背景介绍：
自2012年 Tinder 在美国大学校园推出以来，手机交友软件迅速风靡，革新了传统在线交友方式。尽管在线交友早已存在，但 Tinder 通过其独特的滑动浏览功能，使交友变得简单有趣。疫情期间，在线交友软件使用量激增，Bumble 和 Match Group 等公司的市值也随之飙升。然而，近年来，用户对交友软件的热情逐渐消退，下载量和活跃度均有所下降，反映出用户对线上交友的失望和对线下交友的向往。
Why people
have fallen out of love with dating apps
为什么人们不爱用相亲软件了
Tinder and Bumble are struggling as singles refuse to pay up
Tinder 和 Bumble 都在苦苦挣扎，因为单身人士拒绝付款
When Tinder, a mobile dating app, launched on college campuses in America in 2012, it quickly became a hit. Although online dating had been around since Match.com, a website for lonely hearts, launched in 1995, it had long struggled to shed an image of desperation. But Tinder, by letting users sift through photos of countless potential dates with a simple swipe, made it easy and fun.
2012年，手机交友软件 Tinder 在美国大学校园一经推出，便迅速跻身为热门应用之列。尽管自1995年专为单身群体打造的 Match.com 网站问世以来，在线交友便已存在，但它长期以来始终难以摆脱“绝望求偶”的固有标签。然而，Tinder 凭借其用户仅需轻轻一划即可浏览无数潜在约会对象的照片这一功能，成功将交友过程变得既简单又充满趣味。
Soon Tinder and its rivals had transformed courtship. A report published last year by the Pew Research Centre found that 30% of American adults had used an online dating service, including more than half of those aged between 18 and 29.
很快，Tinder 及其竞争对手们彻底革新了约会的方式。皮尤研究中心去年发布的一份调研报告显示，30%的美国成年人曾使用过在线交友服务，其中超过一半为18岁至29岁之间的年轻人。
One in five couples of that age had met through such a service. Usage surged during the pandemic, as lonely locked-down singles sought out partners. The market capitalisation of Bumble, a rival to Tinder, surged to $13bn on its first day of trading in February 2021.
在这个年龄段中，有五分之一的情侣是通过在线交友软件相识的。特别是在疫情期间，由于封锁措施导致的孤独感加剧，单身群体纷纷寻求伴侣，使得在线交友软件的使用量急剧上升。Tinder 的竞争对手 Bumble 在2021年2月上市首日，其市值便飙升至130亿美元。
Later that year the value of Match Group, which owns Tinder, Hinge and scores of other dating services, reached nearly $50bn. Today roughly 350m people around the world have a dating app on their phone, up from 250m in 2018, according to Business of Apps, a research firm. In June Tokyo’s government even said it would launch a matchmaking app of its own to pair up singles in the city.
同年底，旗下拥有 Tinder、Hinge 等数十种约会服务提供商的 Match Group，其市值也逼近500亿美元。研究公司 Business of Apps 的数据显示，目前全球约有3.5亿人在手机上安装了交友软件，这一数字相较于2018年的2.5亿人有了显著提升。今年6月，东京政府甚至宣布将推出官方婚介软件，旨在为城市的单身男女搭建鹊桥。
Yet lately online dating has lost its spark. The apps were downloaded 237m times globally last year, down from 287m in 2020. According to Sensor Tower, another research firm, the number of people who use them at least once a month has dwindled from 154m in 2021 to 137m in the second quarter of this year.
然而，近期的在线交友软件已然失去了往昔的光芒。去年，交友软件的全球下载量为2.37亿次，低于2020年的2.87亿次。据另一家研究公司 Sensor Tower 的数据，每月至少使用一次交友软件的人数已从2021年的1.54亿下降至今年第二季度的1.37亿。
On August 7th Bumble reported revenue growth of just 3%, year on year, in the quarter from April to June, and lowered its forecast for the full year to 1-2%. Its shares plunged by a third in after-hours trading. On July 30th Match Group reported that its revenue for the same quarter grew by only 4%.
8月7日，Bumble 公布的财报显示，今年4-6月季度收入同比增长仅为3%，并将全年预期下调至1-2%。公司股价在盘后交易中暴跌三分之一。Match Group 也在7月30日报告称，其同期收入增幅仅为4%。
Both companies’ market values have cratered since Bumble’s listing (see chart 2). That reflects users’ increasing disillusionment with dating apps, decreasing willingness to pay for them—and growing interest in offline alternatives.
自 Bumble 上市以来，这两家公司的市值均出现大幅缩水。这反映出用户对约会应用程序的热情日益消退，付费意愿下降，同时对线下交友的兴趣却在不断升温。
Start with the disillusionment. Apps that once felt fun have, for many, become wellsprings of frustration. The network effects that initially propelled services such as Tinder, in which a widening choice of partners lured in ever more users, have now made them exasperating.
从失望情绪说起。曾经令人觉得饶有趣味的交友软件，如今却成了许多人心中的挫败之源。网络效应最初推动了Tinder等交友软件的迅猛发展，即通过提供更多选择来吸引更多用户，但现在这种效应却带来了沮丧感。
Users grumble about spending hours sorting through tens of thousands of profiles. Half of women surveyed by Pew said they felt overwhelmed by the number of messages they received. It doesn’t help that 84% of Tinder users are men. So are 61% of those on Bumble, which is targeted at women. Many users also fret about scams.
用户抱怨需要花费数小时浏览成千上万的个人资料。皮尤研究中心调查的女性中，有一半表示她们对收到的海量信息感到手足无措。而且，Tinder的用户中84%为男性，这一点并未有助于改善现状。Bumble 的用户中61%也是男性，尽管它主打的是女性用户群体。许多用户还担心遭遇诈骗。
Younger adults are growing especially weary of the apps. One survey commissioned last year by Axios, a news site, found that only a fifth of American college students were using them at least once a month.
年轻成年人对这类交友软件的厌倦情绪愈发强烈。去年，新闻网站 Axios 委托进行的一项调查发现，只有五分之一的美国大学生每月使用交友软件的频率在1次及以上。
“It’s not fun, it’s so superficial and it’s also just like really exhausting,” laments one youthful influencer on TikTok, a short-video app. “I’m kind of over it,” sums up Wunmi Williams, a 27-year-old who, after years of swiping and matching, has been unable to find a partner through a dating app.
TikTok 短视频平台上的一位年轻网红感叹道：“这不好玩，太肤浅了，而且真的很累人。”27岁的温米·威廉姆斯总结道：“我已经受够了。”多年来，她一直在使用交友软件寻找对象，但至今仍未通过任何约会应用程序找到伴侣。
In a sign of growing despair, the Marriage Pact, an annual event in which participants are matched with a “backup” spouse should their future romantic endeavours fail, has spread to 88 college campuses across America.
《婚姻契约》是一项年度活动，参与者在未来的浪漫尝试失败后，可以与“备胎配偶”配对，这一活动已经扩展到美国88所大学校园，这充分表明了人们的日益绝望。
All this helps explain why dating-app developers are struggling to convince users to part with cash—the second reason for their lacklustre performance. In an effort to boost margins, dating apps have been peddling paid upgrades to supplement their lowly ad revenues.
所有这些因素都有助于解释为何约会软件开发商难以说服用户付费——这也是它们表现不佳的第二个原因。为了提高利润率，约会应用程序一直在推销付费升级服务，以补充其微薄的广告收入。
Hinge has a separate feed with popular profiles it thinks you might like, but demands that you hand over $3.99 for a “rose” before you can chat with them. Tinder’s paid plans range from $17.99 a month (which gives you unlimited swipes and lets you change your location) to a hefty $499 a month (which lets you see the most popular profiles on the app and message users you haven’t matched with).
Hinge 设有一个单独的订阅源，其中包含它认为你可能感兴趣的热门个人资料，但要求你支付3.99美元购买一朵“玫瑰”，之后你才能与这些用户聊天。Tinder 的付费计划则涵盖了从每月17.99美元（可无限匹配并允许你更改位置）到每月499美元（可查看应用上最受欢迎的个人资料并向未匹配的用户发送消息）的不同等级。
重难点词汇：
courtship [ˈkɔːrtʃɪp] n. 求爱；求偶
disillusionment [ˌdɪsɪˈluːʒnmənt] n. 幻灭；醒悟
exasperate [ɪɡˈzæspəreɪt] v. 激怒；使恼怒
grumble [ˈɡrʌmbl] v. 嘟囔；发牢骚 n. 抱怨；牢骚
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