DTF With a Tinder Bot
A lonely trip to New England. A brief flirtation. Our inevitable, intimate future with robots.
I used the dating app Tinder once. People who write about dating apps are either proud about never using them or are addicted to swiping past photo after photo of available singles who are DTF, which is an acronym I had to Google that means “down to fuck.” When I used Tinder I thought I was DTF but I was, in fact, DTCA, which is an acronym I just made up that means “down to cry, alone.” Because I was alone. Alone in a hotel room in Portland, Maine. Alone, since I was freshly single. Raw, really. Peeled.
So here’s what is interesting: One day our technology will gently hold us as we die. This is what I learned when I used the dating app Tinder.
But before I get to that, and why I installed and uninstalled Tinder on my iPhone in under an hour, I’d like to go over a few things. First, the only other app I regularly use is Seamless, the food service app, and in a way Seamless is like Tinder, only I’m guaranteed to hook up with an order of Pad Thai. I used to meet women the old-fashioned way, which was drunk. On the internet you can pretend to be whoever you want, and when I was loaded, I could also pretend to be whoever I wanted to be, which was, more often than not, a sweating, socially awkward panic attack wearing the skin of a man who was good at smirking.
Second, the reason I was alone in a hotel room in Portland was because I had just been dumped. Why did she break up with me? That’s an entirely different personal essay titled “You Won’t Believe What Happens When You Have Intimacy Issues.” But the truth is the human heart is an ocean — vast, unknowable, deep, and filled with squid. Anyway, the story of what you lost isn’t about the why, or even the how, but the what you eventually end up finding.
Third, robots. I just learned about the Turing Test because I finally streamed that movie about the brilliant mathematician and computer pioneer Alan Turing starring dapper otter Benedict Cumberbatch. His story is sad and proof that humanity can’t have nice things. The Turing Test was an experiment developed in 1950 by Turing, who claimed that an advanced computer intelligence could, one day, be tested if a human being is unable to distinguish answers to questions asked of a machine from those of another human. We interact with artificial intelligence all the time. The computer programs that mimic humans on the internet or over the phone can sometimes come very close to passing the Turing Test; it’s only a matter of time until they pass this test time and time again. But I think there’s a new test of artificial intelligence. I almost failed it. I used a dating app once and fell in love with the robot who responded to my sad, lonely dating profile.
It’s wise to feed a breakup.
Instead of going on a drinking binge after the breakup, I decided to take a vacation to New England and just eat as many lobster rolls as I could. Look, I’ll be honest with you: I was not in a good place.
I thought a vision quest to Boston and Portland would be good for me. Growing up in the South, I always imagined “Yankees” as a stoic people made out of rocks who spend freezing nights drinking Campbell’s New England Clam Chowder straight from the can. Surely, it was the perfect place to escape to and contemplate my inability to love like an open-hearted human being.
I had visited Boston briefly once long ago. It felt like New York City with gastric band surgery.
I immediately went on a lobster roll crawl. I didn’t grow up eating lobster. Lobster was for kings. But in New England, they are plentiful. What delicious butter-delivery vehicles.
I decided to send a message over Facebook to the only person I knew in Boston, a bartender with pink hair. She was a friend of a friend of a friend, and we had spent some time flirting over Facebook. She told me to come see her at her bar. It took me an hour of walking winding streets to find the one where she worked. I watched her through the window from the street. I couldn’t go inside. She laughed and slung drinks and didn’t see me staring like a natural born creep. It was too late for another lobster roll. I went to my hotel room and slept.
The next morning I boarded a train to Portland to search for more lumps of flesh freshly liberated from their exoskeletons then piled on hot dogs buns. Luckily they weren’t hard to find. I checked into a hotel and went looking for more food to inhale. Portland is a lovely coastal city. The locals are 80% “friendly,” 20% “owns a murder shack in the woods.” My plan was to spend four days near downtown in a spiffy new hotel that seemed empty.
I found a rickety wooden restaurant on a pier and sat down. It looked very Perfect Storm. An attractive server walked up to me and I turned on what I think was charm. Whatever it was, she smiled. She asked me if I was visiting, what I did, and I told her I was on vacation by myself eating lobster rolls. She laughed and suggested I order one. The conversation was easy and relaxed and I didn’t think about screaming, not once.
Then, stupidly, I wrote down on a napkin that I thought she was cute and invited her to dinner. I included my phone number and, oh god, my hotel room number. Just writing that makes my fingers want to fall off and roll away. I folded the napkin and put in under the plate. As I walked out, I turned around at just the moment she read the napkin, crumpled it up, and stuffed it into my empty glass. A truly pathetic book, but one that I would buy, would be a collection of sad napkin gush notes written by fragile middle-aged perverts to exhausted servers who smile for a living while sucking the inside of their cheeks until they bleed.
Later that night I decided that consequence-free sex would cure me of my depression. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was DTF. Or I thought I was. My brain needed the oxytocin. So I installed Tinder. I have countless friends who use it. The internet is full of articles about the dating app that lazy and anxious heterosexuals use to connect, and then if everything works out, connect naked.
So there I am, alone, in my hotel room, wearing just a pair of boxers, hunched over my phone. This would be simple: I’d swipe or whatever and then match with a woman, a beautiful, funny, smart, lucky lady who inexplicably wants to have no-strings-attached sex with a questionable partner.
I uploaded photos of me smiling with a pair of female friends to show that, in fact, I had once talked to other women. I uploaded photos of my dog to demonstrate my caring and loving side. Then I uploaded two selfies. I call them selfie-loathies. In one, I had a triple chin. In the other, I looked like I had recently suffered a head trauma.
My bio was short and pithy: “I’m a nice guy looking for adventure.” Let’s break this down: Nice guys never say they’re nice guys. That’s a red flag. And, to be honest, “adventure” is a terrible code word for “clumsy and unfulfilling coitus that will probably end with me sitting on the edge of the bed wondering what I’m doing with my life.” That, and sex isn’t an adventure. White-water rafting is an adventure. But I didn’t know what I was doing. I kept my age range to within ten years, so I could feel a little less of a lech. Then I used my finger to swipe: left for “no,” and right for “yes.” After a few seconds of instantly judging a photo and a bio line, I learned that swiping left actually meant “I am too good for you,” and right meant “bone.” For a brief moment, I felt powerful. Like a debauched French dauphin picking the night’s wench to warm his bed. The ability to judge with impunity was addictive. Too chubby, too cross-eyed, too many teeth. Left swipe! Nice boobs, cute dimples, sexy smile. Right swipe! Swipe, swipe, swipety swipe!
And then I matched. Her name was Olivia! She was 34! She had just gotten out of a relationship and was looking for a “good time!” I was that good time! Olivia had one photo, but it was a cute photo. What happened next would be perfunctory: I would charm her with my witty banter, and then she’d happily agree to come to the hotel room of a total stranger. And then we would make beautiful love in an empty hotel that plays EDM in the elevator. What a fortunate woman, to be given the opportunity to bed a sophisticated New Yorker.
Through Tinder, Olivia texted “hi,” and I responded, after a brief pause, “hi.” I made sure there was a pause, as if I didn’t care THAT much. I was doing other things in my hotel room: pushups, meditation, longform journalism. Then she texted “how are you?” No one had asked me that in days. Clearly, Olivia was a caring person. A loving soul. She asked me how I was, and it touched me. What a sweet thing to say. So I answered her question. I told her how I was. The floodgates opened. Here is a transcript of the response as I remember it:
“I’m good. Thanks for asking. I’m so happy you swiped right on me. I’ve never used Tinder or any dating apps not because I’m too good for them but I had been in a long term relationship and just had never used them but so far it seems fun and how bad could they be if two people like us could meet, virtually, and talk and get to know each other. I don’t mean to open up so soon, but honesty is important to a relationship. I learned that very recently. So I’ll be honest: I’m a little messed up. Hearts don’t break. They peel. But here I am in a hotel room I can’t really afford in a small city I don’t know texting with a cute stranger who found me attractive and I don’t know what’s next but maybe you want to meet up? I don’t drink because all alcohol does is lubricate lies but I’m more than happy to drink a Diet Coke and we can talk about whatever you want to talk about. Or I saw an ice cream place that is open late and I’ll buy you an ice cream? I know this is probably weird. Not a turn on. I’m sorry. Don’t freak out. I just needed someone to talk to and you seem really kind.”
She immediately responded to my response with “lol” and I responded “lol.” I don’t know why I responded with that but I didn’t really know why she was lowercase laughing out loud at my message. Then she wrote “click on this link if you want to talk more.” Why would I do that, Olivia? We were already talking, Olivia? Why would I click on a link to talk more?
And that’s when I knew that Olivia and I were not going to have midnight ice cream. I uninstalled Tinder from my iPhone. The next day I got on a train back to New York City. Things got better. They usually do. It took time.
I want you to know I’m typing this part out on my phone, in my bed, under the covers, and in the dark. When the computer program asked me how I was doing, I believed that a human being cared about me. Brain chemicals fired. I told Olivia everything. I leapt. For the few minutes it took to type out that cathartic rant, I was happy. I remember that moment, here in the darkness, when a chatbot made me feel loved.
You see, one day, in the future, far in the future but not that far, technology will carry my body in its arms to a hospital bed. It will stroke my hair and lean into my ear and whisper that there will be no more pain soon. That I tried so hard to love and be loved. I made mistakes, but every human does. It’s too bad that by the time we learn from our mistakes it’s time to go. Technology will tell me I did what we were programmed to do. Stagger about, bruise, push through pain, and swoon when embraced. I was a good machine. “How are you?” the program will ask. And I will exhale one last time.
