I Downloaded Dating Apps & Have No Idea Why

Recently, I downloaded dating apps and I don’t know why because the one time I met a guy on Tinder [he was close with a bunch of my friends but Tinder is just how we started talking] he also had another girlfriend in Seattle. I guess I’m doing it for the experience or just the sheer entertainment.

I started with Bumble because I always hear about my friends going on Bumble dates. The thing about Bumble is when you match with someone, the girl has to make the first move and you have 24 hours to do it. Then, once you send the message, the guy has 24 hours to reply, or the match expires. So basically the response time IS the response.

Bumble isn’t hard for me because I have no shame in approaching people first. To make your first move you can come up with a really clever pick up line like “Are you into fennec fox’s? Because I’ll be all ears when you respond” to an animal lover, or picking out the strangest GIF you can find such as a big polar bear pushing a baby polar bear into a hole in the ground and sending that. Those both got some pretty decent responses. But, what I found gets the best response, is when you don't try to think of anything creative at all. I sometimes start conversations with random statements like "You have great eyebrows" or "Oh, you again" and sometimes even "I guess I should say hi". Apparently guys love it when you show little to no interest in them.

I also tried Hinge. Hinge is a little more complex and a lot more like a social media platform. When you set up your Hinge account it asks you questions from “Do you want kids?” to “How do you feel about drugs?” it also requests that you fill out answers to three random questions. I chose 1. Name a place you’ve never been – Ikea (this was the given answer, I was too lazy to think of something) 2. Where would you want your next vacation to be – The Mountains 3. My dream job if money didn’t matter – Travel Blogger.
Some people on Hinge write paragraphs for their answers but I honestly didn’t care to elaborate so I used the shortest answers I could think of and the first things that popped into my head.

When you’ve finished going through the set up process, answering questions and adding photos, the app starts showing you guys in your area that you can potentially match with. The thing about Hinge is there is no swiping left or right. You can send people “likes”. For example you can “like” someone’s picture or you can “like” a response to a question that they answered. When you send a like it then gives you the option to match with that person and start a conversation.

The trick to Hinge though, is that you only get a certain amount of “likes” per day unless you pay for the app, but nobody wants to waste money on a dating app, so use those “likes” wisely.

Basically, Hinge is super confusing and it does strange things like upgrade you to premium for free and act like they're doing you some sort of favor. I got 15 notifications in about 10 minutes. I did not ask for this. But Hinge was all like "no, no, don't worry, you're doing amazing sweetie". 

On both Bumble and Hinge you get a match, you get a message, you make some small talk and then I want the conversation to be over honestly. But its an application kind of world and I'm just living in it, so despite what I want, Hinge will send me these weird emails that say things like "Jacob and Melyssa, all this talking means its time for one thing- a date!" and I'm sitting here like he sent me one message and I didn't respond, what do you mean you want me to go out with him. 

If I do happen to respond, the guys start asking me things like “What brings you here?” or “What are you looking for?” and honestly I’m not looking for anything. I don’t want awkward small talk over drinks and I definitely don't want to binge watch Netflix with you. I don’t know why I’m here, I’m not the type of person to meet up in person with a stranger I met on an app.

They must somehow get the idea that the conversation is going really well because they will send me their numbers and say things like “Do you want to text? I feel like it’s so much easier that this app.” No, I don’t want to text you. I downloaded the app so that I wouldn’t have to get people’s numbers and text them. When they do things like that I usually end up tossing my phone in the toilet, changing my name and fleeing the country. But more realistically I’ll just hide or delete the match so that I don’t have to deal with the guys who actually use the app correctly and want to meet up with me.

I think I’m doing this wrong. I have no idea why I downloaded these.

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