Dating Apps: Chance To Find Love, Or An Exercise In Self-Harm?

Dating apps aren't built for lesbians. They're not built for straight people, either, but that's another story. What they are built for is to make money. If you do manage to find love, it's because their system failed. 

Now for the Big Caveat™. Yes, lesbians do find love on dating apps. And I'm happy for them. I've even had some good experiences myself. 

But if you're a lesbian in her 20s, and you're using the apps, you should know: if you find love on a dating app, it's because you got lucky.  

Further, your outcome was not a success story. In fact, your love story is actually an example of the app failing to do what it was designed to do. Here's why. 

Dating Apps Make More Money When You're Lonely 

Most of the major dating apps that us women-loving-women use to find each other (Tinder, HER, Hinge, Lex, etc) are monetized in one or both of these two major ways. 

1) Premium memberships

In startup lingo, when a user (that's you) cancels their premium membership, this is called 'churn.' 

Churn is bad. Startups really hate it. Their main goal is to reduce churn, because if they lose users, they lose money.

If you meet someone on a dating app, fall in love, and stop using the app, that increases churn. Because of this business model, dating apps are financially incentivized to make sure it's highly unlikely that you find lasting love on their app. 

Now, if you keep your premium membership, that's called 'retention.' Startups really want higher retention, because more users for longer makes them more money. 

If you're gleefully reading this thinking about how you'll just avoid this trap by never getting a premium membership, sit tight. It's not that easy. There's still the advertisements. 

2) In-app advertisements 

Another really big metric startups measure is 'time in-app.' This measures the amount of time you spend actively using their app per day. Again, the financial incentive is set up to make this time as high as possible, because the more time you spend in-app, the more ads you see, and the more money they make. If you find love, and stop using their app, the company makes less money. 

Now, if you're thinking "okay, so I just won't click an advertisement ever," it's not that easy either. Dating apps measure whether an advertisement is working by 'impressions' and 'clicks.' 

Even if you intentionally refuse to click on advertisements, you're still making money for the dating app because just by being shown the advertisement, your interaction is are now measured as an 'impression,' even though you didn't click anything.

'Impressions' helps the dating app, too. They take these metrics back to the advertisers who are paying for ad space and use them to justify the money they're being charged. 

So, the mobile app companies pay their employees impressive salaries to constantly tweak the system so users spend more and more time 'in-app' every day. The more people using the app daily, the more people they can show ads to, which raises their overall 'impressions' metric. 

They know if enough people are shown ads, some will click, and others will buy, which is the real end goal, because the apps ultimately exist not to serve you, but to serve the advertisers. 

Similar to a non-profit that is dependent on the goodwill of its donors, Tinder, HER, Hinge and Lex are all set up to depend on advertiser money. If enough of their users found love faster, their profits would suffer. 

I don't think dating apps necessarily need to be this way, and maybe I'll write another post one day with some alternate ideas for dating app models that were still profitable but weren't so exploitative of their users. 

The fact is that the way these business models currently are, the dating apps depend on a large amount of people who use the app staying unsatisfied, staying deeply lonely and unfulfilled, so their business can make more money.   

So What? Who Really Cares If Dating Apps Make Money On Me? 

After all, we live in a society with an economy. Everyone's gotta make a living. Companies need money to stay in business. To pay their employees, they need to be profitable. If dating apps weren't profitable, how could they afford to stay in business? 

My point is not that making money is inherently bad and therefore none of us should do business with those who seek to exchange goods and services. 

Rather, my argument is that if a business is intentionally set up in a way such that they make more money if you do not meet your stated goals, it's wise to be suspicious of it. 

Take, for example, Planet Fitness. They're well known for designing their business model to make the lion's share of their money on customers who rarely or never come to the gym.  

Dating apps have a similar business model, but the product is sex and love. Just like Planet Fitness, the dating apps are designed to make it really unlikely that you find whatever it is you truly want. It doesn't matter if that's a long-term partnership or a quick hookup. If you find it fast, they lose money.   

If a dating app has a business model that depends on a large number of its users not finding someone (at all, or for a really long time) to be profitable, it deserves suspicion. 

At Least You Meet Women Faster

I've discussed a lot of the cons. What about the pros?

As a woman who loves other women, dating apps allow you to meet women of a compatible sexuality at scale. Using a dating app, you can reach a lot of women quickly. Usually, this is quicker than you can meet single, sapphic women in real life. 

Dating apps also make it possible for some lesbians to find out which other women in their local area are in fact attracted to women. 

It can be really hard to find your dating pool, especially if you don't 'look' like a stereotypical lesbian. To add to this, it can be scary to consider asking about a woman's sexuality, since some women do get offended.  

But on the apps, you can be pretty confident that women whose profiles you're swiping on are actually attracted to other women. If you're seeing them, it's because they directed their settings to also show them other women.  

If You're Terrible At Flirting

If you tend to choke up while talking to women in person, it might be easier for you to start by building a connection over messaging. 

Apps are good for that. You can start off with just a message. You also have time to figure out what you want to say in response, or ask a friend for advice. Unlike real-time interaction, you can just stop everything while you figure out what you want to do next. 

You can also see some information that women don't typically wear on their sleeve in person. For instance on some apps, women have the option to link their Instagram profile or share a song they like from Spotify. On HER or Lex, you can also check the woman's post history to see if she has ever posted on the app. 

Most apps also have little indicators in the profile that each woman fills out to indicate whether or not they're looking for certain things: kids, commitment, monogamy vs. polyamory etc. 

This can be an advantage when it comes to sorting out who your goals are more compatible with. Most women won't immediately start off a conversation by saying something like "Hi I'm Lauren, I'm a lesbian and I'd like 3 children and am only interested in monogamy."

But on a dating app, you might see that straight away in her profile. This helps you filter out who you're more interested in.  

Stuck In Talking Stage Hell

For some of us lesbians (me) the messaging portals on dating apps seem almost like a digital version of liminal space. You're trapped into this endless cycle of small talk that seems interminable. 

In person, I do enjoy some small talk, but I really don't want to text multiple strangers for 1-2 weeks before ever making plans to meet up in person or even just have a phone call.  

Another issue is that women rarely message each other first. Like in real life, lesbians on the apps tend to hesitate to actually message first. Whether it's because she thinks she's "probably not your type" or is afraid of rejection, she's probably not gonna message unless you message her first. 

So, while this is by no means an inevitability, it's also not uncommon as a lesbian to find yourself in one of two talking stages on the dating apps: 

1) in an endless vortex of small talk, dancing around actually asking her on a date, or

2) waiting for the other woman to message first 

Flattens Us Into These Weird Caricatures Of Ourselves

At the same time, when you make a profile on a dating app, you're kind of forced to became a 2-dimensional avatar of yourself. Like, you exist inside someone else's phone. No matter how witty your bio is or how hot your pictures are, what makes you "you" just can't come through an app in the same way.

It also concerns me that this same 'flattening' effect also happens to women I might otherwise date. What if the love of my life just so happens to be terrible at writing bios, or taking pictures of herself, and I swipe left on her? 

The Unicorn Problem

If you've used a dating app, you've almost certainly seen some straight couples looking for a third. Most lesbians won't entertain this idea, and it's annoying to constantly be shown something you're not interested in. 

Many of these couples put many images of the girlfriend and then one image of the boyfriend in the back of their profile, so you could even miss it and end up having a conversation you're really not looking for. 

Bit Of A Meat Market Though

There's also something weird and meat market-ey about the dating apps. I'm pretty sure we're not actually meant to be evaluating each other just on the basis of looks and a brief bio. There are all kinds of intangibles that you can only feel out in person. Something about this entire process has always felt spiritually off to me. 

I believe that's because the user experience (UX) industry, while composed of many wonderful people who are just doing their jobs, is designed by intention to exploit the basic facts of our biology. They harness our serotonin and cortisol to steal our attention and keep it in the app for longer. 

They're Not Exactly Hiding It

This isn't a closely-held secret in the UX industry, by the way. Take a look at an introduction to the UX industry and how it approach monetization, and you'll probably see what I mean. Exploiting our biology/attention is an intentional part of app design. Genuinely — unless you have a dumb phone, your phone isn't your friend. If you want to read more about it, this article about UX and SaaS monetization is a good one. 

Ever Heard Of Digital Self-Harm?

Digital self-harm is this new concept, not really fleshed out yet, that I've been seeing bouncing around some corners of the internet. It basically means continually exposing yourself to content (media, images, video, comments etc) that makes you feel terrible. And doing it on purpose, not for work, research or school, just kind of to scratch some kind of psychic itch.  

But why suggest that dating apps might be an exercise in self-harm? Isn't that a pretty strong statement to consider?

It is - and I think it's a very serious discussion that we should be having, at least with ourselves. 

These apps aren't built for us. They're built to work against us. The apps are, quite literally, designed to exploit our attention. 

Even if you never get Tinder Gold, Tinder still makes more money on your consumption of their advertisements if you're crying on the couch scarfing ice cream than walking down the aisle on your beaming father's arm. Same goes for the other apps. They make money on their paid ads and on their premium subscriptions. 

The dating apps being a nightmare isn't a bug. It's a feature. For these apps, their every incentive is to design the system to be just workable enough that you still have the faint, dying dregs of hope, but still not be quite efficient enough to actually help most of their users form real connections. 

They call us the "users," but who's really being used?

Did You Know There's A Loneliness Crisis?

I always thought these dating apps were exploitative, but I'm particularly fired up about it right now because of the loneliness crisis. 

In a world where three in five people who are 18-34 years old feel lonely "often or always," it's particularly egregious to watch these companies, which are supposed to be designed to help us find real connection, instead double down on their monetization strategies.

One in five millenials don't have a single friend. Just sit back for a minute and let that sink on. Honestly let it sink in, because it's really important. The apps aren't gonna save us. The only thing that will is doing the scary thing: send the email, pick up the phone and call someone, make real, IRL plans. If those ideas scare you, that probably means you really, really need to do it.  

But what are some lesbian-specific ways that the loneliness crisis can affect lesbians? 

• It's a straight world, we tend to have more trouble finding romantic partners 
• It's hard to find other sapphic friends, for the same reasons it's hard to find romantic partners
• It's nearly impossible to find older lesbians for friendship/guidance/mentorship/etc because they don't go to the lesbian bars anymore

tldr; the loneliness crisis affects lesbians the same way it affects everyone else, but for some of us, probably more

This issue affects us as lesbians even more. Many of us already started off lonely before the loneliness crisis even kicked off. This alarming increase in loneliness rates started years before the pandemic. The pandemic just made it way worse. But that's another topic for a different, longer post.  

There Actually Are Better Ways To Meet Lesbians

Credit: Alberto Montejo

1) Women's Festivals

If you want to meet lesbians, you can go to the women's festivals. Where hundreds of women, most of them lesbians, and many of them hot and single, gather in the woods every year to sing, sit around the campfire, go to workshops, and mingle. 

A handful of the women's festivals are lesbian-majority spaces. The ones that are not do still have a lesbian presence. 

Going to a women's festival is the quickest way that I know of to meet other single lesbians. You can fly there or road trip there. Even if you don't know how it works or what to bring, you can ask other women who have been there before what you'll need to know, and they'll usually be very happy to answer your questions.  

Lots of women go to the women's festivals for their first time every single year. You certainly won't be the only one there who's a first-timer, and most women attending will go out of their way to help you feel comfortable and make sure you have everything you need.   

Women's festivals are also one of the only places where you can find older lesbians. Older lesbians are badass because they'll give you a shoulder to cry on, teach you cool skills like how to fix and build things, encourage you to work on your art and give you (sometimes unsolicited, but generally pretty dope) advice.   

Most women's festivals also have alcohol, live concerts every night, and sometimes weed. The all-girl bands at the concerts aren't famous or anything, but they're really, really fun to watch perform. You usually camp in a tent, or you can bring an RV sometimes, or you might be able to rent a cabin. Depends on which women's festival you decide to go to.   

To get hooked up to the US-based women's festivals, fill out this form to request to join the Amazon Trail Discord. 

2) Women's Land

If you want to meet lesbians, you can go to women's land. Women's lands are often owned by lesbians. Whether there's one woman living on the land, or several, land dykes nearly always have a larger network of lesbian friends in their local community that they can introduce you to over time. 

Most women's lands are lesbian-majority spaces. Some women's lands are even made by lesbians for lesbians. Many host regular events that local lesbians who don't live on the land nevertheless attend. 

Visiting a women's land near you is more than just a visit. It'll get you connected to your local 'underground' lesbian network. If there are lesbian goings-on in your area, your local land dyke probably knows about them. Can't overstate this. Go and find the lesbians. 

You can find a women's land near you on the Women's Land Map on this blog. If you don't see any lands near you, you can email me and I'll try to help you find one. I only list a land on the map when I have explicit permission from the owner to do so. Therefore, there are many lands that are not listed on the map that I can still share more info about by email.

Concluding Thoughts

If you've tried the dating apps and they haven't worked for you, or if you've tried them and they have worked but they make you feel terrible, the breathtaking thing is — this is by design. 

You're not supposed to feel more fulfilled or more connected to other human beings by virtue of using these apps. 

These dating apps are non-figuratively designed to keep you wanting more. Because as long as you're still lonely, they're making money on your tears. 

Remember, loneliness doesn't just feel terrible. It also "significantly increases the risk of premature death from all causes and is thought to rival the risk post by smoking, obesity, and physical inactivity." As such a serious health risk, clinical loneliness is considered comparable to smoking 15 cigarettes per day, and it's been shown to affect lesbians more.  

Genuinely. Is your health insurance coverage good enough to maintain a 15-cigarette-a-day level of loneliness?

If you're been stuck in a work-home-laundry-netflix cycle for too long, you need to force yourself out of the house and get interacting with real, messy, imperfect human beings. 

The quickest way to start snapping out of this vicious cycle (the one that big corporations would really prefer you stay in) is by taking action that will lead to real-life plans.

Call a friend. Stop waiting, and email a women's land. Join the women's festival discord.

Find women's land near you on the Women's Land Map. Don't see any lands near you? Email me at findwomensland [at] gmail [dot] com and I'll try to help you find one in your area. There are many active women's lands scattered across the states that I am aware of but don't yet have permission to list publicly on the map.