I'm not that excited about dating apps. The ridiculously small number of cliché personalities considered cool in which people are trying to fit in (more or less consciously) makes it feel like a simulation. A simulation with rules I don't want to follow, it feels like a childish game of play pretend. And the worst part comes when, by chance, you stumble upon someone you actually know pretty well in real life, unrecognizably wrapped in a completely different person.
Despite the hate, I do use dating apps. There are great people out there, and I've met some of them. I also am a strong believer in minding my own fucking business, so many analogic ways of meeting people are not for me. With longer or shorter breaks, I've been using dating apps since around 2017. I don't quite remember how it was back then, but boy I do have strong opinions on how it is now (late 2024), and I think it's the time to write them down. For the future me (or anyone else). In that scope, this page is going to be updated each time I encounter a new cliché or trend or whatever that I find disturbing, depressing, nauseatingly cringy or concerning.
Before we start with the list, it's important to frame everything right. I live in Berlin, maybe the place with the most questionable dating ethics in the world, and definitely with the highest density of wannabees and attention seekers. I'm also male and straight as a ruler, so my observation are limited to the opposite sex.
At last, let's not forget about the matching algorithms. They supposedly try to give you what you want. So maybe, just maybe, I'm the one who's fucked up and the algorithm is just doing its job. Oh well... I just hope that my journey won't take too long.
This is nuts, and it's the thing that drove me to write this page. I don't know when this started because the time of the discovery, was my first in about two and half years on dating app.
It's meant to be if you like to share your food with me , looking for someone who likes sharing food , we'll get along if you like to share your food ... these are just a few examples. Look, I'm not rich, but maybe I'm too well off to understand the hunger ravaging the Berlin's hippest neighborhoods? Or, maybe it's the other way around, I'm too cheap to understand the need of Berlin's white middle class to play poor (and sexy)? Or is this code-word for some new kink?
A good friend of mine suggested that, as we experience troublesome times (the climate crisis, the rise of the far right, wars you get the point), people are reverting to their primal instincts. And what's at the bottom of the Maslow's pyramid? Food and stuff, two steps below sex.Psst, tech bros! Now's the time to use GPT to write your own, monetized, food sharing app!
I hope that my friend is joking, or at least that he's wrong. But I got one last bumble prompt to back his theory: An essential to a successful first date is finding out if we can survive sharing appetizers. I copied this one letter by letter, I swear.