Look up Akerlof's market for lemons. In a market for lemons, information asymmetry between sellers and buyers causes the market to be flooded with poor quality product, until the market crashes. In this case, the sellers know more about their product than buyer, they know if they are selling a quality product (a peach), or a bad product (lemon). The buyers have no way of knowing what they are going to get, so they settle on an average price between that of the more expensive peach and the cheaper lemon. Because the price is set at average, those with peaches have to sell at a lot, while those with lemons profit. Over time, those with peaches leave the market, while those wth lemons stay in, so the average price goes down and teh overall quality does too, driving buyers out. It becomes apositive feedback loop, until the market is overrun with lemons and crashes,
Are there conditions for OLD to become a market for lemons? Yes, and by and large it has. Do the people posting their profiles know more on if they are a high quality mate?Yes, they do, as you can put anything on their profile and you won't know you've been catfished until the first date. Is there no honest signal of quality? Yes, because in most cases you have no way to verify what they mean on their profile. Say you are a decent quality mate, and you connect with someone, and they turn out to be shitty. This disincentivizes you from continuing, but since that shitty person got an upgrade for you, they stick around as they thik they can do better for themselves. This is why Tinder, OkC and a lot of other free dating sites have gone to shit. That's why it seems no matter how you try all you find are bitchy, obese, bluehaired cat ladies with a gaggle of children/ scraggly fedora'd unemployed pothead neckbeards. It has nothing to do with you, all of the kind, intelligent, slim, beautiful fair maidens/handsome, well groomed, gainfully employed, stable gentlemen have long since packed their bags having the same problem you did.
So, is online dating bound to crash? Yes and no. Free online dating, yes. With no barrier to entry there can be no honest signal of quality. But, if there is a payment, or any other barrier to entry (Ie an invitation), there can be an honest signal of quality, so high quality mates are incentivized to participate while low quality ones are kept out. Notice how tinder and bumble have introduced premium subscriptions and are icnreasingly relying on them. This is the only way they can survive being overrun by lemons. People may also respond by going back to basics: meetups through mutual friends and in real life, which can have more honest signals on both ends.
