Dating Apps, How Do They Work?

This was a common question on book tour, so I asked around

Hey there folks, I’m more or less done with book tour for the time being. It was amazing beyond words to be out in the world, in rooms full of people who feel that sex is important enough to talk about that they’re willing to leave their homes in the evening and go out in public. I’m grateful beyond grateful to everyone who came to an event and to everyone who has bought the new book. Truly, I hope it makes your sex life better (and also the rest of your life, but that’s a secret, hidden hope).

Q&A was a big part of the events, and this week I’d like to answer a question that I couldn’t answer in the moment because I just didn’t know anything worthwhile to say.

It was from someone around 30 years old who was dating online for the first time in a long time, asking for advice. I didn’t feel like I could answer it. I got married before dating apps were much of a thing. I met my marital euphemism on OKCupid when it was a website. I chose it because it had both the best algorithm and also the best statistical analysis of successful strategies and tactics for how to use the site. I followed their advice and met the person I married in three months. I have no idea whether any of that advice applies now, 13 years later, but here it is, for what it’s worth.

Use the online space as a metaphor for meeting IRL. Look, we still live in a misogynist cisheteropatriarchy and the earliest stages of dating are rife with deeply embedded, unexamined expectations about how people will behave. So OKCupid’s research found that as a cisgender woman I shouldn’t send the first message. I should make myself invisible, then look at people’s profiles. When I found someone I was curious about, I would make myself visible and go look at their profile again. They would notice that I looked and, if they’re interested, write to me. If you’re a cisgender man, alas alas, and I am sorry about this, your job is to contact only the people that you see looked at your profile. You can also use the trick of looking while invisible and then going visible so that the interesting people can see that you looked; then they can go to your profile and decide whether they want you to know that they looked back at you. If they do, you send the first message. Is this patriarchy? It absolutely is. And it’s the real world. We’re working with highly intuitive—read: reactive and irrational—responses, based on decades of living with a very specific script about how our potential partners should behave.

Anyway, it’s what OKCupid’s own research said worked best, so I did this for potential people of any gender. It was a successful strategy.

And again I have no idea if the whole “invisible browsing” is even an option in these apps.

But I followed up. I asked around and got TOTALLY FASCINATING tips from people who are dating now and from people who are watching friends and family date online. I learned three main things:

1. It actually is a numbers game. This is why I found dating so exhausting myself—you really do just have to go out at least once with a bunch of people to find out whether or not you have even baseline attraction and shared interests and values. You can’t know, until you meet them in person. This was one of the big takeaways from my own deep dive back in 2011. If you’re looking for a LTR, meet a lot of people a small number of times.

2. Try not dating in the app! Several Gen Z AFAB folks in particular use the app to get themselves out there, but they write, “Don’t contact me on the app, email me at this dating specific email address.” This raises a barrier to contact, which can help winnow the wheat from the chaff, reducing the number of people who contact you to those who are willing to switch apps and write a whole email. Some people even ask specifically to be sent a “dating resume,” which was a new concept to me, or a “proposed date,” like a description of what you would be interested in doing together. Someone even suggested a Google Form, to have people write more explicitly about who they are and what they’re looking for.

3. Say specifically what you’re looking for. This isn’t just to make sure people know what you want and whether they might be a match, but because it can increase the chance of them sharing your profile with someone they know who IS a match! Like, “Holy crap, this person is looking for a queer-friendly pervert with whom to get extremely nerdy about tea?? I’ve got to tell my tea-obsessed friend!”

There was an interesting conversation, too, about how dating is different, post COVID lockdown. It seems like a lot of people have a lot of stuff they’re working through, after the trauma of isolation so many people experienced—and that includes the people I talked to, not just the people they were meeting—and so they had changed their M.O. More dating before sexing, again building more of a barrier between app contact and body contact. Something to keep in mind. So many of us who never experienced trauma before are healing from it for the first time, and they may not have developed great skills for processing that in the context of a  new relationship.

One other thing: Two unconnected people recommended Debby Herbenick’s new book, Yes, Your Kid (Book Moon, Amazon) as a resource for understanding young people’s relationship with apps in the context of relationships and sexuality. I haven’t had a chance to read it yet myself, but if you do, let me know what you think!

So that’s what I’ve learned about dating in apps. I hope this helps! Feel free to share with the person in your life who is dating online and kind of hates it?

And if you’ve worked out a way of using dating apps that makes it not a nightmare hellscape, let me know! I’d be glad to collect people’s wisdom and share it with the newsletter.

Thanks again for all your support!

Emily

---

Questions or comments? Please email my very tiny team at unrulywellness@gmail.com

Feel free to say hello on 📷 Instagram and 🤖 Facebook – I don't always reply but I read everything.

Signed copies of Come As You Are and Come Together can be obtained from my amazing local bookseller, Book Moon Books.

Stay safe and see you next time.