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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 18, 2026

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If it was so easy to create a company based on long term matching at scale, then where is it? Tinders been out for what 15 years, okcupid, match.com 30? 90% of datong apps/websites are owned by match.com

At some point you need to consider the systemic problems that incentivize dating app profitability. If matching people for long term profit made more money for shareholders then selling short term boost/matches then it’s likely we would see that sort of emergent behavior. It’s clearly not. The system is just not setup that way. Being known as “the app” only works if you have such network effects that you can get a large base of people so short term losses are offset by long term gains.

I believe the secret would be that payment is due at time of marriage. But that creates incentives which push the target market out of the mainstream.