There’s something rather amusing, and perhaps a little depressing, about the fact that a fifty-year-old economics paper on defective used cars might explain what’s wrong with modern dating.
Bear with me. I promise this isn’t going to turn into an economics lecture.
In 1970, economist George Akerlof published a paper titled The Market for Lemons, which would eventually contribute to his winning the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 2001.
The premise was simple. Imagine you’re buying a used car. The seller knows whether the car is in good condition or whether it’s going to break down the moment you drive it home. You, unfortunately, have no reliable way of knowing.
Naturally, you’re unwilling to pay the price of a perfectly good car when there’s a reasonable chance you’re getting a defective one. But that creates a problem for sellers of genuinely good cars, who can no longer command a fair price. Some of them eventually stop selling altogether.
What’s left is a market increasingly dominated by the very cars everyone was trying to avoid.
Akerlof called this information asymmetry. And while he was talking about used cars, I can’t help but wonder how remarkably well the same principle applies to dating apps.
Think about it.
Almost everyone claims to value honesty, communication, emotional maturity, and meaningful connections. Scroll through enough dating profiles, and you’d be forgiven for thinking we’ve collectively evolved into a generation of remarkably self-aware, emotionally available adults.
And yet, the actual experience often tells a rather different story.
Because how do you distinguish someone who genuinely wants a relationship from someone who simply enjoys the attention? How do you tell whether someone’s affectionate messages reflect genuine interest or whether you’re merely the most interesting conversation they’re having that particular evening?
You can’t. At least, not from six photographs, a carefully curated biography, and a shared appreciation for obscure music.
And when sincerity becomes impossible to verify, it gradually loses its value as a signal.
Consider what happens when someone first ventures into online dating.
They might approach it with genuine enthusiasm. They reply quickly, express interest without hesitation, and make an honest effort to get to know the person on the other side.
Then comes the first unexplained disappearance. The conversation that was going wonderfully until it suddenly wasn’t. The person who seemed deeply interested on Monday but couldn’t be bothered to respond by Thursday.
Perhaps it happens again. And again.
Eventually, something changes.
You stop replying quite so quickly. You learn not to appear too interested. You keep multiple conversations going, not necessarily because you want to, but because investing in just one person begins to seem rather foolish.
You become careful about expressing how you feel, because you’ve learnt that the person who cares more often ends up getting hurt.
And just like that, someone who entered the dating pool looking for an honest connection has learnt to behave exactly like the people who made dating frustrating in the first place.
The particularly unfortunate part is that none of this necessarily requires bad intentions.
Sometimes, people aren’t playing games because they’re manipulative. They’re playing games because previous experiences have taught them that being straightforward comes at a cost.
It’s a rather cruel feedback loop.
The more people protect themselves, the harder it becomes to tell genuine interest from indifference. And the harder that distinction becomes, the more everyone feels the need to protect themselves.
We end up creating the very environment we’re trying to survive.
Of course, human relationships aren’t used cars, and people don’t fall neatly into categories of good and defective. Someone who wants something casual isn’t inherently dishonest, just as someone looking for a serious relationship isn’t automatically sincere. There’s nothing wrong with wanting different things, provided we’re honest about what those things are.
But that’s precisely the problem. Honesty is difficult to establish when everyone has learnt to be suspicious of it.
And dating apps don’t necessarily make this any easier.
They make it remarkably convenient to discover new people, compare possibilities, and move on when a conversation doesn’t quite meet our expectations. There’s almost always another profile waiting, another potential match, another conversation that might turn out differently.
When alternatives seem endless, the temptation to avoid difficult conversations becomes equally strong.
Why explain that you’ve lost interest when you can simply stop responding? Why work through an awkward misunderstanding when starting over requires little more than a swipe?
It’s worth asking whether we’ve made meeting people so convenient that we’ve inadvertently made treating them as disposable equally convenient.
I don’t think dating apps invented dishonesty, emotional unavailability, or the fear of commitment. Those existed long before smartphones. Nor do I believe everyone using them is trapped in some elaborate psychological game.
But I do wonder whether the way we use these platforms encourages a peculiar sort of self-preservation, where appearing detached feels safer than being genuinely interested.
And if enough people begin to think that way, the consequences extend well beyond individual disappointments.
Those who find the constant uncertainty exhausting may eventually leave. Others learn to adapt, accepting ambiguity and emotional distance as normal parts of the experience.
The result isn’t necessarily a dating pool full of terrible people. It’s a dating culture in which even perfectly decent people can find themselves behaving in ways they once disliked.
Which brings me to the part I find most unsettling.
At some point, we seem to have collectively accepted that caring too much is embarrassing. That replying quickly makes you desperate. That expressing your feelings gives the other person an advantage.
Since when did genuine affection become something we needed to conceal?
I don’t have a neat solution to any of this. Trust, after all, cannot be established through a verified badge or another carefully worded profile prompt. It takes time, consistency, and a willingness to be vulnerable, none of which can be condensed into a swipe.
And perhaps there’s no way to guarantee that being honest won’t occasionally leave us disappointed.
But I find it difficult to accept that the answer is to become increasingly indifferent ourselves.
Because if everyone is waiting for someone else to be sincere first, nobody ever has to take that risk.
And what a terribly lonely way that would be to look for love.
Perhaps the answer, then, isn’t to become better at playing the game.
Perhaps it’s to remember that we were never supposed to be playing one in the first place.
Inspired by this Instagram reel on George Akerlof’s theory of information asymmetry and modern dating.