When your dating life is a joke.
“Reason why I’m on dating apps is mostly because I’m bored, it’s easy validation and it’s like people watching.
“Also, swiping helps me sleep.”
People often assume that when you download a dating app, you’re either on a quest to find the love of your life or you’re just looking for a temporary companion to spend the night with.
But let’s not forget about the unsung heroes of the dating app world – the ones who fall into a different category altogether. They’re the ones who use dating apps purely for entertainment purposes and to pass time – it’s like playing a virtual dating game show with no intention of winning any grand prize!
“Don’t get me wrong I’ve tried (to find my perfect match) but it’s just been disaster after disaster.
“So at this point I feel like it’s more a way to pass the time until I feel like I’m ready for anything and then I think it will just find me eventually. I don’t think I should force it, at the end of the day I have my whole life ahead of me.
“I feel good about myself, most of the time, and when I don’t – I have my dating apps.”
The combination of both miserable dating failures and disasters in the past serves a perfectly reasonable explanation for why someone might take a more lighter and unserious approach towards dating apps. After a string of love misfortunes, it’s only natural for a touch of cynicism to settle in and colour their perspective on the dating world.
“At this point I just don’t have very high hopes for romance all together, but I feel like personally I still get a lot of validation for myself from other people.
“Sometimes I just wanna get that and feel like ‘oh if I ever felt ready to actually look for something serious again, I would still be desirable’.”
“I feel like I constantly am looking for this sort of validation, sometimes I just get a bit starved so I just go on Tinder to take a few swipes.”
Validation and dating obviously goes hand in hand. Despite the majority of time spent on dating apps could be to just pass time, the validation that comes with it is just another positive to add to the list.
He goes on to say that the need for validation from people on dating apps is a mixture of insecurities on both looks and personality. But he is fearless in approaching these insecurities in a lighthearted and funny way.
“I have to process it in some way, the way I feel about myself and I feel like I don’t have too many options.
“Especially when it comes to strangers, I feel like your options are either limited to completely ignoring it which to me feels very ingenuine like I don’t want to just pretend I’m fine.”
“Like it’s either that, completely not addressing it or just trauma dumping on strangers which I find to be such a turn off.”
“So I just take it in a casual way, crack a few jokes around it and poke fun at myself.”
He goes on to say that a lot of people trying to date take themselves too seriously and says he feels like “you should be able to see your flaws and have a little joke about them.”
“And to be fair, when someone has a positive response to the jokes it kind of warms me up because then it shows they can appreciate my sense of humour when it comes to my own shortcomings.
“Whereas when someone finds it serious and gets concerned, I just find it funny and play along to see how far I can go before they’re like ‘okay this bitch is crazy.”
He says he never message first and will wait for them to message because “that’s just the cherry on top of the validation cake.”
“So I just wait for them to message me and then usually stay around for a while and give them funny responses.
“Sort of like, how crazy can I act before someone actually decides to drop me. Is that a psychopathic thing to say?
“It’s like, no matter how insane I am, someone will still love me.”
He goes on to say that the relationships online are still very surface level because he “feels scared letting people in.”
“It also gives me a sense of control because I can only reveal as much about myself as I want.
“I get to decide the way I’m perceived, which is something that’s way harder with in real life dating.”
He also touches on the fact that he is dating within the gay community and “a lot of it is very centred around hooking up with people.”
“Which is something I don’t necessarily want to do, especially not on a dating app because I feel like that feels very superficial. So I feel like whenever It gets close to that point I just pack my bags and run.”
“This (right) has happened so many times actually, like way too many times.
“And not even on dating apps! The worst one was this guy I spoke to for two weeks in second year.
“He ended up running into me on the street, we had a chat and then we kept texting and afterwards he tried calling me ‘mommy’ as a joke.
“I was like ‘okay he is joking’ but like somethings aren’t adding up here so I had to make sure we were on the same page because this has happened before.”
“I just asked him ‘you don’t think I’m a girl do you’ and he was like ‘actually I do’.
“And I was like shit.”
No matter how hard he tries, it seems like the confusion has a way of finding him.
“This guy I was messaging thought I was a girl and then I was like ‘I’m actually a boy’.
“And he replied ‘oh I am actually straight.
“I talked to this guy for a week… I don’t know how he didn’t question it.”
Despite the fact he does not take dating too seriously, he has managed to make meaningful connections and unexpected friendships through both Hinge and Tinder.
“With some people it started off flirty and then over time we just enjoyed each other’s company so we’ve actually remained friends.
“We’ve figured out we are not really looking for anything serious.”
It’s almost as if the universe has a sense of humour, intertwining his lighthearted and honest approach with genuine human connections.