Tag: love

Disappointments of paywalls in dating apps.

By Edna Deus

Connection between people in today’s world happens mostly in the digital form. With rapid increase of different social media apps and use of emails, the world has become easier for people to meet without going outside. This has led to the rise of dating apps which has made it easier to find relationships whether platonic or romantic. However, creating a profile and swiping through potential matches brings you to the realization that payments are needed to engage with someone.
This revelation leaves you with disillusionment and disappointment.

From Tinder to Bumble and niche platforms as eHarmony, the mechanism of requiring payment just after luring in users with the promise of free access to the app or website kills all motivation
of continuing with the apps. When you download dating apps most of them are advertised as free and this prompts many to take a chance. After creating a profile, swiping, liking and messaging it
seems to feel as the best deal. This is until the limitations of your “free” membership shatters all hope of using dating apps unless you’re willing to pay for packages that are offered.

Before we dig deeper on the payment matter, we cannot neglect that dating apps have helped make connection between many people. Many relationships whether platonic or romantic have been able
to happen because of these platforms. Some of these people if asked can even say it’s worth the payments for the subscription if it would lead to a successful relationship on their end. But that’s just it, paying for the apps is still not a full proof plan because you never know if it will fail or not.

Monetization of apps is not unique in any way and so the matter is not necessary about the money but the shift of expectations. The whole process of signing for a dating app is for the hope of
meeting someone and this changes to being cornered to pay to secure your future in romance. This changes the meaningfulness of being in a genuine relationship. And subscribing does not mean that you may get your soulmate. A lot has happened in dating apps such as scams, catfishing,
ghosting and many more. This makes you wonder what if you do pay for the app but get
disappointed with it, just making you lose money for a bad experience.

Not all dating apps are deceitful though. Some show you their offers from the beginning, about what you get when you download the app and what features are supposed to be paid for. This makes it easier to know what you are walking into without being manipulated for an experience.
Yet the trend for monetizing romantic connections remains widespread, making many people distrust the process. And for those who refuse to pay, their options become very limited. They are
forced to spend time swiping and hoping to get a match and, in the end, leading to abandon the
app altogether.

The act of bringing up subscriptions while a user has no idea that the “free” part of the dating app is only for making a profile is very harsh. It shows that the deceit done by owners of these platforms
is due to their greediness. It feels like they trapped you when you sign up to meet someone but are given a choice to either pay or delete your profile. The thought of letting go your process that you
have done until that moment feels heavy, making you to start wondering if paying is the best option
to meet someone.

Either way, being let down by paywalls in dating apps goes beyond the cost itself. It’s about the realization that even when finding love, money comes first. This depresses many to discover that
the easier way to find a relationship involves a price tag. Dating should feel natural, but when you must pay to talk to someone, it starts to feel fake. And this takes the joy out of it. The disappointment lies there with commercialized structure of modern online dating.

The Culprit Behind Adults Pain

I am 73 and never in my life did I have the audacity to be myself. Sometimes in the middle of night I feel like I am suffocating and think that this is all for me…I have wasted my life essentially lived as per what society suggested. I have no one to blame and I feel sad’ lamented Alice when asked what regret does she feel after becoming older! 
‘If you don’t touch it, it won’t harm you’ 

may not be a very well-known saying but it certainly is a lifestyle that many of us are living with and might be the very reason to why we do not talk about death…Wait!! Don’t skip this page let us all face this reality for once because obviously death is simply passing away where every part of the body becomes deceased but there is another type of death where the body is active but the heart and minds become dead, I would call it loneliness. 

Believe it or not; loneliness is one of the most unspoken issues among the African communities especially in Africa and across the Globe because many people refer to it as an indication of strength while considering it a régime to mask their troubles. Unfortunately there is a significant figures of the victims who are secretly suffering from unimaginable number of pains and are willing to spend millions of pennies on several culprits to protect their suffering. Today, this magazine will discourse about this common culprit for adults’ pain which has left incurable effects to the societies.

What is the pain?

Unquestionably; in a world full of vast devices to keep the minds busy from worrying about our prescribed lifespan; both youngsters, adults, wives, strangers, patients, doctors and every normal human being all share a common fear of loneliness. Loneliness is the state of feeling emptiness inside someone’s mind, soul, body or heart, (regardless how much a person may be owning); where as the results, it leads to an individual’s unwise decisions which may also yields to unhealthy preoccupations such as an obsession of the body image.

The 90% of those whose focus has been invested on image obsession has either performed plastic surgeries or at least considered anti-aging prescriptions because they thought the problem is more physical than mental. On many exclusive researches conducted to find out why themajority of adults spend quite mercilessly on anti-aging products, it was finally discovered that the main cause to the act is the fear of beingempty, lonely and eventually becoming invisible to their loved ones and society in general.  

At least every year the World spends about $ 274 billion on the anti-aging products while the media has tirelessly encouraged all ages on how important it is for them to look younger on a daily basis. Although on the outside the entire anti-aging campaign may look like it is about the beauty but it seems to be a completely different agenda on the inside because when a group of adults asked why are they scared to look or get older; the top answers were all pressed back to the fear of pain, poverty, becoming vulnerable and abused. Who will take care of me? What will happen when I get ill? The fear of getting treated with humiliations in the hands of those who may not even be related to them and the costs that may be used for instance in the West to take care of elders; altogether spice up this pain. The good news is there is still hope for a better change as far as people are willing to share and learn.

What is Tanzanians’ acuity on the matter?

On the other hand; the courage of whether or not to communicate and implement about this pain seems to differ and have taken a unalike approach at least for the participants of this survey whom I believe are representatives to the majority of the country because many of them felt uncomfortable to address this. Some of them seem to have believed that loneliness is a part of faith hence no one should rise a concern about it, while others are uncertain if this is a problem or not.

Apparently when both youths and adults of 21-75 years old interviewed, they admitted to have experienced on the feeling and urge that it is unavoidable circumstance unless one chooses to live a useful life.

 ‘I celebrated a lovely 25 years’ old birthday last week with family and friends and felt so happy but I assure you on the inside I was somehow worried on becoming older because I can relate how different this birthday celebration is from a 19 years old one. The people’s engagement, the mindset, the dependence…all these were seem to be freely accessible but the more I aged; the desperate I become’’. Said Sylvia a fourth year Medical Student at Muhimbili, adding that her hard work has been a motive to worry less.

There has been an incredible rise of beauty shops in Dar es Salaam region alone which is the business city where 7 of 10 people you meet have somehow tried to mask their loneliness through the beauty concept.

By Khadija Amri