The modern world has mechanized everything, from commerce to war, and even thought. Now, it has mechanized love.

Dating apps, those digital bazaars of desperation, promise efficiency in the pursuit of romance, reducing attraction to an algorithm, human connection to an interface, and courtship to a transaction. The result is not a world of more love, but of less. More choice, yet less satisfaction. More matches, yet less meaning.

But the destruction is deeper than mere loneliness. It is not simply that dating apps create a superficial, low-effort marketplace. It is that they warp the very structure of attraction itself, breaking the natural bonds that form relationships and replacing them with a digital mirage of abundance.

Love has always been a function of proximity. We love what is close to us, what we can touch, see, and experience. Historically, relationships emerged out of shared spaces—villages, schools, churches, social circles. The mere act of being near someone over time—observing their mannerisms, feeling their presence—creates the conditions for deep connection.

But proximity alone is not enough. Attraction is not merely about being in the same room; it is about the pull between two people—the gravitas that draws one soul toward another. In a sense, love is like gravity: the stronger the attraction, the more it gathers the world around it. The closer one gets, the greater the force.

This is where dating apps fail at the fundamental level. They remove proximity from the equation entirely, forcing relationships to form out of gravitas alone. A match is made on appearance, a text exchange, a snippet of personality. Yet without physical closeness, without the depth of shared experience, most of these digital connections remain forever potentialities—never actualized, never realized.

Love is an act of becoming, not a static choice. It requires the tension of proximity to bring gravitas into reality. And in severing this connection, dating apps create the illusion of attraction without the necessary conditions for it to thrive.

Dating apps do not foster romance; they foster addiction. These platforms are not built to create relationships—they are built to keep users engaged. Swiping triggers the same dopamine pathways as gambling, training users to crave the process rather than the outcome.

For women, this means a parade of low-effort, unremarkable men, easy to discard. For men, it means a slow, grinding descent into rejection. On most apps, the top 20% of men receive 80% of the matches—a winner-takes-all economy where the average man is invisible. The result? An epidemic of loneliness, particularly for young men who find themselves completely excluded from the sexual marketplace.

The paradox is obvious: dating apps promise to increase access to romance, yet they create a system in which only a tiny fraction benefit. The rest are left to swipe in perpetual frustration, slowly eroding their confidence, numbing themselves to rejection, and retreating into digital isolation.

Worse, this addiction rewires attraction itself. The endless swipe teaches men and women alike to search for something better—to treat each match not as a person, but as one option in a limitless field. This breeds a mentality of disposability, where no one is ever good enough, and where the next profile is always waiting.

It is not only men who suffer. Women, who historically relied on courtship as a test of a man’s worth, now find themselves drowning in attention—but it is worthless attention. If a woman can get a thousand matches in a week, does any single match matter? When abundance is infinite, value is zero.

In a normal setting, a woman assesses a man by his presence, his social proof, his actions. But on an app, she has only a bio and a few photos to go on. Thus, selection defaults to the lowest common denominator—looks. This is why apps systematically favor the most superficial, short-term relationships. They remove the need for men to demonstrate character and for women to exercise discernment.

More terrifyingly, dating apps actively punish feminine instinct. If a woman waits for a man to pursue, she receives nothing. If she expects effort, she is ghosted. The app environment rewards immediacy, availability, and compliance. A woman who plays hard to get is simply passed over for the next profile. The lesson is clear: adapt, lower standards, or be alone.

This creates a feedback loop of resentment. Men become bitter at their exclusion; women become exhausted by low-effort suitors. Both end up withdrawing from dating entirely, convinced that the opposite sex is the problem, when in reality, it is the system itself that has poisoned the process.

Proponents of dating apps will argue that technology has allowed relationships to flourish across greater distances than ever before. And while it is true that people can now form deep connections online, there is a reason long-distance relationships have always been fragile: they are only viable if proximity remains the goal.

Long-distance relationships, at best, are an exception that proves the rule. They can only work when both people are actively striving to collapse the distance between them. But dating apps create the opposite effect: they provide an illusion of closeness while ensuring that true proximity never materializes.

A digital connection, however strong, is never the same as a real one. It lacks the microexpressions, the unspoken glances, the subtle chemistry that only exists in person. It is a shadow of love, never the thing itself.

Before dating apps, rejection was final. If one failed in courtship, they moved on. Today, the supply of potential partners is endless. This has obliterated commitment. Why work through difficulties when a single swipe offers another option? Why cultivate patience when everything is immediate?

This mindset—people as infinitely replaceable—is the true horror of the app-driven world. It trains men and women alike to view each other as interchangeable parts, to seek novelty rather than depth, and to see relationships as something to consume rather than something to build.

The truth is, technology is not neutral. It is not merely a tool that we can use wisely or foolishly. It shapes us, mechanizes us, reduces us. A man who navigates life through a screen becomes incapable of navigating it without one. A woman who receives endless validation online learns to rely on it, even when it makes her miserable. Dating apps are not merely a response to modern culture; they are an accelerant to its worst tendencies.

The only way to escape the algorithm’s trap is to reject it entirely. Delete the apps. Force interaction back into the real world. Relearn the lost art of courtship—the tension, the uncertainty, the stakes. Women must refuse to participate in a system that strips them of their natural selectivity. Men must recover the courage to pursue, to risk, to win or lose in the realm of reality.

Love is not efficient. It cannot be streamlined, optimized, or programmed. It is chaotic, demanding, and deeply human. Dating apps promise convenience, but they deliver sterility. They promise connection, but they manufacture loneliness. The only solution is a full-scale rebellion—an exodus from the digital brothel and a return to the real.

Dating apps are not just corrosive to romance; they are corrosive to humanity itself. They reduce attraction to an algorithm, relationships to transactions, and people to mere options in an infinite scroll. Love is neither immediate nor convenient—it is an act of fate, one that requires risk, effort, and sacrifice.

To escape the loneliness of the modern world, one must do the currently unthinkable: step away from the screen, embrace the difficulty of real courtship, and let gravitas—the pull between two souls—take its course. Love cannot exist without proximity, and proximity means choosing reality over the endless void of the digital.