by Lauren Oyler
I thought I’d join Tinder, which was the most popular platform and so seemed most likely to yield positive outcomes, though really so many people were on all the platforms that positive outcomes could be found anywhere equally. I’d heard Bumble, the “feminist Tinder,” had “better people,” but I dismissed it immediately because of the requirement that women message first. I disliked being told what to do—I made a mental note to add this to my profile, a sexy but meaningless declaration—though the elimination of at least one level of indecision was probably part of the platform’s appeal, its unromantic directness thinly veiled by the cute haplessness suggested by the name. No, where the people were was where I should go, I thought, until I spent a couple of hours on a desperately search-engine-optimized blog focused entirely on How to Get the Most Matches on Tinder and How to Write the Perfect First Tinder Message and Rules for Taking the Best Tinder Profile Picture. I knew such ingenuous cunning existed, but I hadn’t wanted to think about it.
Tinder ranked its users based on popularity, I learned, another fact I could have deduced if I’d ever thought about it. Your ranking determined how frequently your profile appeared for others to be judged, judgment being famously enacted through a swipe on the phone left (not interested) or right (interested). You can only attract by being attractive, and you can only talk to a person you’re attracted to if they’re attracted to you, too. I discovered a forum where women critiqued men’s photos before they posted them; think of it, one poster wrote, as a sisterhood, women helping women. No, I would not think of it that way—there was no room for slant interpretation here. The most banal observations were the most accurate ones. The scale of the obviousness overwhelmed. Tinder’s algorithm merely reflected what we already know, that everyone loves hot people, and that hot people have it easier, in romance, in career, in any situation into which they can insert themselves. Active users, even very successful ones, noddingly obliged that the apps were creepy and depressing, that they produced the upsetting feeling of flipping through faces like they were flannels at a thrift store, and of knowing you were facilitating the conditions to be treated like a rag yourself. Couples who met on the app were defensive, assuming you thought there was something essentially unnatural about them, though they also knew the app had introduced them precisely because they made mathematical sense, that the likelihood they would have met in person, at some place of mutual interest, was high. Meanwhile the hours they’d spent swiping through profiles could never be recovered; what use did they have, now that they’d found love, for the information they’d gathered, about how humans respond to an indisputable context? Yet dissenters still seemed hopeless—millions of users, but they couldn’t find anyone they liked, or who liked them? I remembered all the articles I’d skimmed about antisocial trends in romantic behavior, arisen, the implication was, through the attitudes promoted by Tinder: ghosting, breadcrumbing, orbiting. I’d watched a guy phubbing (too gross to really catch on) at a house party the year before, his head almost perpendicular to his chest, thumb expertly moving horizontally across his phone as he appraised photographs of singles in his area while our mutual friend was trying to talk to him about the (literal) pond-scum research she was doing upstate. She thought he was addicted, she told me, to the spark of promise each profile offered and to the power the app gave him to quickly dismiss not just women but futures, to act as if he had endless reserves of time and energy. Sitting hunched over my desk, I couldn’t abide it. I imagined a lottery ticket illustrated to look like a smartphone, promising a jackpot if you scratched off the surface to reveal “looks,” “personality,” and “job.” (Uncover three “looks” and win five hundred dollars.) Although I knew by this time my intention was to use my profile for casual deception, a hobby, I wanted to allow for the possibility of falling in love with a man so immediately wonderful that he would break down my mendacious defenses romantic-comedy style, and I felt Tinder was not designed for this. Though my profile would have to circumvent the expression of a personality, I didn’t want to go on even fake dates with people who would concede to a system in which personality was secondary. I decided to use OkCupid.
The ex-boyfriends think my willingness to use the same analysis to arrive at either one of opposing outcomes is disturbing. Don’t go on dating apps, they say, all having been on dating apps. (Their fates were mixed.) You’re too sensitive for them.
I wish they would stop saying that. The rules of OkCupid said I had to use real photos of myself, which wasn’t a problem. If I planned on going on actual dates, which I did, I needed to be theoretically forthright about my appearance. Real photos were deceptive, too, as everyone acknowledges; they fabricate trust where there is none, even or especially when the beholder knows that photos cannot be trusted. Of course people post their most flattering; I would do that, too; that’s not what I’m talking about. What I’m saying is that you hear so many stories of catfishing, of people luring others into interminable online relationships with photos of not-famous models they’ve plucked from Google, that natural photos, taken in a variety of settings, were considered the ultimate verifiers of identity in the realm of virtual bullshitting, though looking like your photos didn’t mean you were telling the truth about your occupation, interests, age, history, or unique enjoyment of coffee, food, and travel. To prevent my suitors from searching the images and figuring out who I was, I took two new pictures of myself, one by the canal in a nice sunsetty light and one in my room, both at self-portrait distance, my head filling too much of the frame. I selected a third full-body shot from my computer that I’d never posted on social media. I came up with a username that didn’t make reference to my own name or any book or movie—if only I’d known I’d been living through a golden age: now they make you use your first name—and filled out the eugenicist sidebar about my height, body type, eye color, ethnicity, languages spoken, at what level (??), religion, education, use of controlled substances, and diet. Each had a drop-down menu of responses to choose from, not customizable. Then I moved on to the fun part, the getting-to-know-you questions.
I wanted to express an alluringly evasive personality, and I knew I would have to do it through voice rather than content. In eighth-grade English, with Mrs. Hayden, who humiliated students who didn’t cover their mouths when they yawned, we were required to keep a journal five days a week, responding to specific prompts. The notebook I used was painstakingly chosen, from Target, with pink and orange stripes, college rule, lines also pink and perhaps even composed of very small dots, and I wrote in it with unfiltered enthusiasm, mainly while sitting on the floor of my closet, fascinating myself with ideas I couldn’t believe I was having, the person I became once I started to explain myself, the voice that emerged from thoughts and feelings. This was who I was! Now, though the OkCupid prompts were more juvenile than what Mrs. Hayden had assigned her eighth graders, I would try to become the inverse, a person whose voice determined her thoughts and feelings, whose thoughts and feelings you could only figure out by interpreting her voice. And even then, you would be wrong.
A bold prompt: Most people that know me would say I’m:
In light-gray font, in the box where you were supposed to fill in the sentence, an explainer: (How would a friend describe you?)
An idiot? No. The Idiot? I hadn’t read it, and I didn’t want to get myself in hot water with literary types, who love to quiz. Unassumingly beautiful? Too cheesy. (And redundant, with the photos, ha ha.) “difficult but worth it.”
That was the tone: a cliché of characterization, apparently saying much but actually saying nothing at all, but actually saying something true via the inaccessibly flirty style. Who wouldn’t want to be difficult but worth it, self-centered but valuable to others? Valuable to others through one’s self-centeredness?
Current goal (What are you working toward right now?): “. . . ok, mom”
I could probably beat you at (Go ahead and brag a little, champ): “talking about myself”
My golden rule
(The thing you live by): “never assume”
A movie I’ve watched over and over and over again (OK, you can put two if you really can’t choose): “persona”
I value (Share what matters most to you): Time for a quirky list, a mix of serious and joke interests, specific yet believably belonging to many fields and types of people: “modernism, guacamole, browsing but not buying, the low season, roller coasters, travel”
The last show I binged (This could lead to a cozy couch date in the future): “don’t watch TV”
A perfect day (A day you’d feel great about): “i’ll know it when i see it”
If I were sent to jail, I’d be arrested for (The crime you’re most likely to commit): Though I was tempted to say something pious and political—“disturbing the peace,” “assaulting a police officer”—I went with “tax evasion.” Could also be political.
What I’m actually looking for (No judgment: What do you want from this whole dating-app thing?): “i’ll know it when i see it”
Next came a box labeled Match Questions, which would be used to determine my personality traits in relation to other OkCupid users and calculate matches, measured in percentages of compatibility. Reading this I felt betrayed. Percentages! I thought this was supposed to be the wholesome dating app, pure, simple, devised by people like (the real) me, unwilling to rely totally on insipid technology just because it’s there. I wanted to abandon my project and go out drinking, but I had come so far already. I left my computer glowing in the now-dark bedroom and went to the kitchen to get a beer. Frieda wasn’t home, but the remnants of a vegan stew she’d made earlier conjured her memory. She cooked with an impressive frequency and always offered to share; she said she liked to cook for other people because it helped her deal with her bipolar disorder, dropping this information so casually into our conversation that I thought she must have mistranslated it. I repaid her generosity of supply and spirit by using her Q-tips and never cleaning the kitchen.
It came to me as I was contemplating a good deed, any good deed, wiping up the orange soup dotting the counter, putting away the half onion, maybe even spraying the area with Öko Allzweck cleaner. I rushed back to my room, turned on the light, and sat down at my computer renewed: This was no longer a personal project, a dalliance with earnest dating-app usage, but a purposeful critique of the system. I could be anyone I wanted (or did not want, as the case may be), and my deception would not be selfish, cruelly manipulative of innocents looking for love, but a rebellion against an entire mode of thinking, which was not really thinking at all, just accepting whatever was advertised to you. Dare I say: it was political? If I ever wrote again, I could write about it. People who took themselves very seriously would get mad at me.
The website told me I could answer as many Match Questions as I wanted, but that the more I answered, the more accurate my matches would be. That’s what you think! I answered one hundred. I’m not going to list them here. You can go on the website and answer some if you want to know what they’re like. It’s fun because it’s designed to make you seem interesting.
Just before I declared my profile complete, I added “in the mood for love;)” to the question about my favorite movies; Persona was doing too much work there. I read back over my answers: Would I date this person? Absolutely not. I was so frustrating. I seemed combative, wily and unyielding, immature and in denial about it, yet also typical, typical, typical. I would probably insult you in bed and call it feminist.
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I STARTED RECEIVING MESSAGES WITH SUSPICIOUS IMMEDIACY, and they were written as if I had already met the sender. “Hey you.” “Hey ya!” “Hey! How’s it going?” “hey, just wanted to say hi.” “Hey what’s up?” “what’s going on it’s Marc.” “If we could both travel around the world tomorrow, where would we be heading? Let’s get some ideas on the table!” “Gun laws in America: discuss.” “my fav thing is to provide oral pleasure to one woman—just one—in every city to which I travel to.” “I would go down on you until the sun cries.” “so what’s your take on feminism then?” Men in India looking to talk. Men in Pakistan looking to talk. Men in Bangladesh looking to talk. Men who expressed wonder at our 76 percent compatibility, as if no closer match existed for them. “u kno what they say about ppl who assume . . .” One man asked what other Bergman films I liked. One man had a very bad hangover from partying until 8 a.m. that day lol! Some asking wie geht’s, but not many. I sent an email to a friend expressing shock-but-not-shock-at-all about the state of affairs and she supplemented her own anecdote: For a month, she and her two male friends experimented with a paid premium version of Tinder, Tinder Gold, which in addition to letting you swipe on singles around the world—the free version being location-based—allowed you to see who had liked you, a less intentional method of approval than the swiping. (OkCupid had this feature too, I saw, represented by a star and escalating number in the upper right-hand corner of my profile; when I clicked on it, the profiles of men who had liked me were blurred out and covered by a box that said I, a “total catch,” could see who’d liked me by joining the A-List.) At the end of the month, my friend said, each of her male friends had a couple dozen likes, from women who mainly seemed like their type. Despite being about as attractive as the guys—one of whom was actually very hot—my friend had over four thousand likes.
The Bergman guy was thirty-two, six foot one, straight, thin, white, Asian, atheist, spoke English native, Korean native, and German fluent, had attended university, smoked occasionally, drank often, sometimes did drugs, Taurus, and 91 percent compatible with me. In his first photo he was smiling, not looking directly at the camera, at a party, in flattering pink light, wearing a normal shirt; there was the sense that people were moving and laughing just beyond the frame. In another he was kissing a terrier. In another he was climbing a rock. He had a long face, a narrow chin, hair like male movie stars in the nineties (the swoop), and very defined calves. He liked cooking and chess and worked as a teacher. One can take in this information much faster when it’s presented in bullet points, with selective bolding and a lot of white space.
Ignoring a concerning mention of something called Relationship Anarchy (capitalization his), I replied that my other Bergman favorites might be red flags and I would prefer to get to know him before I revealed so much about myself. Though (or because) it was after midnight he responded immediately—a green dot next to his username indicated he was online—with hahas and more questions. (Though admittedly boring his personal favorite was Wild Strawberries.) He was cogent and nonrobotic, worldly, getting of it, not at all bad. After about fifteen minutes I noticed that I was sitting in the dark messaging with a guy from a dating website at one in the morning and said I was going to bed but that we should meet for a drink this week, my schedule being open; he said tomorrow at this bar in the Reuterkiez? The bar was highly rated on several platforms. Fine.
I woke up to more messages, not from him. The necessary sifting had the desired effect of pulling me away from social media, and although the waste of time was functionally equivalent it felt productive, almost as if I were meeting new people. When I abandoned my inbox and began scrolling through the men the app suggested for me—sortable by Match %, Distance, Last Online, Special Blend—I was surprised that many piqued my interest, not as potential subjects for my personality experiment but as people I might actually want to date. The Special Blend seemed to know what I wanted and fed it to me endlessly. I envisioned myself hitting it off with an Italian postdoc, an American artist, a German artist, a German engineer, another German artist, a Spanish artist, a Spanish Marxist, a Moroccan PhD candidate studying ancient languages, a Slovenian journalist, a Russian translator. Even an Australian project manager, working at a startup, and a British bartender/DJ compelled me with self-effacement appropriate to their jobs. In our imagined meetings my role was always diminished, my only emotions a sense of giggly ease and magnetism, relief at like-mindedness. Objects online are less sexy than they appear,
I reminded myself, not believing it at all. I began to regret agreeing to go on my first date with Bergman, who was not as enchanting as some of the others, many of whom seemed happy, well-adjusted, and self-aware. I’d had no idea I’d be able to be judicious. How could there be so many people with whom I might have a believable relationship? I sent a few messages to the matches who met my height requirement—all copy-and-pasted except for a calculated reference to something specific in the man’s profile, making sure to change each missive before I sent it off so as not to reveal this was an assembly-line effort—and got up to make coffee. The ex-boyfriends are thinking of, but not mentioning, the times when I Gchatted or text-messaged them some particularly worded opinion or fiery emotional missive, something that sounded as if it had just then erupted from a core of intense feeling that they would have believed genuine if I hadn’t already sent it to them a day or two before, in the same incensed tone and often the very same verbiage. Haha i suck, i’m the worst, bad1!!!, I’d always say, and then try to forget about it.
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RELATIONSHIP ANARCHY (RA) IS A PHILOSOPHY THAT REJECTS definitions and rules, Bergman told me, drinking a Moscow mule, the ring on his pinky distracting from an otherwise normal outfit. The ring hadn’t been featured in any of his photos. He had a disarmingly soothing accent, a combination of springtime allergies and having grown up in Sydney with a Korean mother and Scottish father, an upper-class Commonwealth fluidity atop a bed of congestion, garnished with a distant staccato. Everything he said sounded right, even when it was totally ludicrous. The hair, shiny and thick, long but not too long, likely contained some subtle product, suggesting confidence and control. He had studied German in school and had lived in Berlin for seven years, but when he spoke the language to the bartender the consonants didn’t manage to transcend the softness of his voice, though she replied in her own accented German and not in English, which is not how anyone ever responded to my attempts, even when I thought they were competent.