I Asked 19 Guys on Tinder… What Do You Hate Most About Online Dating?
From ghosting and “dogfishing” to endless eggplant emojis and more, online dating is a hot mess. And not in the kinda cute way. It’s a straight-up dumpster fire. 🔥
Online dating thoroughly exhausts me. Endlessly swiping till my eyes glaze over, I can’t tell one fisherman from another. I was curious to see if my matches felt the same way. Are men excitedly swiping or do they too feel the isolation and frustration that comes with using dating apps?
I asked a handful of my Tinder matches what they hated most about online dating. Some answers surprised me, while others gave me a good laugh. There’s a common misconception that guys use Tinder exclusively for hooking up while ladies want commitment. But based on this extremely small sample size…have the tables turned? 😂 Check out what these fellas had to say…
The hardest thing about online dating is…
Jordan, 25: Establishing a genuine connection. Maybe it’s because dating apps make things superficial and try to quantify people into metrics and pictures.
Joshua, 26: Matching with a 10 and meeting a 2… or people bailing on plans.
Sean, 26: People fresh out of a relationship who aren’t ready to move on.
Brad, 27: Folks copy and pasting canned opening lines.
Cameron, 27: It seems that a lot of people lose interest very quickly after a few messages and waiting for a reply…majority of the time, no disrespect, girls seem very uninterested in actually having a conversation on here.
Nick, 27: The hardest part is keeping the conversation alive long enough to get to the first date.
Paul, 27: The feeling that you’re “shopping” and there may always be something better.
Jay, 28: The posturing. People not being “real” and engaged in actual effort.
Josh, 28: Probably the fact that because it’s basically random there’s only so much trust you can get/give. Like, I meet someone in real life and I get a fairly decent picture of who they are and what they’re like even with that layer of outer shell everyone tries to project. When it’s online, the outer shell is all you’re getting.
Kale, 28: Good question. Like, everything.
Hunter, 28: It doesn’t work…does it better facilitate people getting to know others? No. Does it reduce people into objects via pictures? Yes. It’s depressing.
Mike, 28: Small talk. Like, dry conversations with no actual care or intention to learn about someone. Dead ends from the beginning.
Ross, 28: People who match with me and don’t actually live in the same city.
Tom, 28: Well, from what I’ve seen…according to Tinder, every guy is at a lake holding a fish and every girl is on top of a mountain and that’s why it’s so tragically hard to meet!
Matt, 29: I think the most frustrating, or potentially harmful thing about online dating (a la Tinder) is this distillation of people into numbers. These platforms operate much like mobile games in which matches are the in-game currency. It feeds off our pleasure response by rewarding us with these matches, and artificially increasing the game’s difficulty by gradually burying users beneath a card stack. So much so, that when prompted because we’ve run out of currency, we pay real money to achieve the currency balance we had initially. Tinder’s goal isn’t to get us to meet people. Like mobile games, it’s singular purpose is to keep us always on, and always playing, on the platform.
Ryan, 30: I suppose the lack of real interaction with others. This process moves very slowly and is very impersonal.
Brett, 31: Where to begin…I’ve been using online dating on-and-off for a while, in between relationships, basically since Tinder came out (circa 2012). It’s definitely a breeding ground for frustration, I think mostly because of the nature of its design; it’s a game with no rules or etiquette, there is nothing on the line if you don’t communicate, and it’s a place of unmet expectations. As a male, I would be lucky to get a single match in a day. That in itself is a bit of a bruise to the ego. Of those matches, maybe 1 in 50 would message me first (so, congratulations on being the one!), and maybe 1 in 10 would respond to a message I sent. In a nutshell, it’s the unrewarded effort that’s the most crushing aspect of online dating. I try to be creative and unique with my openers (can people please stop using ‘hey’ or ‘what’s up’ as openers?), but the amount of time spent doing that feels wasted when you usually just get ghosted anyway.
Lucas, 31: Flakiness or false advertising.
Jason, ageless: Well, to be honest, is flakiness. It’s, like, I don’t mind if you truly want to meet me but just fucking be honest. Don’t make plans with me then ditch.
What do YOU hate most about online dating? Let me know in the comments below!
