QuackQuack's Survey Signals a Shift: Are Performative Romances Losing Ground?

Dating apps in India are documenting something their Western counterparts have mostly intuited: the Instagram-worthy relationship may be losing its appeal. A survey by QuackQuack, one of India's largest vernacular dating platforms, suggests metropolitan daters are consciously retreating from public declarations of romance in favour of what the company terms 'private emotional sincerity'. Whether that represents genuine cultural evolution or simply fatigue with performative intimacy is the more interesting question—and the one with implications far beyond Delhi and Mumbai.

The findings are stark. According to QuackQuack's data, 68% of respondents said they prefer keeping relationships off social media entirely. More telling still: 72% reported favouring emotional connection over grand gestures, and 63% said they actively avoid partners who broadcast their love lives online. For an industry that has spent the better part of a decade monetising conspicuous romance—think Bumble's brand positioning around confident, public declarations, or Tinder's entire influencer strategy—this is worth watching.

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The data—and its limitations

QuackQuack surveyed users aged 22 to 35 across metropolitan India between late 2024 and early 2025. The sample is urban, English- or vernacular-literate, and already self-selected for app usage—a demographic slice that represents perhaps 15–20% of India's total marriage-age population. Arranged marriages still account for roughly 75% of Indian unions, according to the most recent National Family Health Survey, and dating app penetration in tier-2 and tier-3 cities remains below 12%.

The findings also come directly from QuackQuack's proprietary research, which means they should be read as suggestive rather than definitive. The company has commercial incentives to position itself as the platform for 'authentic' connections, particularly as it competes with Western-owned apps like Tinder and Bumble, both of which skew more aspirational and image-forward in their Indian marketing.

Still, the directionality aligns with patterns operators are seeing elsewhere. Match Group (MTCH) disclosed in its Q3 2024 earnings that Hinge's 'designed to be deleted' positioning drove 20% year-on-year growth in paying subscribers, whilst Tinder's brand refresh away from hookup culture toward 'meaningful connections' suggests the company's own research is pointing the same way. Bumble (BMBL) has similarly pivoted its messaging in recent quarters, de-emphasising the 'bold first move' framing in favour of safety and intentionality.

Petfishing and other self-reported virtues

One of the more curious findings in QuackQuack's survey concerns pets. The platform claims 35% of female users feel 'more comfortable' matching with pet lovers, and that conversations with pet owners last 24% longer on average. This conveniently aligns with QuackQuack's recent product rollout of a 'pet preference' filter, launched in November 2024. Whether the data reflects genuine user sentiment or a post-hoc justification for a feature the company had already decided to build is unclear.

What is clear is that dating platforms are increasingly mining behavioural proxies for emotional availability. Pets, plant ownership, Spotify playlists, even the presence of group photos versus solo shots—all are being tested as signals of relationship readiness. The risk is that these proxies become performance opportunities themselves, replacing one form of curated identity with another. If users are truly retreating from performative romance, they're not doing it by accident. They're doing it because they've learned that every signal can be gamed.

What people say they value and what they swipe on are famously divergent datasets.

The survey also found that 52% of users believe 'emotional maturity' is now more valued than financial stability when selecting a partner, which will prompt justified scepticism among anyone familiar with stated-preference research. QuackQuack offers no behavioural data to corroborate the claim, which means it remains precisely that—a claim.

What changes if this holds

If the preference for private relationships is real and sustained, the product implications are significant. Features designed to encourage sharing—Instagram integration, story-like updates, prompts that invite public responses—may become friction points rather than engagement drivers. Monetisation strategies built around visibility, such as boosts and super-likes, may need recalibration for users who equate visibility with vulnerability.

More fundamentally, platforms may need to rethink how they signal success. The entire dating app category has long relied on couples who met on the platform becoming informal ambassadors, sharing their meet-cute stories on social media and generating earned attention. A cohort that refuses to broadcast their relationships doesn't provide that flywheel. Apps will need other proof points—perhaps qualitative testimonials, perhaps longitudinal data on relationship satisfaction—to demonstrate efficacy.

India's market is particularly instructive here because its dating app adoption curve is roughly five years behind Western markets, but its social media saturation is concurrent. Indian users are experiencing Instagramification and dating app onboarding simultaneously, which may be accelerating the backlash against performative romance that Western users took a decade to develop.

Operators should be asking whether their platforms are built for users who want to be seen or users who want to be known. Those are increasingly divergent design briefs. The answer will determine which features get prioritised, which brand narratives get funding, and which apps will still be growing when the current generation of daters starts looking for something more lasting than a good story.