We're all here because the apps aren't working.
For nearly a decade, the swipe promised to solve one of humanity's oldest puzzles — how to find another person worth knowing. Now, in Dallas and across the country, that promise is unraveling. Match Group and Bumble, the twin pillars of a multi-billion-dollar industry, are hemorrhaging users and market value as a generation raised on algorithms quietly rediscovers the irreplaceable texture of showing up in person. The crisis is not merely financial; it is a reckoning with what connection actually requires.
- Match Group has lost two-thirds of its market value since 2020, Bumble has cut nearly a third of its workforce, and both companies have burned through multiple CEOs in a frantic search for footing.
- Users — especially Gen Z — are walking away in exhaustion, citing fake profiles, algorithmic paywalls, relentless ghosting, and a gamified culture that turned romance into a chore nobody wanted to finish.
- A Dallas woman deleted every app, organized a spontaneous in-person meetup on a running trail, and watched nearly eight hundred people show up on a sweltering June evening — all of them quietly admitting the same thing had stopped working.
- Both companies are racing to reinvent themselves through AI matchmaking and broader 'human connection' platforms, but critics warn that layering artificial intelligence onto systems already corroded by inauthenticity may only deepen the distrust.
- Speed dating, running clubs, and personalized matchmakers are surging in popularity, suggesting that the oldest solution — physical presence, real conversation, genuine chance — is outcompeting the technology built to replace it.
Abbey Hagan spent years cycling through dating apps across two cities, accumulating dozens of first dates and very little else. By early 2025, the fatigue had become something heavier than disappointment — it was the feeling of time dissolving into nothing. She deleted everything and started over.
One morning on Dallas's Katy Trail, she had a simpler idea: what if people just met in person, openly, with no algorithm between them? She and her friends called it the Date-y Trail, ordered wristbands for anyone open to conversation, and posted about it online. She expected a hundred people. Nearly eight hundred came. The bar ran out of wristbands. The line wrapped around the corner. What struck Hagan most was the unspoken consensus in that crowd — everyone there had given up on the apps.
That parking lot scene mirrors a collapse unfolding at the industry's highest levels. Match Group, parent of Tinder and Hinge, has shed roughly two-thirds of its market value since 2020. Bumble cut thirty percent of its staff this year. Both companies have cycled through CEOs, searching for a strategy that stops the decline. The generational math is stark: only twenty-two percent of Gen Z now use apps as their primary way to date, and a 2024 survey found seventy-eight percent of recent users reported burnout. Fake profiles, hidden paywalls, and the hollow ritual of the swipe have transformed what once felt exciting into something closer to a second job nobody applied for.
Both companies are betting on artificial intelligence as their salvation. Bumble is building an entirely new app designed to learn users' emotional psychologies and match them accordingly. Tinder is testing AI features that let users practice flirting with a simulated date. Executives speak of early promise. Skeptics point out that platforms already struggling with deception and inauthenticity may only become more disorienting when users can no longer tell whether they're speaking to a person at all.
Beyond AI, both companies are trying to shed the 'dating app' label entirely — expanding into friendship, community, and group connection features. But they face competition from newer platforms and from something far older. Speed dating has returned. Running clubs have become a social institution. Personalized matchmakers are thriving. And in Dallas, Hagan organized a second Date-y Trail event in July, this time with a thousand wristbands — and still ran out. One attendee brought a binder of dating resumes. Another taped a list of his interests to his chest. A man with a ginger beard approached a stranger with an icebreaker about the Titanic. She gave him her Instagram. The apps had promised to solve the problem of meeting people. What a generation discovered, after years of swiping, was that the oldest method — arriving somewhere, taking a breath, and actually talking — had never stopped working.
Abbey Hagan spent years swiping through dating apps, first in San Francisco as a fresh college graduate, then in Dallas after a job move in 2022. She went on dozens of first dates. Some were good. Most were not. By early this year, the fatigue had become unbearable—not the rejection or the awkwardness, but the sheer sense that she was pouring hours into something that led nowhere. So she deleted them all.
One June morning, walking the Katy Trail, a popular spot where young Dallasites congregate, Hagan had a thought: What if people could meet the way they actually wanted to—in person, in real time, without the endless swiping? She pitched the idea to friends. They named it the Date-y Trail. Someone suggested wristbands so strangers would know who was open to talking. Hagan booked a bar, posted videos on TikTok and Instagram, and expected maybe a hundred people.
On a sweltering June evening, nearly eight hundred showed up. The line wrapped around the corner. The bar ran out of wristbands. "It was absolute madness," Hagan said later. What struck her most was the unspoken agreement hanging over the crowd: everyone there had abandoned the apps. Nearly eight hundred people, in one place, acknowledging the same truth—that dating apps had stopped working.
This moment, playing out in a Dallas parking lot, reflects a crisis unfolding across the entire industry. Match Group, the Dallas-based parent company of Tinder, Hinge, and dozens of other brands, has watched its market value collapse by roughly two-thirds since it spun off as an independent company five years ago. Bumble, the Austin-based competitor founded by Whitney Wolfe Herd, cut thirty percent of its workforce this year. Both companies have cycled through multiple CEOs in recent years, desperately searching for a way to stop the bleeding. The business of swiping—once a juggernaut that seemed to have fundamentally rewired how humans find romance—is in existential crisis.
The decline is rooted in a generational divide. Gen Z, whose oldest members are now twenty-eight, simply does not use dating apps the way millennials did a decade ago. Research shows that only twenty-two percent of Gen Z and millennials now use apps as their primary dating method, a stunning reversal from the era when online dating overtook friends, work, and school as the most common way to meet. A 2024 survey found that seventy-eight percent of recent app users reported feeling burned out. The apps have become, in the words of one social psychologist, "a bit of a hellscape." Fake profiles crowd out real users. Algorithms hide the best matches behind paywalls. Promising conversations end in ghosting. The gamified swipe that once felt thrilling now feels like a chore.
Both Match Group and Bumble are betting that artificial intelligence will save them. Bumble is planning to release a beta version of an entirely new app this fall that will use generative AI to learn users' psychologies and find matches—what Wolfe Herd calls "the world's smartest and most emotionally intelligent matchmaker in existence." Tinder is testing AI features that curate matches and even let users practice flirting with an artificial intelligence date. Match Group's CEO recently told investors that "early signs are promising." But experts worry that adding AI to platforms already plagued by inauthenticity and deception will only make things worse. If users are already uncertain whether they're talking to real people or catfished versions of real people, throwing AI into the mix will make it nearly impossible to know who anyone actually is.
Meanwhile, the companies are also trying to become something other than dating apps. Bumble has spun off its friendship feature into a standalone app and acquired a nondating activity platform. Match Group is experimenting with platonic connections and group dating features. Wolfe Herd declared at a tech summit that "we will not be a dating app in a few years. Dating will be a component, but we will be a true human connection platform." But they face fierce competition from newer apps designed around friendship and community—Yubo claims eighty-five million users—and from the oldest technology of all: people meeting in person. Speed dating is back. Running clubs have become a cultural phenomenon. Personalized matchmaking services are flourishing. And in Dallas, on a Saturday in July, Hagan organized another Date-y Trail event, this time packing a thousand wristbands and still running out. By mid-morning, traffic had backed up around the bar. The patio was so crowded people could barely move. One attendee wore a binder full of dating resumes. Another had taped a piece of paper to his chest listing his interests. A burly man with a ginger beard approached a young woman with an elaborate icebreaker about the Titanic. She gave him her Instagram handle. Maybe, she said, they'd go on a date. The apps had promised to solve the problem of meeting people. What users discovered, after years of swiping, was that the oldest solution—showing up in person, taking a chance, having an actual conversation—still worked better.
Notable Quotes
Dating apps are feeling like a thing of the past.— Whitney Wolfe Herd, Bumble founder, to employees
I just felt, especially this past year, so fatigued by them, and kind of like they're just a waste of my time.— Abbey Hagan, on why she deleted her dating apps
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
Why did the apps work so well for so long if they're failing now?
They solved a real problem—they made it easy to find people you might not otherwise meet. But they solved it by turning dating into a game, and games get boring. After a decade of swiping, people realized they were spending hours for very little return.
Is it really just fatigue, or is something deeper broken?
Both. The apps are designed to be addictive, which means they're designed to keep you swiping, not to help you actually connect. Fake profiles, hidden matches behind paywalls, conversations that go nowhere—users figured out they were being manipulated.
So why are Match and Bumble betting everything on AI?
Because they're desperate. They've lost control of their core product—the swipe. AI is the next shiny thing, the thing that might make people believe the apps can still deliver what they promised. But it might make the inauthenticity problem worse, not better.
What does an event like the Date-y Trail actually prove?
That people will show up in person if you give them permission to. Eight hundred people in Dallas said, without words, that they'd rather take a chance on a stranger at a bar than spend another night swiping. That's not a small thing.
Could the apps survive if they just got better at what they do?
Maybe. But they'd have to stop being designed to maximize engagement and start being designed to maximize actual connections. That's not profitable in the same way. It's a fundamental conflict.
What happens to Match and Bumble in five years?
They either become something else entirely—platforms for friendship, community, whatever—or they become niche products for people who still want to swipe. The golden age of the dating app is over.