On the Initial Barrier of Dating Apps (And Coronavirus Opinion Update) - #27 - 3/19/2020
A Quick Word on the Status of this Thread:
I have been releasing this newsletter weekly since September 2019. That's 7 months. I feel quite proud to have kept up something like this for this long and grown it to this many people. However, I will admit, it does eat a huge chunk of my time on Wednesday. If I can't get to it on Wednesday, it would rot my time on the following Thursday or Friday. Then the next Wednesday is closer.
I, including many of you, enjoy the format change. I probably put in about 4-6 hours each week on this newsletter. However, the amount of work I'm putting in is not feeling like a 1:1 input-to-ouput ratio. It's starting to feel more like a chore and that's not good. Writing, editing, researching, formatting, linking, uploading, updating the BCC list, putting them on Wordpress, cataloging fiction and poetry that I recently read, researching newcomers, etc and etc and etc. It goes on and on, trust me. A lot of work and energy into an inefficient system results in a lowered ratio. Suddenly 1:1 becomes 1:⅓. I hear from a lot of you, "I love the newsletter! I always read it!" and I understand that, I really appreciate it. Unfortunately, I need to make a change.
Starting today, this will be a bi-weekly thread. It's what I want to do. I'll put into my outlook calendar when it's gonna swing around and I won't forget.
Thank you all for understanding and hope to see you on the next thread!
My Take in One Take
Update on My Coronavirus Opinion From Last Week
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- Out of work! The government giving out the stimulus package checks in late April is too late. That safety net should've been built into the budget.
- My opinion still stands from last week: I'd be more scared of a new strain of flu, I'm still skeptical of the 20x deadlier statistic, there's too much grocery store hysteria happening, I'm skeptical of Trump declaring a Nat-Emergency (note: when he first got elected in 2016, that was my initial fear of how he could consolidate power and flex his authoritarian muscle), and that the name contributes to its scariness.
- HOWEVER, I have changed on my opinion on some stuff where I realized I was wrong: I will now agree that shutting down Hollywood and disbanding audiences is the correct course of action and is no longer just security theater, and that saying "I will go back to my regularly scheduled face touching" was admittedly tongue in cheek, but I agree with the sentiment that it's an extremely irresponsible action to not be careful with the virus. Because it's not that I will get sick - I'm fine, I'm healthy, I'm young, I'll survive - but that I could infect the elderly or those with underlying health conditions and not know I have the virus.
- I'm also aware saying "The COVID-19 Disease" is redundant. COVID-19 stands for COronaVIrus Disease 2019
- I'm now a huge believer of social distancing. It appears Texans don't give a sh*t.
- Some videos I've watched that I recommend:
+ https://youtu.be/_066dEkycr4
+ https://youtu.be/TPpoJGYlW54
+ https://youtu.be/Oq-06inhB3U
+ https://youtu.be/3PmVJQUCm4E
+ https://youtu.be/dSQztKXR6k0
Now for this week's essay!
On the Initial Barrier of Dating Apps
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{Originally written on March 4th, 2020}
At the beginning of this writing, my first Hinge match happened.
As of late, there has been a sort of desire to get on dating apps. I'm an alright man, but I got too comfortable being single. "Hey, what do you wanna do?" - Rolling over on my side - "Oh I don't know, what do you want to do?" Roll back over: "Good question, I'm not so sure." This could go on forever and ever on a Sunday morning in bed until I've given up and carry on my day like I didn't do some maniac sh*t.
I've thought about dating apps since college. Was on them for a short time, swiped till I got matches, and went from there. But I deleted them. Until as of recent, as an adult, I saw all my friends being in loving relationships. Being single was starting to feel like a bad case of athlete's foot, so I did what any 21st Century man would do and downloaded Tinder. Like I said, been on Tinder a few times. So when I opened it up for the first time since college, there they were: all my photos. My dumb, ugly photos. Mid-laugh, unshaven, unkempt. It was like finding long lost photos of a dead guy. "Yikes," I thought. "Gotta change this." "Yeah... you do," my roommate said to me that night.
So there I was, all alone on a Sunday night. I was planning on doing some writing and hopefully completing my next routine or essay like this one. And I uploaded some photos. These photos weren't the best, but hey, I thought they were good at the time. Started swiping. "Oh she's pretty... and her as well... and her." I started that at 5:00pm on Sunday (March 1st). Started swiping by 5:30pm. Built my profile out, looking at bios, and doing this here and there to my profile to make it stand out more. "I need to eat dinner," I said to myself at 7pm. "Maybe I should watch a show to get my mind off this," I told myself at 10pm. 11pm turned to 12am, 12am to 1am. I went to bed Sunday night at 2:30am. Swiping. And no matches.
Went to bed. Woke up. "I have to do something about this. I'll just swipe for 5 minutes." Nothing from 9am to 11am. "Tinder sucks. What is that other app called? Hinge?" Downloaded Hinge. Got pretty nice girls on Tinder at 2am the night before, until it started going south. I saw the same thing happen the next morning with Tinder, so Hinge was my next bet. Pretty girls from 11am to 1pm. "I have to put down my phone," I said to myself. I threw my phone across the bed at 1:30pm Monday. No matches on Hinge. I researched the hell out of Tinder and Hinge. Reading articles, blog posts, news videos, tips and tricks, everything I could find and read to be better at swiping and liking. That afternoon I had to get to my things. I had to. Did all the stuff we like to call chores and errands, while intermittently swiping in bakery lines, at the bank, in the bathrooms, and in the shower for one hot minute. I was a mess.
Then saw my roommate for the first time since Sunday afternoon and spoke to him on how I could improve my Hinge profile. He helped update it, found new photos, updated my prompts, changed some stuff around. And I was off to the races - still no matches. I knew I had to get sleep. And I tossed the app aside.
It's Wednesday as of this writing. I still checked and swiped, yet there was no hope for a match on the horizon. I looked at my photos. I looked myself in the mirror. I sent an email to Hinge Support basically saying, "Hey guys. Look, I'm no Bradley Cooper, but I'm definitely at least a Jason Sudeikis. And here's the kicker - he married Olivia Wilde, so if he can get that, then for god damn sure I can get Romina in Culver City." I demanded that my internal score be raised to a level where us "above-decent people" ought to be. They replied, "Don't worry Don! Just keep swiping and you'll improve your standing in the Hinge community!"
Not true. Tinder improved my score because my profile got overhauled by my roommate. I started seeing better looking girls with hobbies like rock climbing and sun-tanning, rather than the ones with Boomerangs of them blowing fat blunts with anime in the background. Tinder was able to fix it. Hinge hasn't. F*ck Hinge.
No matches whatsoever. Nothing. Absolutely none that are from real profiles. Fake girls love me. I'm a catch with catfish. It feels great to be appreciated by women of such class. Fake profiles saying "Message me on Snap!" I see real girls write in their bios, "I never check Tinder, so catch me on IG." And I thought, "Well if this beautiful girl wants me to DM her on Insta, fine, I'll do it." So I do, and the same thing always happens: I start talking to them, they start thinking I'm funny, cool, and smooth; they go, "You got no photos on Insta?", tell them I hate Insta and send them a link to my Tinder profile, and boom, ghosted. Happened a few times, and that was every time.
So I immediately think, well shit, I got to change something. I need better photos. I went into researching my shit like no tomorrow.
And I thought - well, wait a minute. I'm seeing a lot of girls that are not putting any effort. None whatsoever. What?
I see badly cropped photos, leading to 30 minutes of Nopes, and Disney. F*cking Disney. So many photos of that goddamn rat. If I see one more photo of that rodent, I'm going to go berserk and make a "I hate Mickey Mouse" t-shirt and wear it to Disneyland and ruin every family's chance of making precious memories.
Back on track - yeah, nothing.
I don't know what to do. I already paid for premium on Tinder. And Hinge. For 3 months.
It got to my head. Really into my head. I went into public looking at girls differently thinking "swipe left or right?" However, as soon as I left my apartment and looked around in public, I noticed a very peculiar thing that the dating apps, especially Tinder, skewed in my dating outlook: There are more above-decent girls outside in public, in general, than on the app. I thought it kept showing me the same girls with, to use a friendlier term, "appearance deficits" because I went through all the pretty girls in a 20 mile radius. But no. I began to soon realize that the app actually showed me these girls because of my internal score and thus had a negative impact on my self image and what my worth was.
Because the actual pretty people, the really pretty people, aren't on dating apps. They're getting hit on all the time from guys at bars or wherever.
I actually think that single lone wolf cold-approaching is now becoming a rarity, and for a guy to do it nowadays is almost like a sighting of a rare bird.
So that's what I came to my conclusion.
The apps are there to keep you on the platform and to make it as addicting as possible. Although Hinge is the opposite in that; they want you to delete the app, or so they say.
If you approach as a lone man, you'll be ahead of all the other guys in the crowd. You'll be the one that's able to do things without a guy group or anything like that. Forget the other 99% of guys. Who's more valuable? A guy on an app, or a guy right in front of you? ... Unless he's ugly, then the hot guy 5 miles away is going to beat the ugly dude across the bar... which begs the question: What is the correlation of how hot someone is to the opposite sex and the distance the opposite sex is willing to take? If a guy's a 10, would a girl make a 10 mile trip? If he's a 3, a 500ft trip? That can't be linear, that sh*t's a parabola. Another essay for another day.
And it kind of makes me realize why Tinder, Hinge, and maybe even Bumble might not work out for me. I'm a very social guy and any sense of a girl being into me or anything of that nature has always come from me approaching a girl. I work best in person, not over DMs, PMs, or whatever. I use M&M's. I use my humor and personality. I hate Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, especially Snap. I never liked any of them. I never felt like myself. So why would an app make me feel any different. My best bet is in-person, and I think you, yes, you that are reading this - your best bet is in person too.
Good luck.
... maybe I'm unaware of how ugly I am? Who knows.
By the time I finished writing this essay, the Hinge match unmatched with me. Which means... back to Tinder.
News.Video.Poem
1. They Clean the Buildings Workers Are Fleeing. But Who’s Protecting Them? - Janitors are going into offices to battle the invisible germs that threaten public health, sometimes without adequate protection or information about what they are facing.
2. Sam Morril: I Got This - Full Special - great joke structure
3. The Liver By Matthew Klam - Really good story about being a new parent. I like Matthew Klam's writing. The link has him reading the story. Enjoy.