{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"We Think We Know","title":"Dating Apps: Are They Keeping Us Single?","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":3568,"description":"Maple founder Connor reveals how dating app algorithms secretly rank and league your profile, why Hinge, Tinder, and Bumble are built on the same psychology as slot machines, and why the system is structurally designed to keep you swiping instead of getting you matched quietly keeping millions of people single. Connor is the founder of Maple, a dating and social platform, and has spent years researching and building inside the dating app industry.\n\nIn this episode, he explains:\n■ Why Apps Reward Activity, Not Relationships: Dating apps make money from the interactions on the platform, not from successful matches. He explains how that incentive shapes the products and why the people most capable of finding a partner tend to leave first.\n■ The Slot Machine Effect: How variable rewards keep us swiping, why unpredictable results are more addictive than consistently good ones, and why he sees these products as validation apps as much as dating apps.\n■ Too Much Choice: Why endless options make it harder to commit, why profiles feel like products, and how limited information means everyone ends up chasing the same people.\n■ The Rise of Offline Connection: Why people are returning to in-person events after COVID, how a social club works as a “fourth space,” and the simple ripple effect that gets a room of strangers talking.\n■ AI and the Future of Dating: Whether AI should write your messages or coach you to show up in real life, and the one myth about dating apps he’d like to kill for good.\n03:19 Intro: Is Online Dating Broken?\n 04:47 How Dating Has Changed Over the Years\n 06:00 Are Dating Apps a Crutch?\n 09:02 What Dating Is Like in 2026\n 10:01 Why a Few Profiles Get All the Attention\n 12:19 How Hinge Ranks Profiles\n 14:33 What Do Dating Apps Actually Want?\n 18:20 Standouts, Roses and Thousands of Unanswered Likes\n 22:20 Choice Overload: The More You See, the Less You Match\n 27:06 Ghosting and How Apps Change Our Behaviour\n 30:00 Are Dating Apps Slot Machines?\n 35:06...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/fqgwq7RLVs9N5Y-RdApZsEWFGm9kndYxvGWCLGKGuqA/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS82MmRl/ZjQ3MzAxZDcyMDc0/MWY3ZjFkN2I0ZWEy/NDY1My5wbmc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}