Week One: The Law of Large Numbers
Hey! Welcome to ThursDating, where apparently I don’t actually go on dates and instead spend about 36 hours acting like an idiot on the internet. But I’m getting ahead of myself…
I’m writing this at 10:45pm on the first Thursday of ThursDating, so technically I haven’t failed yet (what an encouraging motto!), but the odds don’t look good for things turning around in the next hour and fifteen minutes. I returned to New York late on Tuesday, so I didn’t end up even opening Tinder and Bumble (my weapons of choice) until Wednesday… AKA yesterday. And it was late-ish yesterday. Well, post-Indian food and painting my nails yesterday, actually, because I can even procrastinate dating.
It’s funny that one of my initial ideas for a punishment was letting my friend swipe and message for me, because I ended up passing my phone off to her in the first ten minutes, and only dropping in to offer light feedback. (“That guy is short.” “How do you kn — “ “Nooope. Short.”) We swiped for a long time last night, with very little response, which I attributed to the late hour on a weeknight.
Then, today, I was on. the. damn. hunt. On that swipe GAME. But again, not much response — and I’m using my own past experiences as a watermark, so I don’t have crazy-high expectations. It could be that it’s a weekday, and maybe people are busy with work, but the sheer NUMBER of people I swiped through seemed like it should have yielded better.
For some math — in the last 36 hours, I have swiped through hundreds of men and have accrued:
- 29 un-messaged matches (either I feel tepid about them or can think of nothing to say. And I sent the message “I had a life-changing piece of carrot cake” earlier, so… not high standards)
- 30 pending messages (I sent one and they haven’t responded)
- 12 ongoing conversations (one of which is, I think, going okay. Confidence is key but shit is rough)
A lot of numbers there… not a lot of dates. As in, no dates. Arguably, I didn’t have enough time to get anything going, but I’ve definitely gone on a same-day date on a weeknight before (see Tinder History #1, obviously) and so I’m a little peeved. Week One and I’m not able to get even close to a date, despite swiping through a completely inordinate number of men, all of whom, I do have to say, look exactly alike. I don’t want to start off on so bad a foot, so I’ve decided to give myself a reprieve as a ‘getting back in the game’ gift… a ONE-TIME 24-HOUR-ONLY EXTENSION. A date by midnight tomorrow, or a punishment. And now: observations from the most intense 36 hours of online dating I have ever done.
- Every man in New York is a financial analyst. I suddenly understand how economic crises happen — it is literally impossible that any financial system can support paying this many people to analyze it.
- This is my first real foray into Bumble, and I’ve heard it described as ‘more serious’ than Tinder. I don’t know if that’s true, but I do know that it is about 600% whiter than Tinder. Crest Whitestrips white. Chad-and-Todd white. Avett Brothers-concert white.
- Using Bumble and Tinder simultaneously is GOOD because it encourages me to send the first message, even when I don’t have to.
- Using Bumble and Tinder simultaneously is BAD because I keep accidentally super-liking dudes because the user interface on Tinder is exactly fucking perpendicular to Bumble’s. What gives, app designers?
I’ll be back in 24 hours. Wish me luck.
