Dating apps didn't invent people lying to get laid, that's just called Tuesday, that's called every first date since the beginning of time. Everyone's performing. I performed on my third date with my current boyfriend by pretending I didn't already know he got a ticket for speeding three years ago.
But here's what's new. Now you gotta do that whole seduction in six photos and one sentence, against every other lunatic within fifteen miles, simultaneously. It's not a date anymore, it's a Kickstarter.
And the bios. Oh my god, the bios. "Not looking for drama." Congratulations, neither is anybody, "Must love dogs." Sure, and I must love oxygen, we're really getting into the nitty gritty of who I am as a person. "6'1, but it's really about the vibe." Then why'd you lead with the height, Brad?
Then they let you see the number. How many people liked you. An actual number, glued to your face, updating in real time. Nobody in the history of humanity has ever needed to know they're trending at forty three percent this week, and yet here I am, swapping out a bikini photo for a slightly more flattering bikini photo like I'm doing A/B testing on my own soul. I used to just wonder if I was unlovable in the privacy of my own home like a normal woman. Now there's a spreadsheet.
Speaking of unlovable, I need to tell you about the worst first date of my life, and it's not even a horror story in the normal sense, nobody ordered my food for me, nobody tried to keep me, it was worse. The man had the worst laugh god has ever assembled. Like a hyena that smokes. Like a seal being startled. And I want to be clear, this would've been survivable, a bad laugh is not a crime, plenty of wonderful people sound like a dial up modem when they're happy, but the problem, the actual problem, is that he thought I was the funniest woman alive, and he would not stop proving it.
I'd say something mildly amusing, barely a joke, just a normal sentence with a little seasoning on it, and he'd throw his head back and detonate. Full hyena. Whole restaurant turning around. I told him I'm reading a book on anti gravity. It's impossible to put down. and this man is wheezing like I just did twenty minutes of tight five at the Comedy Cellar. All I was able to hear was his laugh, echoing, alone, in a restaurant that now hates us both.
I left that date having gained zero information about him as a human being, because every time he opened his mouth to speak, all I could think was, is this over yet. I don't even know his job. I know his laugh. I'll know his laugh till I die. It visits me sometimes, uninvited, like a ghost.
And there's infinite backups, that's the real kicker. Somebody's laugh personally hunts you in your sleep, you don't have to fix it, you just close the app, open it back up, and boom, four hundred fresh disappointments who haven't cackled at your dad jokes yet. It's like being handed a new husband every time the old one chews too loud, or in this case, laughs too loud, at a joke that was not that good, Chad, I was being polite.
So obviously, once you're competing with four hundred strangers at once, everybody starts getting weird trying to stick out. "I collect vintage thermostats." Nobody cares about your thermostats, Ted, they care that you said a sentence the last guy didn't. It's not a personality, it's a slogan. We've all become our own personal commercial.
And here's the part that actually keeps me up. People start believing they ARE the product. Number's low this week? That's not a glitch, baby, that's YOU, that's a referendum on your soul, personally, delivered by an app built by twenty six year olds in hoodies. Getting your self worth from a swipe rate is like asking a slot machine if god loves you. Spoiler, the slot machine does not care about you, the slot machine wants quarters.
Nobody planned this, that's the sick part. Nobody sat in a boardroom and said "let's turn love into dopamine drops." You just give a million lonely people a tiny box, unlimited rivals, and a public scoreboard, and branding falls out the bottom whether anyone meant it to or not.
Anyway I'm not saying delete the apps, I'm saying maybe don't let a percentage decide if you're worth loving, because I looked it up, and not one great love story in human history started with someone hitting forty three percent for the week. Also I made that up, I didn't look it up, but I believe it in my heart, which honestly is where forty three percent of my personality lives, and the other fifty seven percent still hears that laugh sometimes when it's quiet.