Why Online Dating Feels Like Digging Through Trash in Heels
Disclaimer: This is a highly opinionated piece dipped in satire, sprayed with expired cologne, and set on fire with a box of unused Bumble Boosts. If you’re in a loving relationship that started online, congratulations. The rest of us are just trying to survive the wasteland.
The Dating App Glow-Up Is Officially Over
It’s not just your delusion. It’s actually happening. The romance with dating apps is crumbling like a soft boy’s promises. Bumble recently cut 30 percent of its workforce. Match Group, which owns Tinder, Hinge, OKCupid, and every other digital disappointment machine, let go of 8 percent of its employees. The CEO of Bumble literally said the layoffs were part of a “reset moment” to revive user engagement and revenue. Translation: people are tired, bored, and not buying the fantasy anymore.
The numbers say everything. Match Group’s market value plummeted from $45 billion in 2021 to just under $10 billion this year. That’s not a dip. That’s a free fall into a sea of “u up?” messages and permanently single people too afraid to delete the app in case their soulmate downloads it on the same day.
They Called It Empowerment. We Got Exhaustion
When Bumble launched in 2014 with a “women message first” model, it was billed as a feminist revolution. What we got was the emotional labor of initiating every awkward conversation with men who answer with three words or an emoji and then vanish. Somehow the power shift didn’t lead to better dating. It just led to more burnout.
Whitney Wolfe Herd, Bumble’s founder and former CEO, stepped down last year and admitted she wants to “reset” her own relationship with the company. It’s hard not to read that as a metaphor. The woman who gave us this platform for modern love got exhausted by it too. Same, Whitney.
Online Dating Is Not Just Broken. It’s Dangerous
Let’s skip the romance and go straight to the red flags. Because dating apps aren’t just boring and disappointing. They can be seriously unsafe.
According to a 2023 Pew Research study, nearly half of women under 35 say they’ve received sexually explicit messages they didn’t ask for. Another one in ten say they’ve felt physically threatened. And that’s just the stuff they reported. Most of us just delete, block, move on, and tell ourselves it’s normal.
The illusion of safety online is paper-thin. Bumble’s own safety features, like photo verification and message prompts, are helpful, but they’re not foolproof. The same man who uses the “feminist” badge on his profile can still scream at you in a parking lot when you don’t want to go to his apartment on date one.
The Apps Know They’re Losing Us
Bumble's new CEO, Lidiane Jones, came straight from Slack. That’s right. A workplace messaging platform. Which is fitting, because app dating now feels like scheduling a meeting with someone who doesn’t show up and then tells you they’re “not really looking for anything serious.”
Jones is promising to revamp Bumble into something more meaningful. But we’ve heard that song before. Every app promises it’s different. Every app gets worse. At this point, Hinge should just rebrand as a therapy simulator for people with attachment issues and a Ring camera.
Real Talk: Dating Apps Don’t Want You to Find Love
If dating apps really worked, we’d all be off them. But love doesn’t scale well. Frustration does. Loneliness does. Confusion, ghosting, second-guessing, slow fades, and emotionally vacant convos about music taste do. The business model doesn’t thrive on connection. It thrives on churn.
The average Bumble user opens the app more than 10 times a day. Not to talk. Just to see. To check. To hope. We’re addicted to the possibility of connection, even though it rarely delivers anything but confusion, disappointment, or a man named Jordan who says he’s “between jobs.”
It’s a Trash Fire and You’re Not Crazy for Feeling Burned Out
App fatigue is real. According to the Wall Street Journal, usage across major dating apps has steadily declined. People are logging in less. Swiping less. Engaging less. And yet the same apps are raising prices, slapping on new “AI matchmaker” features, and pretending it’s innovation instead of desperation.
We’re not jaded. We’re traumatized. And we’re tired of digging through digital garbage bins hoping for a ring box.
Swipe Culture Isn’t Just Broken. It’s Dehumanizing
When you treat people like options, you stop treating them like people. Dating apps have turned connection into consumption. Swipe left, swipe right, forget their name. The faster you move, the less you feel. It’s not that love has died. It’s that it’s being suffocated by UX design.
No wonder nobody calls anymore. We’ve trained ourselves to fear real-time conversation. To delay vulnerability. To withhold effort. Because the next best thing is always one swipe away. Except it never is.
So What Now?
Delete the app. Not forever, just for long enough to remember what it feels like to make eye contact with someone who doesn’t want to text for three weeks before scheduling a drink.
Romance isn’t dead. It’s just been buried under a pile of bad algorithms, predatory business models, and blurry selfies. Real connection is still possible. It’s just not something you can download.
So maybe the answer isn’t more swiping. Maybe it’s more walking up to someone and saying hi. The old-fashioned way. The terrifying way. The human way.
