Tinder promises instant connection. Theoretically, we match with someone, and after long bouts of messaging and late night conversations we meet up, decide we’re perfect for each other, and start dating. But that’s almost never the case.

Right off the bat, I discovered that a sizable number of the people I encountered were only there to do the nasty; barely-there undie pics and bios proclaiming “Versatile bottom” and “Show me what you got, no fems please” had me wondering whether I was on Tinder, Grindr, or some depraved forum on a backdoor kink site. At one point, after a long and actually really cute conversation about my inability to bake, this one guy adorably offered to teach me how … and then also offered to do really gross things to me on top of a floured kitchen counter.

I was also completely right in guessing that matching is determined mostly by looks. For most of this week, I’d only matched with three people, even though I’d swiped right about a hundred and fifty million times. (I know, right? Such a great boost for my self-esteem.) And by Sunday night, I’d matched with about thirteen, but I’d already forgotten when I’d swiped right on them. This in itself is a major problem because it perpetuates the (awful and completely wrong) idea that people are objects to be appraised, approved, and forgotten about until they resurface.

“ Our bios become a reflection of our insecurities that only we can see, and when even the best possible dream of yourself only gets three Tinder matches in four days, that hurts.”

When I was downloading the app, I read a review of Tinder on Google Play that stated: “If you’re looking for chitchat or a casual hookup Tinder is great, but good luck finding something real here.” And I quickly realized how right he was. For one, the vast majority of the few conversations I had ranged from mutual freakouts over musical artists (surprise — lots of gay men on Tinder like Lana del Rey) to a mutual love of romcoms. For another, I wasn’t “real” on my bio. To escape the age restrictions on Tinder, I posed as an eighteen-year old … mostly because the underage people who actually used their real age in their bios were pretty much there to hook up with older men, and I wanted to be taken seriously, whatever that meant here. So I decided to play strategic. I went from David, sixteen-year-old high school senior with un-fabulous skin and a love for writing to David, eighteen-year-old freshman at Vassar (one the schools on real-life David’s app list, though for my profile I picked Vassar more out of geographic adherence to my outright lies than anything else) with airbrushed skin and a love for writing, photography, and traveling into New York often to spend weekends with fellow sophisticates. While this may be an extreme example of presenting yourself in the way you want to be seen by others, I did what I did for the reason most people embellish their dating profiles; they want to be seen in a better light. Our bios become a reflection of our insecurities that only we can see, and when even the best possible dream of yourself only gets three Tinder matches in four days, that hurts.

“I became a terrible, terrible human being who toyed with people and lied easily and swiped left and unmatched just because it was easy to; shopping for people, it seems, is surprisingly addictive.”

And even with the eventual thirteen matches, the amount of real, deep, and meaningful conversation Tinder promised me revealed itself in one person — and that was because he’d latched on to one of the many lies I put on my bio. He was also named David, and he was sweet, funny, actually 18, and went to Fordham Lincoln Center, where he majored in political science and planned to pay his way through college himself because he came out to conservative parents. It actually sucked worse knowing all that; he joined Tinder because he was really hoping to find someone to fall in love with, and maybe he might have found that spark of hope in me the way I probably would have found it in him if I had actually been me. We’d promised to meet each other on October 3rd, and I deluded myself for a while into thinking that I could maybe go to the city after I finished my SAT Subjects — knowing full well that he’d been interested in someone who wasn’t me and that by the end of the week, I’d be gone because I hated the person Tinder made me.

Tinder had become a game. I found myself swiping right on people I didn’t find attractive just to see if they’d match back, lying to people I actually liked, and stringing along guys who genuinely thought I was attractive just because I liked the attention they gave me. In essence, I became a terrible, terrible human being who toyed with people and lied way too easily and swiped left just because it was easy to; shopping for people, it seems, is surprisingly addictive.

And that scared me too much to keep my account active.