it was so much better than Tinder. Unfortunately, Tinder’s success changed the game and it seems like all the dating sites follow its general form now. On old OKC people would write freaking novels in their bios, in addition to answering hundreds of questions. On Tinder, if you have even two complete sentences in your profile, you’re an outlier. It’s an explicitly, aggressively shallow platform.
I don’t think the old message-anyone method scales well, though. Dating sites are far more popular today than they were back when I used OKC. And even back then, every woman I knew who used it turned off notifications because it was overwhelming.
I totally forgot about spark.com, or was it thespark.com?
Back in the early 2000 area if I recall correctly. I spent way too much time answering questions on there in my college computer lab, then suddenly they added dating.
On Tinder it would not be in the same context that what you experienced. In OKCupid it’s part of the rules that you can send messages without a match. So people are OK (I guess) with it. On Tinder it’s going to come as unexpected and unwelcome. You will start with a disadvantage. Unless the woman is only interested in money (if you can spend $500/month on an app then you are probably among the wealthier half of the population).
I agree, but that just makes this even scummier on Tinder’s part. The people who own and make the app know that, they’re doing this anyway. So they’re targeting people who are already desperate and lonely, and giving them what they will inevitably see as a “lifeline” which actually may make their chances worse.
I had a similar thought. While I agree with the chorus that this is creepy AF and I in no way condone it, as a man who had to wade through these garbage dating apps to, fortunately, meet a long term partner I can attest to the profound sense of loneliness they cause. When I think back on it I can honestly see why some might consider this.
These apps suck, but in today’s world they aren’t always optional. My specific situation was living somewhere new at the beginning of the pandemic. It wasn’t really possible to meet people organically.
Edit: spelling
I never used dating apps in my life, so just a short question: Is Tinder only about looks? Or could you also be successful if you have a good job or house or something like that? Do people look at the profiles or do they select only from pictures?
In my experience (I’m a few years out of date with how the app works now, keep that in mind) it’s like 90% looks. You CAN build up a profile, but IIRC only the first sentence of it shows up on your picture. A person has to see your picture and that tagline, be curious enough to actually go to your profile before swiping, then read your profile if they’re going to use it to judge you on.
Most of the people I know who used tinder, myself included, didn’t really do that much. We just swiped based on looks, and if someone was borderline then we looked at the profile to make a decision. But that was pretty rare, most people it was a pretty clear yes/no based on looks.
The apps is designed to encourage that behavior. When I used it profiles were REALLY not being encouraged, IDK if that has changed (I would guess it hasn’t).
I’m finding out from this that it’s owned by the same company but Hinge has a better formula for that kind of thing. You comment on an aspect of their profile (a picture, their response to a prompt, etc) and that gets sent to them. Then they can reply (which triggers a “match”) or not. You can also send likes without a comment but obviously that won’t be as effective.
In my experience, it’s both. I’m watching a friend of mine go on the apps and she got over 2000 likes (I’m not even exaggerating) in a week. When she sorts through those she first reacts to the main photo, and then looks at their job, and the rest of the profile.
So in order to get matches as a guy, you need to have your life together with a stable job, an interesting personality you can somehow convey in a profile, and good enough looks for that to matter.
If I can just tell her how awesome my penis is she’ll fall madly in love! Right now she has no idea!
$500 per month?? At that point just go to a prostitute a few times a month. The people paying for this are stupid, but on the other hand it’s super sad that Tinder even made this subscription. They know some desperate people are going to subscribe.
I don’t know what the going rate is but I assume that if you just want a throw you could probably get a mid tier prostitute almost once a week for that price.
Probably 3 times a month for in a western country. If you are in a long term relationship that is probably around the same amount of times you are getting laid.
The problem is that the people that would pay 500 to tinder are not the kind of people capable of a long term relationship. Even their fleshlights pray for manufacturing defects so they can get out of long term service.
Three times a month for a long term relationship seems really low to me. Over a decade married and ~3-5x a week.
Many years ago™ OkCupid actually had a good system, before it revamped itself and got bought by Match (Tinder).
In the old version of the website, you could answer any amount of questions from a huge catalogue of sometimes very obscure and specific questions and look for people who had very similar (or very different) answers overall. You could chat freely with everyone and had the option to look just for (platonic) friends.
I had incredibly interesting discussions with people who were at the opposite spectrum of my answers. And I made a few acquaintances and two amazing friends who still are my friends today, one is even my roommate for 8 years now! I also found a group of white hackers and Linux enthusiasts for real life meetings and we still hang out occasionally.
Two other friends of mine looked for and found romantic partners there and they are both happily married to the partners they found via OkCupid back then.
It went all down the gutter when people used the “platonic friends” option to get into your pants.
And when OkCupid tried to make more cash by pushing into the sex/romance market more and copying dating apps.
I don’t think something like this would work anymore. Dating apps and the weird culture and thinking about a “sexual market” seem to have broken humans or something. This asinine idea is just another symptom.
I also met my boyfriend back then like 7 years ago. It was the best “dating platform” that I ever used. Had a lot of great conversations with many people all over the world. Came back to it a few years ago but they already changed it to a more tinder type of way. It was very disappointing.
Did they get rid of the questions? That was the most awesome part of OkCupid. Because you not only answered the questions but you could pick if you cared what your potential matches answers should be.
I met my wife on OkCupid, we were a high % match according to OkCupid and we did turn out to be a great match. That’s stupid if they got rid of that.
There’s a big conflict of interest in dating apps: if you’re successful you stop using the app, and of course the company doesn’t want that.
But if everyone has a shitty experience with it, they won’t recommend it or even tell people to stay away from it. But if it works well, they’ll praise it, thus gaining more users.
More old trivia is that the original OK Cupid system was written in C, including the actual web server that served the pages. They wrote it in C so that the matching thing could run real-time, which is super impressive, even if writing your own web server is actually pretty dumb.
I loved the days when people just wanted to make fun, useful, quirky stuff on the internet and not just peddle thirst traps and Chinese merchandise.
Another version of “online dating is awful!”
Haven’t heard this one before. The world is better with online dating than it was without it
That’s not what the original comment said if you read it at all. The commenter was making the point that okcupid was pretty good before it was enshittified. There was no direct judgement about whether the world is better with or without OLD. And the subtextual judgment seems to be positive or at least neutral, so I’m not sure what you actually have a problem with.
How I saw this as a different version of the same old stuff is that this comment said essentially “well it used to be good when I used it, but now it’s awful and destructive” which it might be in ways but it’s absolutely a net positive from what I have seen
As someone who online dated for years, up until 2021, I’m very aware of the down sides.
I totally agree that it’s a ridiculous thing for them to implement, but saying that consent is required to say ‘hi’ is a bit over the top. I’m assuming the receiving party will still be able to block the sender of course since I’m pretty sure that’s required by Google and Apple.
Next step: Charging you money if you DON’T want to hear from someone you haven’t matched with.
