Dating apps might be one of those things people would rather not know too much about, you know? I mean…sometimes, ignorance really is bliss.
These 16 employees or former employees are spilling the beans, though, so if you think swiping will lose it’s allure if you hear too much cringe-y stuff, you might want to take the chicken exit now!
16. Frequent fudges.
I worked for Match for a couple years. This is probably widely known but women frequently lie about their age and weight and men lie about their height and salary.
Also, it’s a big problem that women are inundated with DMs while most men get none.
15. Right in the feels. Oof.
A couple met on the dating app I worked on.
Unfortunately, the man passed away and the lady returned to the app where they met for remembrance.One day, a bug in the system made some profile likes to be sent again after months and she received one from her deceased boyfriend.
Her bug report was heartbreaking.
14. So many creeps.
This is probably going to get buried, I used to work for Shag.co.uk as a content creator.
And by that I mean it was me who replied to messages from users, I used to get paid between 11p and 18p per message, with bonuses for hitting certain message amounts.
It was mostly horny guys who just wanted to chat and get off, but I met some interesting people:
1 – a ~60s guy whose wife had died a few weeks prior, hadn’t had sex in years, needed a release. Spoke at length of how he had picked me because I looked like his dead wife in her prime.
2 – a guy who was in his 80s who was an ex porn star, sent multiple links to his videos and such, we spoke at length regarding his trips to Africa and all the charity work he’d done.
3 – A lot of obvious paeadophiles, rapists etc. It was pretty scary what people would admit to with enough pushing.
4 – A lot of guys who would agree to whatever weird fetish I dreamed up on that day, horny people be horny.
It all came to an end for me when a guy told me his dad had died that morning, and he wouldn’t be around for a while. I got reviewed for my reply which was “I’m really sorry for your loss, if you need to talk I’ll be here for you” they suggested that I should have replied “Do you not care about me? I have needs too” just realised that the site owners really just didn’t give a shit at all.
13. Man, that is rough.
A dude with over 2000 right swipes and no matches .
honestly, its probably something in his bio thats off putting. Even if you’re not conventionally attractive, theres usually always someone that finds you attractive.
12. Seems to be a trend.
I used to work at Bumble, although this was about 4-5 years ago. Globally, about 90% of the users are men, so there is a huge male to female disparity, although it’s not that bad on a per country basis (for some countries).
The most depressing stat though was the histogram of word count in messages. Something like 91% of opening messages were just one word “hey”, and ~85% of conversations were just one exchange long (“hey” -> no reply ever).
Looking at human, digital mating habits splayed out in data science form was really depressing.
11. Not a winner.
My friend shares some shockers. She removed the photo so it’s just the text.
One yesterday said something like “just want covid to be over so I can get off this app and back to normal, sick of all you stuck up time wasting women. Don’t bother if you’re not going to meet up, no one wants a pen pal”.
Except imagine that with most of the words spelled wrong.
10. A little disconcerting.
We used to create fake accounts and chat with users. It was everything from someone having a premium account that wasn’t getting responses to bored employees.
9. Do you seriously not know?
Lots of gay guys get banned from grindr selling weed. Would get a lot of emails of “why am I banned”. Go to their profile and will say “HMU for that 🌳
8. A bit unethical.
My ex bf worked for the Yahoo Italy dating site back in the earlyish 2000s. His job was to pretend to be a woman, and message male customers just as their accounts were going to expire.
This would encourage them to pay to renew their subscriptions. Once they renewed, he would ghost them.
He only lasted for a few months due to how unethical it was.
7. Why am I not surprised?
Most dating sites and apps are owned by one company The Match Group. They have a near monopoly.
I think bumble is one of the few not owned by them.
6. That’s an understatement.
I have a friend who works for… I wanna say Tinder. Anyway, the company isn’t important; what is important is that her ENTIRE job is to remove inappropriate images.
Her JOB is to look at d*%k pics all day. Five days a week. That’s all. No stat. Just a weird f**king job.
5. A numbers game.
This was years ago now, but I used to work with a guy who had been an engineer for Match.com.
He said 99% of the profiles were inactive, and that 80% of the active profiles were men.
He didn’t provide numbers but also said the was a huge disparity between the average number of messages sent to women versus those sent to men. According to him, all told the site was mostly men reaching out to dead profiles and never getting responses.
As I said however, this was years ago, so it’s entirely possible that they’ve cleaned the site up since then.
4. No chance.
Not been working but a friend wrote her master thesis about the different criteria in online dating and real life. Almost half (43%) the female participants who were in a relationship told they’d never have swiped right on their current partner.
Other interesting results were that over 60% of men they wrote with on apps and agreed to go on a date, would have no chance, if they asked in real life.
3. Horrifying.
I used to moderate OK Cupid. The amount of unsolicited d*%k pictures men would send women, not even accompanied by any words was horrifying. I mean, you’d expect it because online dating is a cesspit but the sheer amount would still surprise you.
I had to look at each reported picture and say ” Yes, that’s a p*nis”
2. Openly cynical.
I would love to know how openly cynical the algorithm really is. My feed on Hinge shows absolutely no one I am interested in. And suddenly, the ‘roses’ feature pops up. I am interested in all the people in the Roses section. But – oh – it’s £4 to buy ONE rose. Which is no guarantee of a match, much less a date.
They want to keep you using the app and spending money for as long as possible and their slogan ‘designed to be deleted’ is such bs it’s comical. And you can’t turn to other apps because they’re all owned by the same corporation.
1. Seriously stop it.
I exchanged numbers with this bloke i met on holiday. Nothing had happened with him and we lived on different continents. Anyway on Christmas day he sent me a message saying Merry Christmas, this is what America looks like at Christmas and some pictures:
him playing with the family dog in front of the Christmas tree
lights outside his parents house
his erect penis, poorly lit
him sledging with his toddler age niece and nephew
snowman
I assumed he sent it accidentally because it was pretty off brand for the rest of the set. So I asked him about it and he was like, oh I was just horny. And it’s like, please don’t be contextualising your low production values pornography with wholesome Christmas cheer
I mean we knew it would be yikes, but yikes.
Do you have a story to add? We’d love to hear it in the comments!
