No, they worked for me between 15-10 years ago, but I get it - by all accounts now they’re so enshittified that it’s just Match parasitically turning loneliness into profit at ever greater efficiency. They would have failed immediately if they didn’t work long enough to capture enough market and attention.

As others mentioned OK Cupid, and it’s a great example. It was originally very good at matching people, and they took pride in it. I remember when Match bought it, as I had recently (just in time) found my person. I was able to see it go from “No, we’re leaving it alone, just tweaking a few things” to ending the interesting data-exploration articles, dumbing down the experience, adding micro-pay-gating, and fully gutting the experience and staff. Nobody should have trusted Match to not destroy what it was, and if they hadn’t sold and remained a useable app, maybe the market would have abandoned Match. Instead, here we are.

I don’t envy those people still looking, I assume best case is still using apps but you just have to waste a lot more time.