‘It’s not you, it’s me’ is the gist of college student qualms with dating apps. Hook-up culture declines while young people search for genuine connection.
‘It’s not you, it’s me’ is the gist of college student qualms with dating apps. Hook-up culture declines while young people search for genuine connection.
It doesn’t help that these dating apps are all deeply enshittified. The free experience is kind of shitty, and the paid is suspect and expensive.
They could do more to focus on matching by something other than pictures. Shared interests, maybe.
They could do more to deal with bots, scams, and low effort users.
They could stop showing me people that live in Thailand. For some reason tinder likes to show me people that live 8000 miles away. Probably because they’re paying for it, but it makes the app worse for me.
I can’t speak to what college kids are up to these days. I’m old. I’ve never had a lot of luck “just meeting” people in real life, though. I always struggled with figuring out if someone was available and interested. I have several unpleasant memories of asking people out in college that I’d been spending time with, only for them to be like “sorry my boyfriend [you’ve never met and I never mentioned] and I are exclusive”. (Which may have been a lie to let me down gently, I guess.)
Also when you have a deal breaker or two, having that up front is helpful.
I know rejection is scary, but its not reallyna reflection of you rather then a reflection of someones preference. You could be a greek god and still get rejected.
Keep trying, but in the meantime also focus on you. Do what you need to do to love yourself, and then the rest will follow
I appreciate the kind words! I’m personally doing well dating wise. With one exception it’s all been people met through apps though.
Last time I used Bumble, a few years ago, I think about a third of the profiles I looked at weren’t even filled out. Step 1 might be enforcing users to actually fill out a profile.
I got to a point where I just swiped left on anything that wasn’t filled out enough. If you can’t even be bothered to do that then I don’t think you’re going to be a good partner.
Well a lot of people don’t want their value boiled down to what you can get from using a connection for a single minded thing. It doesn’t exactly scream emotionally accessible.
At least on dating apps there is an understanding of why you’re both hanging out with each other but even then still only using energy to get what you want from others will limit your options. Sure you can get just sex. Probably with someone you don’t want sex with…or with $trings attached. But if that’s how you treat spending time with a person : as a trade off, you’re reaping what you sow with that.
if you’re looking for deep connection and sex but you’re only using the connection to get sex, it’s not really a connection because you’re not really valuing that connection to people or other people. Connection isn’t payment. If you weren’t just doing it for ulterior motives and a genuine person you’d both getting something out of the connection even if it’s not sex.
’I gave you four coins worth of attention. Sex now pls’…if I picked up on these vibes id suddenly have a bf too. A big one. A really really big one.
Spending time with people is how you get to know people better. It’s how you make friends. You can start feeling something to some of them and it’s ok to ask them out if that’s the case. There’s nothing in what jjjalljs wrote that says they were spending time with the people for the sole purpose of finding a date.
Except Referring to it not panning out as an ‘unpleasant’ experience. Connection alone should not be unpleasant. People who don’t put out should not be considered ‘unpleasant’
Well, getting rejected IS usually an unpleasant experience. You can value someone’s friendship and still find it an unpleasant experience to be rejected by them. Then, ideally, you act grown up about it and you can remain friends. But the feelings can be pretty unpleasant.
Where did they say they found the connection or the person unpleasant? Did I overlook something?
I don’t even know them and don’t know how they really behave, but I feel like it’s unfair to jump to the worst conclusions about someone based on just a few neutral lines of text.
Its not unfair. And it’s unfair of you to discount that this is indeed a very common problem with connection. Especially in the swipe culture we have surrounding us. It’s basic psychoanalysis of how this person uses language when discussing connection. And getting a feeling from a person for the words they use is valid. Especially if it’s about what kind of essence you put off Vs what you get back. Many other words can be used to described what you’re saying. Unpleasant used to generalize an experience of connecting with people instead of an explicit emotion of one thing was intentional summary and at best it was a bit of an easy reach for someone who isn’t genuine.
Well, yes, the “I was nice to you why aren’t you sexing with me?” trope is very bad.
The two I remember specifically were people I legitimately liked. One of them we spent like hours talking after class a couple times. But when I asked her out for dinner she replied she had to help her boyfriend study.
I can see her perspective of just having a friend to hang out with, and then being annoyed when the guy wants to make it more.
But I am legitimately confused how to square what you’re writing about with the advice of “ask people out you know in real life” some people give. That was the advice I was getting back then. Meet people. Be friends. Ask them out.
Now I use apps so I know the other person is in fact available to date, and does date men. Also I’m old and my relationships currently are fine.