Plus, in an app, you don’t see the group of people surrounding the most attractive options, whether they are trying to filter through them or have fun with each one they like.

Also, you can lower your tolerance of the less fun stuff because it feels like there’s always more options available. Like someone but they aren’t available on a free day you have? Someone else might be available on that day, so just pivot to them. Or try both at once, or keep the other on the backburner, only to discover they could read the sudden adjusted level of interest and aren’t as keen themselves anymore.

It happened once to me in RL. I met one girl at a bar one night, hit it off with her well. Then, that same week, she wasn’t able to come to another bar I was going to and I started out wingmanning for a friend by talking to the friend of someone he was interested in so he could talk to her and ended up going home with that friend. I couldn’t handle having two girls being interested and ended up screwing it up with both. But that’s what it almost always feels like with online dating, and I bet it’s even worse for women who get way more matches.

And on top of that, I know that Tinder makes more money if someone wants to find a partner but fails to. I know they have incentive to hire people (or bots) to match, chat for a bit, then flake out. Or independent scammers looking to chat and take money. I have a paid sub and had what seemed like a great match right as renewal was coming up, then she flaked before a date could happen. Who knows if she was real or not, she could have been but at this point it’s hard to get excited about meeting anyone, which makes it harder to engage genuinely, and I hardly feel anything even when I do match with someone that I think I’d really like.

I’m glad I’m generally content being single or this would be pretty depressing.