Tinderbox

We’ve normalized dissatisfaction. Not by accident—by design. The architecture of digital dating apps isn’t built to resolve loneliness; it’s built to circulate it. What’s being optimized isn’t human connection but engagement metrics. Every swipe, match, ghost, or dopamine ping feeds a system that grows stronger the more its users stay unfulfilled.

At scale, systems don’t deliver outcomes. They reproduce the processes that sustain them. In dating apps, that process is affective volatility: a constant churn of hope, confusion, rejection, and retry. The illusion is intimacy; the reality is throughput. These apps don’t profit from happy couples—they profit from the search.

And so we adapt, not by thriving, but by acclimating to a feedback loop that rewards dissatisfaction. The algorithm doesn’t want you to find someone. It wants you to keep looking. That’s the game. What’s being exploited isn’t just loneliness—it’s the human need to resolve it.