> Controversial take, but have we considered that possibly dating apps don't suck, and that this perception is driven by a vocal minority of the people who have the worst experience on them?

Yes. The reality is well known. PlentyOfFish used to publish statistics. About 10% of dating app users are "date bacon" and find matches they like. Everyone else is a dissatisfied loser. The losers provide the repeat business and the profits, just like the gambling industry.

What women want is > 6' tall, over $100K a year, reasonably good looking, and reasonably young compared to the woman. This is about 1% of the US male population.

But a much higher fraction of dating service profiles. Two good-looking women I know have shown me their side of a dating app. Each had over 1000 matches, but the ones they met did not live up to their resume. (Fun fact: the organization of ex Navy SEALS says that there are at least 10x as many people claiming to be ex-SEALS as actually exist. There aren't that many of those guys. Only a few thousand. But on dating apps...)

The fact is that younger generations are increasingly more single and finding it harder and harder to date. If dating apps are primarily to blame could be up for debate but something about the modern world is clearly not working.

Dating apps 100% suck. I'm a good looking guy and I put the effort into getting great pictures and optimizing my profile to the point I was able to get dates 5+ nights a week and date 2-3 new women a week, and while it was validating, the quality of dates was significantly worse than what I used to get from just approaching women in places like bookstores, after yoga classes, etc when that wasn't as culturally abnormal.

Ironically I met my wife while I was on a date with another woman. We had a much better organic connection, and she was way hotter than almost all the girls on the apps.