Getting back on the apps

I usually treat dating apps with disdain. They have such a lot of structural problems that are probably not possible to fix given the incentives. Other writers have done an excellent job of cataloguing them, so I shall point you in their direction (see the footnote if you wish to be thoroughly depressed¹1. Jacob’s argument, in a nutshell: the USP of all these apps is the userbase. OkCupid worked for this reason, but of course as people pair off they leave the site and there’s no good way to replenish them. This is a fundamental structural problem: by design there’s a lot of evaporative cooling, leaving the less partnerable people. Basically the network effect but in reverse. The apps all converge on the same mechanism, which is basically Tinder-like swiping, and with almost no way to actually show off who you are (compare old-school OkCupid with Tinder, which lets you put in six photos and a bio. Hinge doesn’t even let you have a free-text bio. Madness!). Basically, mass-market apps are doomed to rot, where the quality of the modal user ends up looking like this (from The Tyranny of the Marginal User):

The first thing you need to know about Marl is that he has the attention span of a goldfish on acid. Once Marl opens your app, you have about 1.3 seconds to catch his attention with a shiny image or triggering headline, otherwise he’ll swipe back to TikTok and never open your app again. Marl’s tolerance for user interface complexity is zero. As far as you can tell he only has one working thumb, and the only thing that thumb can do is flick upwards in a repetitive, zombielike scrolling motion.

Generally people hate the apps. I spent the last three years away from the apps, preferring to date the old-fashioned way. Well not that old-fashioned – I wasn’t meeting local maidens in church – but through friends, at events, chatting people up in coffee shops, whatever.

But my enthusiasm for in-person dating waxes and wanes, and I find it takes a lot of effort, particularly in London where making eye contact is illegal.

With a sigh I opened the App Store and downloaded the usual suspects.

Creating a profile after such a long hiatus was a strange experience. I found at my advanced age I was much less enthusiastic about crafting a perfect profile that maximises my appeal, and wanted instead to either show some rough edges or just give something like an honest appraisal of myself.

I was reminded that inside the app you are an interchangeable database record, one of unlimited options in a city of ten million people. Once you escape containment and move into the Real World you become a person and have some chance of building a connection.

Tinder: a total bust, basically zero matches except for a lovely super-smart Slovenian who I matched with, immediately had a long conversation with (she opened with “CTO is exactly my type 🙈”²2. Technically ex-CTO but the aura persists which was a very good sign), and met up with in Berlin. Sometimes you just get lucky. It’s been crickets since.

Hinge is the best, but more aimed towards long-term relationships, which I’m not super keen to get into while I’m in this liminal phase of my life, figuring out where I want to live and what I want to do. I do seem to have entered a fully WhatsApp-based relationship with (another!) cute Slovenian, where we exchange long voice notes about our writing and Big 5 traits.

I’m in a funny age bracket. The ultimate Hinge hack is the “Liberal/Long-term relationship/Wants children” trio, but I would be lying or at least stretching the truth on all three counts. (‘Liberal’ doesn’t really mean anything in Britain anyway – which one do I pick if I think drugs should be legal and we should concrete over the green belt?) So that limits my options a lot, and understandably women in their thirties who aren’t partnered and want kids don’t have time to waste on a childfree deadbeat like me.

I will admit to paying for a month of PhotoAI to see what images I could make of me doing things that make me look less like I spend all my time in front of a screen or taking ketamine. I did not use any of them.

I did however use Gemini to fix up some images. There’s one of me that’s okay but my eyebrows are a bit patchy – I have trichotillomania, where you compulsively pull out your hair, and though it’s pretty mild at this point I still overpluck my eyebrows. Normally I use a bit of eyebrow pencil so I don’t think a digital touch-up is unreasonable. Not sure it did a great job on my “Eyebrow Enhancement Request” though:

Quite distinguished.

To my surprise I quite enjoyed my initial foray. A few matches with cute girls, some fun conversations. But it’s difficult to use apps in a way that makes them a complement to ‘offline’ dating, rather than a replacement. You start to have a hunger for likes. You spend more and more time on them. They’re a slot machine that keeps you hooked on validation. Your regular reminder:

Suddenly you notice you’re spending really a lot of time doing this. In bed. On the tube. On the toilet. You try not to take it personally when the flow of matches reduces to a trickle. You hear how your friends are getting loads of matches, wow I can’t even keep up with all the hotties I’m getting. Fuck you.

It must be my profile. Let’s edit it 1000 times and A/B test different photos, figuring out which should go first or which shot from your collection shows off the exact maximally-attractive set of traits I want to signal I have. Remember that you get exactly two hundred milliseconds in which to prove you are worthy of a conversation.

You post it to Reddit to get some helpful feedback from terminally online gooners. They say things like: “You look like you are about to cry.” “You look sad in all your pictures.” (Maybe I am fucking sad.) “Vegan, aluminium free deodorant. It smells over here.” You delete your post.