My grandfather’s favourite quote is: ‘Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt.’ Clearly, my nonagenarian pop hasn’t spent much time on Tinder. I hope.
Because this advice doesn’t hold for dating apps. Most people I know wouldn’t swipe right for a purely pictorial profile – no words looks lazy at best, and unpleasantly narcissistic at worst (sorry Ronan Keating, but on Hinge or Bumble you really don’t say it best when you say nothing at all). Which means we must risk being thought of as fools.
Like most digital spaces, dating app profiles have become a fertile ground for cliches and repetitive, meaningless phrases. So cliched, in fact, that they only serve to put off most potential mates.
I recently returned to the apps after a hiatus of about two years and was sorry to see the same old phrases still being trundled out. I quickly grew so fed up of it all and begun swiping left to screenshot particularly awful answers for the amusement of my friends, that I decided to put it to Twitter: what words and phrases would you ‘mute’?
Gin, as an interest, is a top turn-off, apparently. Oh, you’re a gin enthusiast? What does that even mean? Why is it always gin? And why, when we do meet, you order an IPA? The Dry January version of this seems to be ‘tea fan’. As my friend so aptly put it, ‘If one lists an anonymous object as if it is a part of one’s personality, it says a lot about one’s personality.’
‘Just another whatever lost in London.’ Aussie, NZ, Irish and generic Northerner are the big culprits. If you’re just another anything, why would I waste a couple of hours in a mid-range pub hearing about your travel plans? Also, just to flag (to men in particular) the gym is not a ‘hobby’. Sport and exercise can be hobbies. Lifting weights can be one too – although a barrel-scraping one. But the gym is a place – a sweaty, unsexy one at that.
Then there’s those who post: ‘willing to lie about where we met’. What’s that all about? Most recent data suggests that online dating has largely replaced more traditional methods of meeting someone. An upfront willingness to lie doesn’t exactly bode well for your brand.
‘Sapiosexual.’ Seriously? What is the opposite of that – ‘I bang meatheads’? ‘The literate need not apply’? While you may say ‘sapiosexual’, we read ‘pretentious snob’. Ditto ‘homeowner’. Show me your bank balance, why don’t you?
I cannot read another one of those ‘fake reviews’ from your mum/friend/teacher. They’re not funny now and they never were. Also see: ‘trying to leave the single market before Brexit’. And, as for ‘looking for a partner in crime’? Cease and desist.
Then there are those descriptions that are so ubiquitous they’re completely meaningless. Oh, you like going out but also staying in? You enjoy food and holidays? You have friends? Please, tell me more about how you’re human.
A major turn off for most is using that space – where you should be selling yourself – to list what you don’t want. Girls writing: ‘If you’re under six foot, don’t bother.’ Most apps now require the men list their height, which means you have that information at your disposal. Secondly, if you are so shallow that you wouldn’t consider spending time with someone on the basis of height, best keep that one to yourself.
Height is, of course, a major point of contention. When men passive aggressively write, ‘I’m X height because apparently that matters’, clearly, they know it matters. They’ve just chosen to be a little b*tch about it.
Similarly, when men write ‘no drama’, I read, ‘dislikes opinions that differ from my own’. Looking for someone low maintenance or who doesn’t take themselves too seriously? Probably a flop in the bedroom.
It’s clear how these phrases develop and propagate, starting off quirky or entertaining but soon enough becoming chronically overused – but it’s not so clear why. Are they a verbal tick, embedded into our brains after too many hours online? Are they the web 2.0 version of the staid pick-up line? Maybe they mask a fear of honesty, or are the phrasal shorthand for, ‘I am normal, I am just like you’.
Sometimes they have their merits – the experts among us can read them like a code. ‘I want a lady in the streets, freak in the sheets’ = misogynist. ‘Work hard, play hard’ = w*nker. ‘Must be active’ = no fatties. And, sometimes, they can be helpful. The old ‘two truths and a lie’ ice-breaking game is a great olive branch for your opener.
Even with these insights into our collective sexual romantic psyche, many dating app cliches are now completely redundant. They don’t just put me off dating – they actively make me want to die alone.
And what does it all say about the culture of modern dating and disposable hook-ups, when you can bin someone for simply calling a dog a doggo? Apps leave so little space for nuance or subtlety, turning human interaction into a split-second yes-or-no dichotomy.
What would happen though, if people really told the truth? Not like, ‘I like to be the little spoon’, but ‘I fear emotional vulnerability however still crave intimacy’. ‘I love sex but hate small talk’. ‘I’ll cover my nervousness with garrulous blather’. ‘I’m skint so can we stay in’?
I suspect I’d end up as matchless as I did on Hinge, but I’m not sure I’m ready to find out.
In the meantime, it’s off the apps and back to real life once again, where foolishness might be more charming than alarming. After all, I’m still young. Have vibrator, will travel. Although don’t tell my grandad that.
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source https://metro.co.uk/2020/01/20/mute-gin-enthusiast-dating-app-cliches-12076532/
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