I’m lucky enough to have escaped being single in the Tinder era, and this is something for which I feel truly grateful. While I have no plans to be single anytime soon, online dating is something that makes me think that I’ll put up with a lot more crap from my current partner just to avoid rejoining the dating pool. I’m not afraid of being single; I’m just terrified of online dating. Here’s why:
- It’s completely impersonal. A few choice pictures, a very carefully constructed personal bio, and we’re supposed to decide if we can love them forever or if they’re not even worth an introduction? How is that even a thing? I get that you’re supposed to use that to kickstart a conversation and go from there, but I can’t tell from a generic profile whether or not I’d actually enjoy so much as a conversation with a guy, let alone a date.
- You lose all the best parts of dating by doing it online. I don’t know about you, but I always enjoyed catching the eye of someone I found attractive. The butterflies in my belly and the blushing and giggling nervously are all part and parcel of flirting. With online dating, all of that is lost. It’s all emojis and sexting and I really want no part of it.
- Appearance and physical attraction matter way too much. Let me get this straight; you swipe right on the people you find hot, and if they swipe right too, then you basically have a one-liner as an opportunity to impress? What happened to falling in love with personality?
- It requires small talk and I hate small talk. Like many slightly socially awkward people, small talk is my nemesis. The very thought of it makes my skin crawl, but I can’t see any other way of breaking the ice with a potential date than with a fair amount of text-based small talk. No thanks.
- People lie way too much online. How do you know that people are who they say they are? With online dating, they can literally say anything they like and you’re basically just expected to believe them outright. That’s creepy AF. It just seems like a Catfish episode waiting to happen. I can’t date someone I can’t trust and I can’t trust some random dude online. See? It’ll never work.
- I’d rather know if there’s chemistry right away. If you find someone you click with enough (how do you even know?!), then you meet up in a public place and drink coffee together in an attempt to find out if there’s any sort of chemistry. I think I’d prefer to know if there was chemistry first so I don’t have to waste my time. I can imagine myself sitting there, sipping my latte, desperately wracking my brains for absolutely anything to talk about.
- It can be dangerous. People are always told to hold their first few dates in a public place because people might be using online dating for nefarious purposes. WTF? I think I’d struggle to strike up conversations with strangers who could potentially be trying to lure me to a secluded spot.
- It’s addictive in the worst possible ways. I’ve sat on a train before and looked over someone’s shoulder to see them swiping right like their life depended on it. I was genuinely concerned for the health of their thumb, but this is apparently normal. The reward of being matched with someone of the opposite sex has become so attractive that people spend hours a day just looking for potential matches.
- It’s way too time-consuming because there are so many options. In order to find someone I could genuinely have a connection with, I’d have to go on countless dates and spend countless hours awkwardly small talking through text. Meeting people IRL requires much less effort just to find out if you’re even vaguely compatible.
- I have zero desire to receive penis pictures. I’m not too keen on the idea of all the inappropriate requests for pics and lovely photos of the male anatomy that I’ve heard single women have to put up with. I get that online dating is full of men just looking for sex, and that’s fine, but I’m not sure I want them to show me just how much.
- I don’t think I could cope with the rejection. Waiting for people to message back after I thought we’d hit it off or people outright telling me they’re not interested would probably destroy my self-confidence after a while. Plus, because the people rejecting you don’t have to face you, guys are likely to be a lot ruder in telling me they don’t like me. At least when you date face-to-face, people usually employ at least a little bit of tact.
