I tried Tinder on a lark. “You’ll hate it,” a girlfriend said. “It’s all 25-year-olds looking to hook up. I mean, that’s why I’m on it, but I am 25.” I signed up anyway. There were a lot of 25-year-olds, but also people in their 30s, like me. Whenever I’d see a man in his late 30s, or a divorced dad with kids, I wondered: What was he doing there? What was I doing there? Should we be on OkCupid? Were we too old to be playing a hookup game? Did it matter?

At first it was strangely exhilarating. Each time I got “It’s a Match!” I’d punch the “Keep Playing” button as if I were winning the Desirability Olympics. But then a guy friend told me, “Most dudes swipe right on almost everyone.” I continued judging potential matches, swiping like mad, still trying to win.

Dating is a numbers game, people say, but the direction it’s taking online and in apps means ever bigger numbers. The number of people you’d never talk to in a million years. The number of men who message every woman, because maybe one will have sex with them. The chances someone will anonymously talk about a date with you to 150,000 people on @Tinderfessions. As your profile or location is crunched into numbers and algorithms and equations, the possibilities are endless.

Here’s the problem with bigger numbers and endless possibility: They don’t go well with humans. We don’t have the processing power. Dating is not simply about finding like-minded people, but about limiting your potential set of choices. When we’re making a selection from what sociologists call a bounded set of choices, we can “satisfice” — that is, reach a kind of threshold of satisfaction. Once we find something above that level, great, let’s try it.

When the number of options increases, we become maximizers — unsatisfied with those options, and wanting more. On Tinder, we can judge, swipe and date as if there is an unlimited number of matches. When faced with boundless choices, can we ever choose?

“Success” in online dating can mean many things to many people — and to many companies. Some sites or apps want to help you go on a date. Some want you to answer their entire compatibility questionnaire. And some want to create a “sticky” experience, bringing maximizers back, getting them to peruse even more choices to see if there’s a better, hotter, more perfect match.

Digital dating allows us to increase our numbers of suitors and objects of interest — Tinder says it has made 2 billion matches to date — but unless you’re a math genius or a hacker who can beat these algorithms at their own game, more isn’t necessarily the answer. It’s about finding good matches in smaller sets. Maybe algorithms aren’t there yet. Or maybe that’s not the goal of the game.

Even without computers and phones, long before screens, we’ve always wondered, “But is there someone better?” There’s a simple reason for that, although the simple reason does not have a simple solution: Dating involves humans. We are strange creatures, sometimes brutal, not always photogenic, often delicate. We’re fascinated by metrics, big pictures and endless horizons of possibility. And we always, always want more.