LogFAQs > #924549131

foolm0r0n posted...

Hannyabal posted...

If youre looking to meet another introvert (or even someone who wants to date an introvert), a dating app would contain more introverts than any form of in-person dating, almost by definition.

First of all, I definitely don't want to date an introvert, I have enough of that myself already.

But the apps are absolutely not full of introverted people at all. The apps are about volume and persistence. They are about digging through hundreds of profiles and playing the intro game with each one. It's a ton of effort and it requires a lot of social energy (extroversion). It's the worst part of meeting new people, repeated over and over in quick succession.

The match and okcupid type of sites solve that by matching you up automatically. That skips the worst part of the process for introverts, so I imagine those sites have a lot of introverts (which is also why I have 0 interest in them).

The analogy is like shopping online. If you're looking for an HDMI cable IRL, you just get the one the store has. But if you're looking online, there's dozens, hundreds you have to sift through and compare for you to find the best one. It gets way more intense than it needs to be, but it is addictive for us to minmax so we keep doing it. That's what the dating apps do.

The apps like to pretend they are like they are bars/clubs except online, but they're really not. They are the manic information-dense 50-tabs-at-once optimization that makes the internet so draining, except with real people that you have to actually meet IRL at the end of the day.

Bars/clubs are really a lot more like the matching sites, where they give you a place to go and skip a lot of the introduction stuff simply by existing as yourself in that space. Alcohol doesn't hurt either. It's really the best place for introversion in my experience, but I understand if people are intimidated by the concept.

I certainly dont disagree with your online shopping argument and I definitely waver between deleting the apps and coming back to them (aka theyve got me addicted to some degree).

On the other hand, I think I just frame dating apps differently. Lets run with this online shopping analogy. In your analogy, you would find online shopping for an HDMI cable frustrating because theres a full page of information on every cable and you dont want to have to deal with reading through all the info.

If I were shopping for an HDMI cable, I would go in knowing that I want, say, a 3 foot cable HDMI cable. So I can look on Amazon where theres hundreds and hundreds of HDMI cables and just automatically throw out all the 1 foot, 6 foot, 10 foot cables because theyre not the type I want. I dont have to look further than the picture and the title to know that its not what Im looking for.

I genuinely disagree with you in your assessment that this process is super draining. Swiping right or left isnt intended to be a comprehensive evaluation of this person. Just swipe on your gut reaction.

Once I actually match with someone, then Ill take a look at their bio. At that point Ill actually make a judgement of whether I want to message them or not. Im not really interested in having the same oh where do you work? Whered you go to school, etc conversation a million times, so i try and pick out something about them that I actually am interested in learning more about. at this point, that conversation should feel natural and you should just bail if it doesnt

Besides, if you want to meet and date extroverted people, youre going to have to put in some level of extroversion, whether thats sitting at a bar or on an app. Its unreasonable to expect not to have to. Otherwise youre just living passively, waiting on someone to engage with you.