20 Dating App Fails for Sad Singles (October 15, 2026)

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Emmy Pratt • Senior Editor
Oct 15, 2026 12:30 PM EDT

It's easy to feel alone in how many failed situations you've had on dating apps, but at least your Hinge messages aren't so bad that they went viral! That's the distinct pleasure of the people in this article!

Every day, I am grateful that I don't have to use dating apps anymore. I deleted my Hinge account before I became official with my beloved. I did it both because I was confident we would become official and because I hated using Hinge so much that I didn't want to see it on my phone anymore. I didn't want notifications. I wanted freedom from the prison I'd created. 

For some people, dating apps feel like freedom. They can talk to so many more people than they could if they just approached people in public. They can stop talking to someone without consequences; the freedom to ghost is ever-present on dating apps in a way it isn't in real life. If your friend sets you up on a date with their friend, they're probably going to get angry at you if you ghost them. But if you ghost a total stranger on Hinge? That will have little to no negative impact on your day-to-day life, for better or for worse. 

Although a sliver of the population finds dating apps liberating, most of us who have used them resent them for understandable reasons. They show you an endless stream of fellow singles looking for love, and it makes you feel terrible that you haven't been able to lock one of them down! I don't know about anyone else, but I would feel pretty down on myself after a slew of unsuccessful dates, even if it wasn't my fault. If I wasted a Thursday night spending 2 hours with someone I had no chemistry with, I'd feel sad and resent the app for giving me yet another bad match. Nobody likes getting rejected, even for perfectly valid reasons like lifestyle incompatibility or a lack of attraction. No matter how much the apps hurt me, I would always go back to them until I met the perfect person for me in real life. Sometimes, your perfect person is at the local business that you go to once a week instead of on an endless algorithm of rejection and disappointment. 

As much as it's easy to hate dating apps, they are a part of our lives, and they aren't going away anytime soon. They make it so that you can go on a date without having to talk to somebody in real life beforehand, and for anxious Gen Zers who can't go up to strangers, it's a lifeline. If you need to escape from the disappointments of your dating life, or want to walk down memory lane of being on dating apps, you've come to the right place. 

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