People Want to Know How Much They’re Worth in Dating

New York subway cars once carried posters for a dating app called Bidsy that promised to turn romance into an auction. The ads claimed it would let users “discover your true dating market value” by bidding on potential partners. Some commuters felt uneasy, saying the idea reduced people to a price tag and made relationships feel like transactions. The founder of Bidsy, Ryan Beswick, had originally thought it a quirky experiment. He explained that the concept seemed “transgressive” and decided not to keep the app alive after a short trial. Though Bidsy itself faded quickly, the notion of attaching money to love survived in online circles and entered mainstream discussion as “sexual market value. ”This transactional view of romance is not new; it echoes old practices like dowries. Yet in recent decades it has resurfaced through books and blogs. A 2005 bestseller about pickup artists, The Game, hinted at similar ideas, while a 2012 blog post by Rollo Tomassi plotted the perceived worth of men and women over time. Tomassi argued that men peak in value around their late thirties, while women's scores drop sharply after thirty. The concept has sparked debate about whether love can or should be measured in dollars. Critics warn that it risks objectifying people and undermining genuine connection, while proponents claim it offers a clear metric for self‑improvement. The conversation continues as society wrestles with the balance between market logic and human emotion.