Gemma Spake

I can't say I've ever made a friend from Tinder, much less somebody I've wanted to know for longer than an afternoon.

But the self-validation point, I think, didn't surprise me at all.

If the app becomes a place...

You know you can go to get validation when you're feeling bad about yourself or in need of reassurance.

Where it's a place you can go when you know you're going to get a swipe, you know you're going to get a match, you know it's going to make you feel better.

That validation is one of the most, oh my god, intoxicating things ever.

It can train you through pure biology to start compulsively checking.

Let's be honest, dating apps weren't set up out of the good of someone's heart, right?

They are businesses.

They are businesses at the end of the day.

And that doesn't automatically make them evil.

Of course not.

You know, businesses can create things that are genuinely helpful.

But when you understand the incentives underneath the design, the choice overload, the emotional levers being pulled, the intermittent reinforcement, I think it helps us to maybe...

distance ourselves a little bit and go a little bit slower, maybe match with fewer people, maybe concentrate our time on being intentional about our method rather than just endlessly swiping.

Understanding how the apps make money is just essential.

This is the part that I haven't even spoken on yet, but most major dating apps run on what they call a freemium model.

So a freemium model is basically where

Most people are going to use the basic free version, but then there are some people who are going to pay to upgrade and they're the ones holding the whole system together.

Paying to upgrade means that the app isn't working well enough for you on the basic level.