October 16, 2026 — 11:35am
Zohran Mamdani may be the exception that proves the rule. “I think I was in love from the moment I saw her profile,” the New York mayor said of his wife, Rama Duwaji, in an interview with Complex magazine. “I screenshotted her Hinge profile.”
But for every Mamdani-Duwaji love story there are countless complaints and despairing headlines about dating apps (‘ding-dong, dating apps are dead’, ‘why young adults are caught in a dating recession’, ‘I feel so cringe on dating apps’), taking aim at their habit of locking away desirable profiles, making users feel unwanted, or providing an overwhelming sense of infinite potential mates.
Writer and dating app founder Alistair Kitchen is billing One as a “non-toxic” alternative to larger platforms. Sam Mooy “They have an economic incentive to stop you partnering in long-term committed relationships,” says Alistair Kitchen, an Australian writer who has developed an alternative dating app that is in an early test period. “What I tell people is this: every time a Hinge user falls in love on Hinge, Hinge loses two customers, and so the worst thing possible for Hinge is for people to fall in love.”
So, Kitchen argues, mainstream Western dating apps like Hinge, Bumble and Tinder have an incentive to keep users online and spending money to overcome the limitations they have placed in users’ way. Yet if commercial needs are frustrating dating apps’ social potential, the business side is scarcely going better. Match Group, which owns Tinder and Hinge among other brands, has suffered repeated falls in its user base. Bumble, which shot to a $US14 billion ($20 billion) valuation after it went public in 2021, has done even worse. After sharp de
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