If you found your partner before the advent of dating apps, I’m sorry, but I simply have nothing to say to you. Listen, I’m sure dating pre-iPhone had its challenges too. I can’t even fathom what it must have been like to go on a blind date, or to have no choice but to marry your high school sweetheart. All love, and all that, but the landscape of dating apps right now is rancid and only getting worse.
All the rumors are true, dating and hookup apps are becoming more dystopian by the minute. One only needs to look at the latest “Twitter Villain of The Day,” whether that be the Tabi Thief or West Elm Caleb, to see the general state of online dating in 2023.
When I first signed away my self-respect I thought all I had to worry about was the proverbial ghosting. I figured I would match with a few guys, we’d go on a few dates, and the absolute cruelest thing they could do would be just drifting off into the ether, like that one Homer Simpson meme. Boy, was I unprepared! Screw classes on how to do taxes or get stains out of laundry. I need a doctorate in the nuances of Tinder, need an intensive program on the ins and outs of Hinge, need an on-call professional to talk me through the inhumane abyss of Grindr.
Gone are the days of original recipe ghosting, now the best I can reasonably hope for is a GhoSTD. That’s when you go on a few dates with someone, they ghost you, and you only hear back from them three months later to inform you that you more than likely have syphilis. They offer you this possible prognosis and then fade back into obscurity. You will never hear from them again, but you will always remember the generous gift they left behind.
It used to be perverse for a man to jerk off at you on the subway, now many of us elect to this cyber-exhibitionism. We begin our interactions in sparse messages facilitated by an app, and then bring the conversation to a more intimate place. (“Let me slip into something a bit more comfortable, like Snapchat.”) Once there, you are almost always met by the Brechtian horror of their penis mid-ejaculation. It’s a jump scare on par with Psycho. But you’re a modern woman, and you can roll with this, after all, you “met” on a hookup app, and this comes with the territory you think. You go to reply, only to find they have blocked you on everything before you’ve even had the chance.
You haven’t been touched, but for whatever reason you feel like you need a cigarette.
People keep telling me that seven years ago was the golden age of dating apps. It’s like how apparently Ubers used to cost $5. But this history is always changing, and they keep pushing the year back further and further moving the line. They stare off into the middle distance, eyes lovingly remembering fonder times. Those were the halcyon days. The good ‘ole days before all the best ones were taken. I feel like I was sold this lie of milk and honey, but what I got instead was one of those clusterous rat kings, all maws and patches of fetid flesh— squirming around in pain screaming out: Looking? Into? Interested?
Many of us have been forced to evolve to survive these caustic sewers. Created new techniques to stand out from the algorithm. And like any system, there will be those who find new and fun ways to abuse its backdoors.
There are the men on Grindr who name themselves “DL,” knowing this affords them an air of mystery and plausible heterosexuality. This is like catnip to self-hating gays, and they flock to these men in droves. Afterall, it is the ultimate notch in one’s bedpost to have landed a straight man. I don’t feel I need to explain why this concept is baldly unrealistic, but it should also be noted that the majority of these DL men are in fact just cheating on their partners. In this way DL comes to mean a different thing to different people, and everyone believes what they want or need to. Who knows if this is a premeditated catfishing or just an obfuscation of the truth that netted positive results? Regardless, everyone has gotten their desired cum-outcome and so they continue.
We see this more broadly in the age section of bios. I like to refer to this as “catfishing-lite” or “catfishing-for-dummies.” People will change their listed ages, and then in their bios divulge the truth. I have seen this in both ways, posting older to reveal a younger age (34 I’m actually 28) and vice versa (Bio says 34, but I’m 46.) It is unclear if this is a play at the algorithm or simply a way to get your foot in the door with your desired audience. No matter what the intent, telling on yourself feels rookieish. If you are going to lie about your age, at least be committed like our great foremothers Fran Drescher, Mila Kunis, and Tommy Wiseau.
Then there are the straight men who play on this similar flaw in gay male ideology. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the straights have learned to weaponize the Masc4Masc manifesto. A feature of most dating apps is the nebulous algorithm. Basically, the more people who match you or engage with your profile positively the higher your “desirability score” is. This is why your grid or pool on these apps looks so vastly different from that of your friends who live in the same area. The app is trying to match you with people who are on your level. (Tinder IS calling you ugly, you’re not wrong.) Thus, to improve their score, and get noticed by more attractive people, straight men are changing their “interested in” categories to include women and men. By being the ultimate straight-passing man (by which I mean, actually and factually just straight) they can play on this base impulse of gay men to improve their chances with the women they feel they deserve access to. So, they will match with gay men without the intent of ever talking or meeting. It’s the closest a straight man can get to being Kim Petras or Kylie Minogue.
When not outright lying online, there are also men who use the algorithm to optimize their profile in frankly unnerving ways. I had matched with a man who had refined his dating process to an almost robotic systemization. He had allotted forty minutes to each date, and carried with him everywhere he went a backpack containing an objectively absurd number of condoms, lube, and popper varietals. He was like a gay sommelier (a redundancy I am aware of). This lube paired best with this brand of poppers and so on. He was beyond prepared. He was like a doomsday prepper of casual sex. It was in many ways his full-time job and his higher calling.
At some point, he mentioned to me how he was on all the dating apps, from Scruff to Tinder and even Sniffies. I remarked playfully (I’m always so playful) that he “ought to swipe on me there as well.” I felt that I too was effortlessly and masterfully navigating the dating world.
A few days later he sent me a screenshot of my own profile on one such app. I replied, “You’d better match!” I was killing it. He informed me that he had already X’d me, which I took as a joke at first, but then came to realize was serious.“Why did you do that?” I wrote back, unable to square with the fact he was both interested in me enough to fuck but also apparently not interested at all. Then he revealed to me a process that I can only describe as operationally psychopathic.
This man would screenshot every account he rejected on the apps, and match them with the images and prompts on Hinge that were engaged with. By looking at this “dud” folder he could test out which profile pictures and responses yielded the highest quality matches.
I was dumbfounded. The sheer exertion of energy and time that this machination must take. I imagined how sick someone would have to be to gather entire folders of data, the spreadsheets alone! I pictured a red string connecting me and dozens of other undesirables, and it made me furious. I was not like those other men, I was somehow better, more deserving, more valuable. I was not just data in an experiment. But what was the difference between what he was doing and what I had already opted into by using these apps?
It hurt because I was a human, but so were those other men, and though I hate to admit it, so was he.
There’s a healthy level of separation you need to employ to effectively retain your humanity and mental health on these apps. You create some distance from the images on your screen, pretending they are not real and that their disinterest or active cruelty is in some way fictitious. You tell yourself that these profiles are bots, excuse away their actions, disregard the harm you feel in an act of dissociative self-protection. All the while, everyone around you tells you: “chin up, dating is just hard right now.”
Your friends share their own tips, tell you about the things they’ve seen the ways they’ve been hurt—trying to protect you. Because, as many flirtations as you’ve had with outright deleting the apps, we all know that there’s no escape. It’s a sticky trap you either die on or chew your own arm off to escape.
I suppose at the heart of it, I can understand the impulse. Everyone just wants to be seen—wants to feel wanted. This form of dating is inherently unnatural, so it stands to reason that there is a greater sense of separation from our own humanity when we engage with these screens and algorithms. But, somewhere along the line, this need got perverted and grotesquely mangled into something more malignant. Something that only palely resembles sodality.
Can dating apps help find your soulmate? I don’t know, probably. This is the fairytale we are all peddled and constantly reaching for after all. But we would also be lying if we said that using these apps hasn’t churned us out like parts on a conveyor belt into more hardened and jaded daters.
I can say personally, that I am finding the entire act disaffecting, finding myself to be less trusting, more damaged, less myself. I can’t say if dating has always been like this, can’t say what is a feature and what is a flaw, Hell, I can’t even parse out what is a violation and what is just using the app to its fullest intent, being an effective dater. But I can say that it is becoming increasingly harder to tell what has been bait and what has been poison all along.
Thank you to everyone who sent in such thoughtful and personal responses to this prompt. If i didn't find a way to include your story in this one, I will try my best to include it down the line. As always, thank you for your support.