It’s prime-time Friday night one week before Valentine’s Day and outside of a packed bar in downtown Manhattan, two firetrucks are flanking the door. The building, thankfully, is not on fire: The bar is hosting a “Rescue Me” singles party, a dating event for people who want to meet firefighters and other first responders — including a few who’ve been ferried there by their enormous red trucks.
Inside, over the sound of J-Kwon, a DJ encourages the “ladies, ladies, ladies” to go outside and get a photo climbing the trucks. Women in sparkly blouses, meanwhile, chat up firefighters with flashlights and carabiners dangling off their utility belts. Brittany Wingate, a tall thirtysomething in a bright red dress, jokes that some of the guys still smell like smoke.
Wingate says that while she’s here looking for in-person connections, she also dates online, using popular apps like Hinge and Tinder. But she says that recently, she’s felt like the apps only really match her up with potential dates if she pays for a “premium” subscription. She wistfully remembers the promise online dating offered when it first gained popularity about a decade ago: a slick, all-new way for people to find love. But now she feels that opportunity has faded.
“Whatever their mission was when they first started,” Wingate says, “it’s no longer that. They have been bitten by capitalism.”
The rise in dissatisfaction with dating apps has been breathlessly reported and carefully quantified. A 2023 Pew study showed that about half of people who date online say their overall experience has been negative. And while some companies are reporting a decline in users, overall, dating apps remain a cultural bedrock: That same Pew study found that three in 10 Americans have used a dating app.
Increasingly these users are, like Wingate, being forced to spend serious money to do so. While the average user spends around $20 a month on dating apps, elite memberships can cost as much as $6,000 a year.
Despite the outsize coverage that the dating app industry receives, one possible underlying reason for the frustration is almost never mentioned: Many of the major apps are now all owned by one publicly listed company, Match Group. Critics say that the $8.5 billion corporation operates under a “perverse incentive” to not actually help its users find love and stop using its products but instead strings them along endlessly with promises that if they just spend a little more time and a little more money, they will find their match. Is a monopoly ruining America’s love life?
Proof that dating apps are bad for you. Best way to find love is meeting someone who shares a common interest. But remember that anyone you date will likely be on their best behavior…so be careful.