An app that legitimately finds people love, is probably a good candidate for warm fuzzy donations, perhaps the general public would be receptive to this?
Questions
Does anyone know of any dating apps (other than Duolicious, which I’ll write about in a comment) that have experimented with a not-for-profit, or charity model?
What am I missing? This seems like a big ol’ hunk of power, social capital, and utility, just sitting on the ground of central station!
I’m skipping the explanation of why dating apps are bad for their users.
I think you have failed to understand why dating apps are bad for their users.
On my current models, the core problem isn’t the incentives, it’s the medium. A very large chunk of attraction for most women is about social behaviors, which just don’t come across in some pictures and a text blurb; they mostly come across in conversations and other social settings. The net result is that women mostly don’t find the guys on apps attractive, even when they’d find many of those same guys attractive if they socialized with them a bit. That, in turn, results in the notorious statistical problems of the apps, and the frustrating experience of most users.
I know lots of people mourn the loss of 2014-era okcupid, but I would guess the median experience on okcupid was qualitatively similar to today’s apps. I recall the okcupid data blog itself noting that mostly the pictures were the only thing which had significant predictive power for people matching up.
What am I missing? This seems like a big ol’ hunk of power, social capital, and utility, just sitting on the ground of central station!
This sounds like one of the riskiest and most thankless kind of (legal...?) websites which it is possible to run in exchange for not even a will-o-the-whisp of profit or payday.
After reading about Craigslist and OnlyFans and Facebook and Instagram and OKCupid and Backpage and Kuro5hin and MeFi and Tea and Mastodon-everything etc, I think I would rather slam a door on my private parts than sign up to try to create or moderate such a site for sub-minimum wage (at a total opportunity cost of likely millions of dollars, exclusive of psychic damage), and have to deal with people like, well, your following comment, and whatever regrettable decisions they inevitably will make.
I know of one experiment like this, Duolicious. But other than the name, which gives me the feeling I imagine the word ‘moist’ gives to others. The app has… too niche a community.
Fig. The landing page for the Duolicious website. They claim to have 19,482 active members.
Fig. An example of the type of community Duolicious has.
Despite it’s oddities, Duolicious is community funded, and open source. I think with a little work, it’s interface could be really great! The “Clubs” system, which stands in for what would usually be “Interests” on another dating app, is fun, and highly customisable, letting you create your own Clubs, and easily tap other profile’s Clubs to join them. It’s a great customization loop!
Fig. Example of the tags system. Again, this is a pretty niche, heavily internet cultured community. Not shown here, is that all tags you have in common, are listed separately.
Same goes for the Bios, which look like they can be as long as you desire, and add character to a person’s profile. I haven’t seen many “Date Me Docs”, but I imagine this is as close as you’ll get to one, while keeping the modern dating app interface.
Fig. A lovely little bio I came across. I thought this was so pretty, I copied the whole thing, and added it to my Obsidian vault for use in future writing.
Based on estimated GPT5 gave me, I was expecting running a dating app to be hugely cost intensive, however, Duolicious makes this claim:
o:
I feel surprise. I guess I believed something wrong. Going to the donate page, it’s costing them $360 a month for servers.
That’s an insanely low cost! How are they doing this? I wonder how hard it would be to shift the culture of the app, to something friendlier to a wider audience. Because at this cost, and for what it is, Duolicious is doing an above average job!
I don’t broadly approve of trying to diagnose people over the Internet, nor am I qualified to, but it’s striking how much the “i love mind games” bio suggests borderline personality disorder. It has chronic feelings of emptiness (“i have no passions or goals in life.”), instability in interpersonal relationships (“i love mind games, i love drama, i love fake people.”, “i would not hesitate to betray any of my loved ones at any moment.”), negative self-image (“[...] really no reason for anyone to be around me.”), and so on.
If you are dating and this bio doesn’t make your HUD light up bright red, you are in danger. Read up on personality disorders so you can make more informed decisions about people you are getting involved with.
it mostly communicates that they’re a heavy user of the internet.
That true fact in no way contradicts dbohdan’s point. (“The import of an act lies not in what that act resembles on the surface, Mr. Potter, but in the states of mind which make that act more or less probable.”)
This, um, dramatically changes the picture. It could be nothing.
As a heavy user of the Internet, I didn’t recognize this copypasta. My mistake was only googling a large chunk in double quotes.
Edit: “Dramatically” is intended as a pun on “drama”, hence the italics. I think the new information changes the picture significantly, and yet the bio remains a red flag.
I saw that others have commented about how the bio is an edited meme rather than real, but just on the perception of various personality disorders, I feel like the statements you highlighted would show too much self-endorsement of that interpersonally bleak and exploitative outlook to be typical of (just) BPD. If we had to pick something that the dating profile statement seem typical of, it sounds more like ASPD (maybe together with BPD) to me. If someone only has BPD, it would probably be more typical for them to feel super attached and positive towards their loved ones for at least large parts of the time. And while they might split and end up betraying their loved ones, the person with BPD doesn’t typically have the insight to understand that this is a likely thing that they might do, so liking drama and being ready to betray others wouldn’t be a part of how they see themselves.
Disliking/unendorsing the negative features of one’s personality instead of endorsing them is an important ingredient for success chances with therapy, which is why BPD by itself is easier to treat than NPD or ASPD, or combinations where either of those come comorbid with BPD.
Two weeks after launching the website, someone will get date-raped by someone they met through your app, and they will sue you. The story will be in all clickbait media, which will report it as totally your fault. On your Wikipedia page, 90% will be the “Controversies” section, listing everything bad that has ever happened to any of your users.
Unless you spend tons of money on PR and lawyers, of course.
To Make Dating Apps Not Terrible, Make Them Not-for-Profit?
I’m skipping the explanation of why dating apps are bad for their users.
To fix these problems, why wouldn’t we make a not-for-profit dating app?
It removes incentives to keep users lonely for as long as possible.
There are rich people who are worried about population decline, who might fund it.
I’m assuming some governments are probably getting worried too.
An app that legitimately finds people love, is probably a good candidate for warm fuzzy donations, perhaps the general public would be receptive to this?
Questions
Does anyone know of any dating apps (other than Duolicious, which I’ll write about in a comment) that have experimented with a not-for-profit, or charity model?
What am I missing? This seems like a big ol’ hunk of power, social capital, and utility, just sitting on the ground of central station!
I think you have failed to understand why dating apps are bad for their users.
On my current models, the core problem isn’t the incentives, it’s the medium. A very large chunk of attraction for most women is about social behaviors, which just don’t come across in some pictures and a text blurb; they mostly come across in conversations and other social settings. The net result is that women mostly don’t find the guys on apps attractive, even when they’d find many of those same guys attractive if they socialized with them a bit. That, in turn, results in the notorious statistical problems of the apps, and the frustrating experience of most users.
I know lots of people mourn the loss of 2014-era okcupid, but I would guess the median experience on okcupid was qualitatively similar to today’s apps. I recall the okcupid data blog itself noting that mostly the pictures were the only thing which had significant predictive power for people matching up.
This sounds like one of the riskiest and most thankless kind of (legal...?) websites which it is possible to run in exchange for not even a will-o-the-whisp of profit or payday.
After reading about Craigslist and OnlyFans and Facebook and Instagram and OKCupid and Backpage and Kuro5hin and MeFi and Tea and Mastodon-everything etc, I think I would rather slam a door on my private parts than sign up to try to create or moderate such a site for sub-minimum wage (at a total opportunity cost of likely millions of dollars, exclusive of psychic damage), and have to deal with people like, well, your following comment, and whatever regrettable decisions they inevitably will make.
I know of one experiment like this, Duolicious. But other than the name, which gives me the feeling I imagine the word ‘moist’ gives to others. The app has… too niche a community.
Fig. The landing page for the Duolicious website. They claim to have 19,482 active members.
Fig. An example of the type of community Duolicious has.
Despite it’s oddities, Duolicious is community funded, and open source. I think with a little work, it’s interface could be really great! The “Clubs” system, which stands in for what would usually be “Interests” on another dating app, is fun, and highly customisable, letting you create your own Clubs, and easily tap other profile’s Clubs to join them. It’s a great customization loop!
Fig. Example of the tags system. Again, this is a pretty niche, heavily internet cultured community. Not shown here, is that all tags you have in common, are listed separately.
Same goes for the Bios, which look like they can be as long as you desire, and add character to a person’s profile. I haven’t seen many “Date Me Docs”, but I imagine this is as close as you’ll get to one, while keeping the modern dating app interface.
Fig. A lovely little bio I came across. I thought this was so pretty, I copied the whole thing, and added it to my Obsidian vault for use in future writing.
Based on estimated GPT5 gave me, I was expecting running a dating app to be hugely cost intensive, however, Duolicious makes this claim:
o:
I feel surprise. I guess I believed something wrong. Going to the donate page, it’s costing them $360 a month for servers.
That’s an insanely low cost! How are they doing this? I wonder how hard it would be to shift the culture of the app, to something friendlier to a wider audience. Because at this cost, and for what it is, Duolicious is doing an above average job!
I don’t broadly approve of trying to diagnose people over the Internet, nor am I qualified to, but it’s striking how much the “i love mind games” bio suggests borderline personality disorder. It has chronic feelings of emptiness (“i have no passions or goals in life.”), instability in interpersonal relationships (“i love mind games, i love drama, i love fake people.”, “i would not hesitate to betray any of my loved ones at any moment.”), negative self-image (“[...] really no reason for anyone to be around me.”), and so on.
If you are dating and this bio doesn’t make your HUD light up bright red, you are in danger. Read up on personality disorders so you can make more informed decisions about people you are getting involved with.
The bio is an edited meme, not an original; it mostly communicates that they’re a heavy user of the internet. Example from a year ago
That true fact in no way contradicts dbohdan’s point. (“The import of an act lies not in what that act resembles on the surface, Mr. Potter, but in the states of mind which make that act more or less probable.”)
No, actually; the mindset implied by repeating that text as a meme is quite different than the mindset implied by unironically generating it.
Indeed they are different mindsets. They are, however, both mindsets of concern.
This, um, dramatically changes the picture. It could be nothing.
As a heavy user of the Internet, I didn’t recognize this copypasta. My mistake was only googling a large chunk in double quotes.
Edit: “Dramatically” is intended as a pun on “drama”, hence the italics. I think the new information changes the picture significantly, and yet the bio remains a red flag.
I saw that others have commented about how the bio is an edited meme rather than real, but just on the perception of various personality disorders, I feel like the statements you highlighted would show too much self-endorsement of that interpersonally bleak and exploitative outlook to be typical of (just) BPD. If we had to pick something that the dating profile statement seem typical of, it sounds more like ASPD (maybe together with BPD) to me. If someone only has BPD, it would probably be more typical for them to feel super attached and positive towards their loved ones for at least large parts of the time. And while they might split and end up betraying their loved ones, the person with BPD doesn’t typically have the insight to understand that this is a likely thing that they might do, so liking drama and being ready to betray others wouldn’t be a part of how they see themselves.
Disliking/unendorsing the negative features of one’s personality instead of endorsing them is an important ingredient for success chances with therapy, which is why BPD by itself is easier to treat than NPD or ASPD, or combinations where either of those come comorbid with BPD.
Two weeks after launching the website, someone will get date-raped by someone they met through your app, and they will sue you. The story will be in all clickbait media, which will report it as totally your fault. On your Wikipedia page, 90% will be the “Controversies” section, listing everything bad that has ever happened to any of your users.
Unless you spend tons of money on PR and lawyers, of course.