I hopefully come off slightly better than this. Hopefully.
I’ve been diving back into online dating a little more recently, and boy howdy there are some patterns. (Or I’m like John Forbes Nash Jr. or Charlie on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and seeing patterns where there are none. One of the two!) So here are some observations:
- The cishets are not okay
- Tinder has this weird simulacra thing going where half the profiles feel like stolen instagram photos representing people that have somehow, despite having an instagram, never existed
- For the hookup culture a lot of media likes to bang on about, there’s a lot of people with “No hookups!” prominently in their profile
- My irrational distrust of women with bleach-blonde hair and prominent makeup continues unabated
- Things that people seem to have mistaken for being their personality, or substituting for having developed one:
- Being a fan of The Office (this was mostly observed by Xyzzy, a friend of mine, but I’ve also seen it)
- Smoking pot
- Enjoying travel, or having traveled to [double digit number of countries]
- A list of geeky media, often fairly mainstream (e.g. Marvel Cinematic Universe) consumed
- Being “fluent in sarcasm”
- Okay, that last one might be a personality trait but it’s also a red flag if that’s, like, your whole main thing and you read it as a positive
- Everyone either hikes or vehemently hates hiking. Any middle ground is a sign the person is a commie traitor and actually on whichever side you aren’t, apparently
- There’s some version of each app that doesn’t keep people’s carriage returns, so The whole thing Just looks Like this and it’s Very hard to read.
- “I hate doing this” and “Just ask” are both common self-summaries that manage to tell you nothing about the person while simultaneously increasing the difficulty of figuring out what to message them about, or whether to like them at all
- Despite it being some months (or even a year) since OkCupid instituted a policy that you have to mutually like someone to message them, 80% of all profiles will include the line “I can’t see likes, so just message me!” even though messaging someone before they know you “like” them is now functionally impossible. (Even if you send an intro message, that just gets included along with the info given to you to choose whether to like them or not)
- People leave the “open to hookups” box checked on OkCupid a lot, including people who explicitly then say “no hookups” in their profile
- Scruff is intimidating
- Grindr is MORE intimidating
- Being a bisexual person on online dating means you get to swipe through a lot of straight cis women who will probably never like you back for a wide variety of valid (and not so valid, e.g. biophia) reasons. You get to put in twice the effort to only be liked back by other queers! Good times
- I miss OkCupid crunching their data to learn weird things about their dating population, like how profile photos with pets are weirdly effective
- I have seen VERY FEW men holding fish, and I am disappointed by this fact
That’s mostly it so far. I’m sure I will have other wonderful, witty, insightful opinions at some point. Coming soon to a mediocre stand-up comedy special near you! XD
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