We wrap up our report on whether online dating works or not. It’s pretty clear that online dating really doesn’t work.
Welcome to part 6 of our 6 month investigation into determining whether online dating works or not.
In part 1, I discussed how I approached this research as well as the profile I used among other things. In part 2, I discussed my experience with the dating apps/sites of Bumble, OKCupid, and Facebook dating. In part 3, I discussed my experience with eHarmony, Tinder, and Hinge. In part 4, I spoke about what it was like to use Plenty of Fish and Match.com as well as spoke about the mental damage that these sites inflicted on me along the way. In part 5, I discussed how we had a third party try online dating themselves only to arrive at the same conclusions I did as well as showcasing some of the research that we came across for this project.
Today, we offer our conclusion to this massive project while wrapping up our report. So, let’s go over what I found throughout this project.
My Findings
When I started this project, I had doubts that these sites wouldn’t work. I was very up front about this personal belief. My experience ended up being much worse than that.
I was very cognizant of confirmation bias and did everything I could to ensure that these services had the best possible chance to succeed. I followed the advice of others, filled out my profile the best I could, treated others with respect, sent out messages that were thoughtful, and more. Despite my best efforts, the services themselves still failed in some pretty spectacular ways.
I tried a huge swath of online dating services. The services I tested were Bumble, OKCupid, Facebook dating, eHarmony, Tinder, Hinge, Plenty of Fish, and Match.com. This to get a broad cross section of different services to basically help give online dating the best chance to succeed. None could help my genuine efforts to find someone.
In fact, things were much worse using these sites than I could have possibly imagined. eHarmoney, in my opinion, ripped me off of about $300. OKCupid was not functional at all and couldn’t even let me get in in the first place. Match.com banned me for literally no reason. Tinder randomly deleted my profile without explanation. Facebook dating suddenly stopped working altogether. The rest ended up being such a horrible experience, it sent me into therapy afterwards.
I was out money, my emotional state ended up being a wreck, and I got nothing out of the experience outside of wishing I had never undergone this experiment in the first place.
Someone else I knew acted as a sort of “control” where he didn’t gain anything for not succeeding and ended up coming to the exact same conclusions as I did.
While I can’t speak for other people and other regions, I can definitely speak for myself. Online dating doesn’t work. It exploits desperate users to fleece them out of their hard earned money only to spit them out the other side, leaving them an emotional husk afterwards. I can safely say that using these services is generally an unhealthy experience.
While some of the fault for why these services suck don’t necessarily fall onto the sites themselves (this includes excessive high expectations on some users parts), their exploitative nature means they shoulder a lot of the blame. They advertise themselves as being a fool proof method of finding someone and help drive the narrative that if you can’t find someone using their services, it’s obviously all your fault when the reality is that it’s probably the dating site that failed the user instead.
If you want further proof that these sites are more about extracting money from the user instead of connecting people, look no further than the prices:
Bumble – $59.99 per month
eHarmony – $54.77 per month
Hinge – $49.99 per month
Match.com – $40.00 per month
Plenty Of Fish – $29.99 per month
Trust me, none of those sites are worth the costs they are charging. None.
I hope that my experience helps to push back on the negative stereotypes of users who also couldn’t get these sites to work for them and that my pain and misery from using them benefits someone out there. After all, it’s been my experience that these sites get recommended to people a lot by those who don’t even use them.
While some try and argue that they are there for deeper connections or more quickly finding someone out there, all of the ones I tried, in my experience, are trash. By the time I got to the end of this experiment, I was just counting down the days to when I never have to see any one of these things ever again. Now that this experiment is over, I’m happily going to move on to something else while tossing these apps in the trash where they belong.
I don’t recommend using any of these. They are all the same. Garbage apps, exploitative ads, and services that will leave you with nothing but disappointment. I never want to use these pieces of crap ever again. It was the worst experience I’ve ever had in conducting an investigative journalism piece and I can say that I am thrilled that this project is finally behind me. If you value your sanity, don’t bother with online dating. There’s nothing pleasant about the experience and the more you push, the harder these services are on you. They absolutely do not work as far as I’m concerned. Just spare yourself the pain and don’t use them.
