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Three or four exchanges then silence is so consistent a pattern that it is almost always structural rather than personal. The usual cause is that the conversation has no momentum to lose.
It feels like rejection, but most of the time nobody decided anything. The thread simply ran out of things to say.
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'How was your weekend?' 'What do you do?' 'Any plans this week?' Each is answerable in four words and none of them gives the other person anything to work with. Two rounds of that and the exchange dies of boredom, which reads exactly like rejection but is not.
A better version adds something of yours first: 'I spent Saturday trying to fix a bike I do not really know how to fix - did you do anything more successful?' It answers its own question before asking, so the other person has something to react to.
If they write six words and you write six words back, you have agreed to a conversation that cannot go anywhere. Someone has to put something real in first. It may as well be you, because the alternative is a slow fade.
That does not mean writing essays. It means one extra sentence of something real - an opinion, a small story, a detail about your week that invites a reply.
A dating app conversation has a shelf life of roughly two to three days. After that it quietly becomes a texting relationship with someone you have never met, and those end without an event.
Suggest something low-pressure once there is mutual engagement. Not on message one. Not on message twenty. Something like 'I am enjoying this - want to get a coffee on Saturday morning?' is enough. It is specific, easy to say yes to, and easy to decline politely if they are not ready.
Some people go quiet because they met someone else, got busy, or lost interest in the app altogether. That happens no matter how good the conversation was.
One fade tells you nothing. The pattern only means something when it happens at the same point again and again.
Ask one specific question about something in their profile. Offer something of your own alongside it, so they are not being questioned. Propose meeting once it is flowing.
If they give short replies twice in a row, let it go. That is triage, not failure, and it frees you for the ones who are actually engaged.
Judge any change over a couple of weeks of conversations rather than one thread, because a single quiet match can never tell you whether the new approach is working. Look for whether more of your threads now make it past the fourth or fifth message.