I fully understand that some people have great success with dating apps and meeting really solid people, even if the relationships don't fully workout, but I think the general consensus is that a lot of people have more bad things to say about the kind of people they encounter on dating apps than they do positive things. At best, most can admit they went on a date where there just wasn't any chemistry or they got ghosted/left on read without any signs which is always disappointing, but it always seems like the worst of it is when a lot of people run into some real unsavory characters out there who are totally fine and personable one second and you're thinking, "Oh wow, finally, someone who seems like a decent human," but then something happens — maybe they start showing signs of being flaky, or someone else flakes on them, or you ask them a question that you didn't realize would elicit such a strong reaction, and it causes a flip to switch and all of sudden you're on the receiving end of name calling or aggressiveness, and you're like, "Whoa, okay, this is not the kind of person I thought I was talking to…" And from there, your perception of who is out there in the dating world begins to get bleak. You get more guarded. You get more wary. Eventually, you just give up.
Is it just that people who exist within these spaces are not healthy people to date? Is it maybe more so true that the reason why these people find themselves on apps is because they've been rejected elsewhere in life, and the shield of an app allows them to hide their worst characteristics? Is it their projection of bad past experiences onto you, a stranger who hasn't done anything wrong, but along the way, unknowingly triggered an insecurity in them that causes them to react defensively?
I watched a TikTok recently where this woman said she was swearing off dating apps because every experience she had off of them was "diabolical," whereas every dating experience she had in meeting someone in real life was normal and healthy. She referenced some advice for a friend saying that the people who you meet on apps are people you were never meant to come across in the first place, and that kind of made sense to me. It's like we're voluntarily signing up to encounter the wrong people, and then wondering why it's leaving us feel so exhausted and burnt out.
What do you all think?