Why this startup expert says you should fall out of love with dating apps

Dating apps have given us the wrong idea about love. 

They have conditioned us to believe that connection sparks when we’re alone in the antiseptic confines of the digital world — a sterile, controlled, algorithmically determined environment that’s low-risk and low-stakes. 

They make us believe that romantic interest is binary and unambiguous. That there are easy exits from interactions that falter or fizzle.

But lurve — the stuff of ballads and sonnets — has always been the opposite. It blossoms when in proximity to other people. It occurs in the messy and ambiguous physical world, where the stakes are medium to high. Sometimes you find yourself working in the cubicle next to the person you disastrously asked out.

Apps don’t recreate the torture of being giddy with excitement because Chris from Customer Success with the charmingly crooked grin has asked you to “hang out after work one day”.

But then he takes you to see Deadpool & Wolverine, and you start questioning whether it’s even a date at all. So you’re sitting there, sharing a nine-dollar box of popcorn, feeling embarrassingly overdressed in the cute dress you’d spent hours picking out.

When I was an investor, I heard many ideas for new dating apps.

But I never heard a single pitch which promised to substitute for that poignant moment on a heaving dance floor, when you’re out dancing with the friend who you’d always held a torch for but who’d always been in a relationship — until now.

Maybe you’ve taken a shot of tequila and worked up your courage to lean in and say something flirty, but your words are drowned out by the thundering bass.

They smile adorably – cluelessly – and reply with a puzzled “What?”

So you repeat yourself, your confidence waning. But they laugh nervously and say, “This music is so loud, I can’t hear you properly”. You shake your head, mouthing “Nothing” as the moment slips away and you wish the dance floor would open up and swallow you whole.

Dating apps protect us from these kinds of mortifying experiences. 

But at what cost?

The truth is, dating apps are economically incentivised to keep users swiping. To show users an endless procession of profiles that lack distinction, so as to show them ads for weight-loss drugs in between.

The apps tease us with the existence of a ‘highly compatible’ match, which shall be revealed upon paying $29.99 for a monthly subscription. Of course, the apps have a perverse incentive not to make the matches too perfect. Every time a perfect match is made, they lose two customers!

But regardless of whether apps are deliberately keeping us paralysed with (the illusion of?) choice, I think they’re missing that essential ingredient that leads to love. 

Because as they say, in love, sometimes what you need is twenty seconds of embarrassing bravery to unlock a lifetime of happiness.

And I don’t think those 20 seconds will be those one spends looking through someone’s profile on Hinge.

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