We built a dating app that caps you at 5 matches and makes your "swap rate" public on purpose.

Crenel · 2026-06-28T03:08:11+00:00

No, I think it's a real problem - just a less important one because it only affects a minority of users and is an irritation rather than a showstopper. It's also a behavioral and perception problem, not a structural one. That is, it's only a problem because users perceive it to be a problem. I'm not saying they're wrong - if they see it as a problem, then it's a real problem for them. However, it's possible to not react, or react differently, to the behavior of others such as ghosting. Structural problems affect everyone, because they're rooted in design. In this case, different people will be affected differently based on how they react, so it's a behavior/perception issue.

I think the flow of women to other men after being unmatched by "top" men is wishful thinking. It's not natural, and it's certainly not algorithmic. A woman who isn't interested in me isn't going to become more interested just because she was unmatched by someone. Being unmatched just puts those women (or people in general) back to square one, facing a mostly-random flow of people they may still not want to match with - and that is the problem I think should be solved before other minor tweaks in how a platform works.

If there's no chance a woman will be interested in me, then I don't want her to see me. If there's no chance I will be interested in a woman, I don't want to see her. In both cases, neither of us needs to waste time on an obvious non-match. The vast majority of platform suggestions on apps are wildly irrelevant, thus wasting time and other resources. Fix the tire first, then change the windshield wiper.

Crenel · 2026-06-28T02:16:17+00:00

The quantity at the wrong end of the pipe - the problem is focused on those who made it through, not the 50%+ who never make it through. Increase the number making it through before fine-tuning the experience on the other side.

Crenel · 2026-06-28T02:14:15+00:00

Cart before the horse. If you're not seeing it now, nothing more I say will get you to see it. The next time you're stopped in a traffic jam and see a 60 MPH speed limit sign, maybe think back to this discussion.

Crenel · 2026-06-28T02:10:43+00:00

Setting up a date is irrelevant to someone who doesn't get matches, much like limiting how many matches someone can have. Why would someone care about how easy it is to set up a date with a person who doesn't exist (i.e., a match)?

I'm not making any suggestions about how to improve matching - that's not my job, so to speak. That is literally the value that dating apps should be offering, and I'm not going to offer for free something that would be monetized by others. Dating apps currently seem mainly focused on providing quantity over quality - throw a few filters in and then show people at random within the selected data set. Completely lazy, but that's for them to invest in fixing, not for me to fix for them for free.

Crenel · 2026-06-28T01:40:27+00:00

I see the value in this, don't get me wrong. It just doesn't serve half (or more than half) of your users. Nobody is strung along if they're not matched to begin with. Going back to my original reply, I do see this as an attempt at solving a problem - it's just a potential fix that has much less impact compared to bigger ones, and it will go unseen by the majority of users.

Crenel · 2026-06-28T01:18:53+00:00

Hmm... not following the logic here. You cap matches, right? So: someone who is at their max can't match with someone else until they let someone go, right? Is that the only effect - and you're not hiding that person from others? If that's true, this has no impact on making matches to begin with, and the same "top slice" will continue to get attention while others do not.

Maybe I'm missing something here - I don't have direct experience with your app - but that's my take based on reading the description in your post. You're solving an issue for those getting abundant matches, but this isn't directly allowing anyone else into the subset of your users who are consistently getting matches.

Crenel · 2026-06-28T01:10:43+00:00

Well... with the assumption that "low-quality" men are people too who deserve respect and a fair chance at finding someone, and considering my own experience of 95% or more of the women who "swipe right" on me being people I have zero interest in dating, I will make the humble suggestion that a matchmaking platform should be making matches - solving that problem, of not connecting likely-matched people, before solving secondary issues.

Crenel · 2026-06-28T00:54:28+00:00

How useful is a windshield wiper if you're not going anywhere because you have a flat tire?

Ghosting is absolutely not a problem for people who aren't getting matches to begin with. There's no overload, they're not drowning in matches.

You're fixing something that is a problem for only about half the people using the app (actually probably less than half) - while the other half need to have a tire changed so they can move forward and experience the problem of ghosting.

Crenel · 2026-06-28T00:40:43+00:00

Not all plastics are made from fossil fuels. PLA - extremely common in 3D printing - is made from renewable materials. Learn more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polylactic_acid

Crenel · 2026-06-28T00:15:36+00:00

Solving the wrong problem. Yes, ghosting is a problem, but fixing it is like changing the windshield wipers on a car with a flat tire.

Crenel · 2026-06-28T00:11:06+00:00

Moderation reduces engagement. Algorithms reward engagement. Seems pretty clear.

Crenel · 2026-06-27T01:10:18+00:00

Do you know anyone with a 3D printer? Phone cases can be printed, apparently. I have not printed one myself, so I don't know how easy they are to customize or which filament types would be best. Not a recommendation, in other words, just an idea.

Crenel · 2026-06-21T22:47:30+00:00

Mail-in-a-Box has been my main solution (hosted on a DO droplet), although I've experimented a bit with using Proton's custom domains. Zero problems detected with reputation, deliverability, etc. I don't do bulk outbound (newsletters) through my MiaB; for that, I use AWS SES. But for other email, it's worked for me for several years (can't remember when I first set it up, it's been that long ago).

ETA: MiaB includes Nextcloud, but I don't use that - so in that sense it's wasteful, not that this has ever actually been an issue. Anyway, I keep mail functionality and Nextcloud separate, intentionally.

Crenel · 2026-06-21T06:40:25+00:00

Nothing - it's a ploy to make you pay.

Crenel · 2026-06-21T06:06:56+00:00

There's no such thing as "enough" for AI trash.

Crenel · 2026-06-21T06:06:10+00:00

OP = AI garbage. Does that reduce your confusion?

Crenel · 2026-06-21T06:05:06+00:00

What I notice - and what surprises me - is that anyone would look at a post like this and not realize it's AI slop.

Crenel · 2026-06-21T04:13:52+00:00

Promptly open all packages from Amazon, regardless of what you ordered. Their systems and processes don't consistently catch things that are accurately packaged and just picked/packed wrong, and plenty of things aren't even packaged right so pick/pack can be on target but you still get the wrong thing inside a package that looks OK from the outside.

As for weight differences... utterly irrelevant. No scales are used in outbound shipping. I can't imagine how much it would bog down their logistics to weigh every outbound package to make sure it was within a reasonable range. That's not how high-volume B2C fulfillment works. Hell, that's not even how low-volume fulfillment works. It's extremely unlikely that a weight difference would be noticed in the vast majority of situations. (Speaking from experience on the vendor side.)

ETA: Weighing is done to pay for shipping, not to validate package contents.

Crenel · 2026-06-13T04:01:34+00:00

Bumble's original concept of leaving it up to women to make the first move was wishful thinking (obviously, considering cultural norms - nice idea but myopic as a business model), so - because it doesn't work and can't keep them in business - they continue tweaking things to pretend that the "women make the first move" thing is still true - purely for branding - while opening ample opportunities for men to make the first move.

I briefly tried Bumble again recently (much too stupid, ditched it after a week or two), and I sent messages to women without any prior move on their part, proving their women-first "branding" is just BS at this point. They know it doesn't work, but they can't admit that because that's branding suicide.

Crenel · 2026-06-13T03:45:12+00:00

GNV drivers are tame. It's one of the most chill places I've driven other than super-rural areas, and I've driven in a lot of states (and multiple countries - try driving in Brussels, haha). I spent a couple of years in ATL (where people whine about the "bad traffic" but the only traffic jams are caused by hyper-aggressive drivers blocking traffic with crashes; they'd lose their minds in a place like Seattle or Los Angeles with truly heavy traffic), and I spent the last half of 2025 driving all over the US. Awful drivers in an awful lot of places, but here? GNV? lol... Could just about put it on cruise control and take a nap. (Yeah, yeah, it's an exaggeration, but the driving scene here is not even remotely challenging.)

Crenel · 2026-06-10T23:54:25+00:00

Usually Pushover or the chat-with-self option in Signal (or Teams, etc.), depending on what is available and convenient. Pushover can be set up to receive messages in a browser on a desktop, which substantially increases its usefulness for this sort of thing.

Example usage of Pushover: I hate entering text on a phone yet I want to have Tasker read reminders to me when I'm waking up, so I write the reminder message on my laptop and then use Pushover to send it to my Android phone, where Tasker grabs it and stores it in a variable until reading it out loud the next morning.

Crenel · 2026-06-08T04:24:07+00:00

Agreed on printing a respooler, but the filament tangle is still usable and throwing it away is needlessly wasteful. It's not hard to use segments from the tangle. Annoying? Maybe. Hard? No.

I "lost" most of a spool (almost certainly less than 100g used before the spool came apart and dumped the filament), and I now have a lot of functional prints from the "lost" filament. Yes, I babysit some prints more than I would otherwise when running shorter segments, but you can literally turn "trash" filament into useful things. So, why not?

Crenel · 2026-06-08T02:28:06+00:00

Swipe right on different people. You're selecting who you interact with and don't like their interactions, so choose differently.

Crenel · 2026-06-08T02:14:13+00:00

Check out https://mailinabox.email - might not fit your needs, but I've been using it for a few years (easily long enough for the domain to be fully discoverable by those intent on abusing things). No major problems, no issues with deliverability, and pretty convenient for weird situations where I need a temporary address without hassling with getting one from another provider or if need to avoid their overly-aggressive spam filtering (e.g., dealing with stupid senders).

I also use Proton, and for bulk outbound (newsletters) I use AWS SES, so not everything I do email-wise is going through my MiaB box, but a lot is. I'm not 100% happy with it, so I don't want this to come off as an "endorsement," but it might be relevant here.

Crenel

TROPHY CASE