My main issue with online dating and especially apps that match you like tinder is that you're sort of always "in the game" a little bit. Every time you swipe you get a sort of mini-rejection if you don't match. And since you can match at any time, you're receiving these mini-rejections implicitly all the time. Obviously basically none of them are actual rejections, but the low-level lack of success builds up over time and just becomes depressing. To add to it, you can't actually see what's happening in the system at all. You might never even have been seen by the people you're interested in.
Contrasting this to events occurring in person, you're only ever in the game when you're at a bar actively looking or at some social event. Even better you might mainly be there to see friends and the potential love interests is just an extra. And when you're done at the place you're done. You're not trying to attract some abstract far off person while sitting on the subway. On the subway you're off and thinking about other stuff.
I think the issue is similar to the problem of not being able disconnect. It just feels mentally unhealthy to me.
Interestingly I think I had the opposite experience, in that I found only a small minority of people worth swiping right for and even then still managed a good match ratio.
I'd always rated myself quite low before trying Tinder, but it gave me a much better perspective on my datability. I haven't used it in a while now, thanks to lockdown ending meetups, but I've since partnered with someone who I previously would have considered out of my league.
Same anecdotal experience here.
Average looking man, took the time to fill a profile, maybe one right swipe a day, 50% match, two real-life meeting and one turned into a relationship.
It's not always the warzone some people make it look to be, at least in my country (Europe) and for my age (early 30s).
Though I met my wife offline, I did some online dating before that. I also have some close female friends who were doing it and I think the initial contacts are skewed heavily in favor of women getting initial responses (prompted or unprompted) but from their stories, I’m hard pressed to conclude that the process is overall much more favorable.
I think everyone has something valid to complain about in dating: offline, online, and hybrid.
I also think many people don’t realize, particularly with Tinder, one’s sexual preference (as in an app setting/config) is only used for matching, not preventing your profile from appearing for members whose sexual orientation are not in alignment, it will just never match.
So, one could be matching or rejecting more than realized.
I forget which, but one of the big dating sites has a toggle to be invisible to straight people. I think it's mostly so people in the closet can still use it without being outed to locals, but it could be expanded.
Your experiences seem to be based on subjective choices. I don’t see how opening an app is less of a temporary experience than being at a bar. If you choose to be always in the app, that’s your choice.
The apps and their incentive systems are designed specifically to make us "choose" to do this as often as possible. But yes of course I'm not a helpless robot and it is something I can avoid. I chose to just stop using the applications because they decreased my quality of life. Besides I never had much trouble meeting people socially and for dating in person so the app approach was basically only negative for me so I think my choice was the right one. This does not apply to everyone (presumably including you), but I know many people who are better served by it.
edit: Actually I'd like to respond to this more closely:
> I don’t see how opening an app is less of a temporary experience than being at a bar.
An app is always available. You have the potential to be in "dating mode" at any moment at all. You can be on the toilet. You can be your kitchen. You can be at work. You can be with friend. If you don't allow yourself that capability, when you are alone, you are alone. When you aren't in the bar or in other social situations, you're not in those situations. This doesn't detract from your previous comment about this being a "choice" (of course that's true), but I don't see how anyone could argue that the effective boundaries in their life of digital app like interaction and in-person social interaction ever could be the same.
Contrasting this to events occurring in person, you're only ever in the game when you're at a bar actively looking or at some social event. Even better you might mainly be there to see friends and the potential love interests is just an extra. And when you're done at the place you're done. You're not trying to attract some abstract far off person while sitting on the subway. On the subway you're off and thinking about other stuff.
I think the issue is similar to the problem of not being able disconnect. It just feels mentally unhealthy to me.