It's official: "swipe fatigue" is no longer just internet slang but a statistically observable phenomenon, and it's radically changing the way younger daters approach finding a partner. An astonishing 78 percent of all Gen Z dating app users have reported a "burnout" from app use, according to Forbes, while Match Group, Inc., the conglomerate that owns Tinder and Hinge, has seen its stock value decline by two-thirds from its pandemic highs.

This fatigue has led to a surge in "IRL singles events," and even forced apps like Tinder and Hinge to adjust their game plan. Tinder launched an Events feature earlier this year to promote IRL meetups, as well as a Festival Mode to help strangers with mutual interests meet, and Hinge has reportedly dumped over a million dollars into promoting offline meetups.

But there are some retro dating directories that are trying to solve swipe fatigue, mostly by offering more than a carousel-style, hot-or-not matchmaking system. Instead of a binary yes-or-no decision often based on a handful of photos and a short bio, these old-school dating sites create online communities where people have multiple opportunities to interact or bond over shared interests.

Hookup apps for everyone

AdultFriendFinder
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readers’ pick for casual connections

Tinder
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top pick for finding hookups

Hinge
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popular choice for regular meetups

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And weirdly enough, AdultFriendFinder might be the perfect example of this approach — here's why.

Credit: AdultFriendFinder

Matchmaking beyond the swipe

As fun as mindlessly swiping through singles profiles can be, it should dawn on you at some point that your fellow eligible locals are putting exactly the same amount of effort into evaluating your profile as you are into evaluating theirs. And that's genuinely terrifying.

If you're looking to meet someone, you need more to go off than just photos and a 200-word biography. In the past, people met at work, in college, or at their place of worship, but in the decentralized, delocalized world of the internet, that kind of constant proximity to others is becoming a rare commodity.

Sites poised to succeed in a post-swipe-fatigue landscape are aware of this fact and are actively trying to solve the problem.

Yes, AdultFriendFinder has its own version of the singles search, where you put in your location and filters, and it generates a list of eligible people, but that's only a small fraction of what the site offers.

Digital communities are the future

The best way to cure swipe fatigue is to remove the mechanism entirely. Instead, allow people to meet organically through interest-based online communities.

AdultFriendFinder has an entire Community section built around blogs, group chats, and shared stories, where the purpose is more than just matching with someone you might have something in common with. You can read other people's stories, share your own (with or without pictures), or participate in group discussions. There's even a handy Trending filter, so you always know what stories and discussions are generating the most buzz.

And, if you have a way with words, it's surprisingly easy to build your own following, especially when you consider how many niche or esoteric interests AFF caters to.

Centering live chats and webcam broadcasts

For all their self-promoting talk about being the future, dating apps are shockingly low-tech. After all, we've been able to send and receive texts for over two decades now, and the swipe mechanism itself dates to before the original iPhone. What, exactly, is so special about their design? And why have they been so reticent to adopt video messaging?

Look at two of the most popular and most downloaded apps of the last decade, Snapchat and TikTok, and it's easy to see that the age of the photo is on its way out, while text messaging is as archaic as the dinosaurs at this point.

Plus, let's be real here: people already use both Snapchat and TikTok as lowkey dating sites, flirting via video chat.

This is another place where AdultFriendFinder, despite its age, is obviously ahead of its time. It made live broadcasting and video chatting a major component of its site more than a decade ago. Click on the Live Action tab at the top of their banner, and you can gain access to their Member Webcams section, where singles regularly interact with their audiences (and not just in naked, NSFW ways!).

If you're tired of always being the one chasing and want to experience people coming to you for a change, start your own broadcast and engage with the people who watch your stream — you may be surprised by who shows up!

The future of dating apps

To be clear, we're not arguing that AdultFriendFinder is about to replace Tinder or Hinge as the go-to dating app for young daters. But we are telling you that by every evaluative metric we have to judge by, online daters are sick of swiping and looking for something more substantive.

We fully expect the next big dating app to offer community-based interactions rather than one-on-one swiping, and to natively support video chatting or messaging, stealing a page from TikTok's playbook.