In September 2023, Adam Raines made a Reddit post revealing what feels like a near-universal problem for singles: His dating app conversations are painfully boring.
Attached to the post, titled “Sometimes, texting on dating apps feelings (sic) like hitting your head against a brick wall,” is a screenshot of a bone-dry Tinder conversation between him and one of his matches, in which Raines’ curiosity is met with short, dead-ended answers.
As apps like Tinder, Hinge, Bumble, and Grindr realize that a user base of socially inept daters is making them look bad, a larger push to catch younger daters up on basic conversational skills (or eliminate the need for them) might be inevitable. But whether the tools on offer are actually useful remains to be seen.
