Online Dating Is Really Ruining Romance

I’ve been single for seven years now.

Each year of my life, that number gets larger, and I wonder when it may ever change. For the better part of that time, I’ve wished I had a partner and yearned for the universe to give me the sweep-me-off-my-feet, meet-cute-sparked, star-crossed love I saw in all the movies and read in all the books; only in the last two years have I start to become more comfortable — and truly content — being single.

In the times when I wished for a partner, I would consult online dating apps. I tried my hand at it, but it never worked. In fact, it made me feel sick.

To preface, I’m not shaming anyone who engages with online dating sites or apps. I have friends who have met really awesome partners on dating apps. I know why people seek love there. I think it’s wonderful that we’ve created another mode of socialization in this world.

But I will say this:

I know more people who have had bad experiences with these apps than people who have had success.

And that has nothing to do with the people who go on these sites (at least, those looking for genuine love) and everything to do with what these apps do to us.

I can’t speak to online dating sites, but online dating apps have become a cesspool of validation-hungry people or horny people with nowhere else to go or people just looking for something superficial.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with this; everyone needs validation sometimes, most of us get horny once in a while or more often than that, and it’s okay to seek superficial relationships sometimes. But when there’s so many people from those demographics, these apps disadvantage people who are looking for something real.

The whole process becomes impersonal, a game.

You’re judging someone based on a few (most likely highly doctored) profile photos and a short blurb about who they are and their gender and their age and their likes and dislikes.

If you want to get really creative you can attach a song anthem to your profile so people can see what kind of music and artists you like. But most people don’t even get that far.

For many of us it’s just a mindless swipe.

A quick view of their first photo and a snap decision and nothing else.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t like living in a world like that. I don’t like living in a world where we must carefully curate photos that showcase our best features — or even distort us to seem more attractive — lest we won’t get picked.

I don’t like living in a world where we spend mere seconds deciding if someone is good enough to pursue a relationship with.

We don’t even get to know them; barely glance at any of the other information they’ve shared. Just see the photos, decide, swipe, be done.

It made me sad to be on dating apps, not because people were looking for different things than me but because it felt like a game, and I didn’t like that. I wanted to truly get to know people and form connections.

I may be part of the minority, but in my experience there is nothing quite so exciting as a genuine spark between two people, formed in person, whether consciously or unconsciously.

I was ashamed at how fast I would sometimes go through profiles.

It would take me seconds — sometimes less — to determine that someone wasn’t a “match” for me and swipe left.

But who knows? I could’ve missed meeting the love of my life simply because he chose the wrong profile photo. I could’ve had a genuine connection with the guy whose pose holding a fish turned me off at first sight. (I mean, probably not, but it could happen.)

I think many of us can relate. It gets to a point where all those photos start feeling less like people and more like just viable options that we can do with as we please. Humans are not options. Dating apps are not there to satisfy our impulsive natures. They’re supposed to be there to help build connections, whether those are hookups or lasting relationships. That’s what they’re intended for.

But so often, it becomes grosser than that. More impersonal. The last shreds of humanity left begin to disappear with each millisecond-swipe.

There’s also nothing worse in the world than finding out someone swiped on you, feeling a split-second of excitement, and then realizing they’re probably Snapchatting half the girls in your area and you’re nothing special. Truly, it feels like objectification at its finest.

Swipes aside, can we talk about the disgusting ways people (ahem, women) are treated on these apps?

Can we talk about how animalistic it can be? How objectifying and unsettling and icky?

If I’m on Tinder, it’s quite possible I’m looking for a quick hookup or someone to be friends with benefits with. That, however, does not mean that I’m going to be receptive to you typing out Let me sit on your face as the first thing you say to me over direct message. If you think it’s flattering, it isn’t. We’ve heard it a billion times. It’s played-out and weird.

And that’s just the milder side of it. I’ve had people say things that were rude, insensitive, or downright creepy. And sure, you can block the person or report them or do whatever you need to do to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

But you can’t block the damage from your mind, and with each bad experience like that, many of us stray even further from a genuine connection or from wanting to pursue a dating life in the first place.

If I’m being honest, I think a lot of this has to do with how people live and express sexuality.

I’ve come to realize that I am on the spectrum of being demisexual, which means sexual attraction forms only in the presence of emotional bonds.

I have on occasion been sexually attracted to someone I haven’t formed an emotional bond with, but usually it’s some sort of TV character whose character’s emotions I see through the screen and maybe that’s what I am attracted to rather than the person themselves.

Either way, I find it hard to imagine being intimate with someone or even being close with them unless I feel connected to them emotionally first.

And dating apps are not conducive to that.

I firmly believe that there are many more people out there on the demisexual spectrum than we realize (I didn’t even realize I might be on it until about a year ago), and we deserve for dating apps to serve us, too.

Dating apps shouldn’t just serve some…

…Like those who are looking for hookups or joking banter. Many of these apps — especially the ones notorious for perpetuating hookup culture, like Tinder — are not designed with demisexual people in mind. Or anyone else who doesn’t fit the “mold,” so to speak.

Again, I’m not shaming anyone who uses dating apps — I’ll be over-the-moon happy for anyone who finds love, regardless of how that happened.

But that’s precisely why I am against dating apps. It’s because I think everyone deserves to find love, and only a select few are ever finding it on these platforms. In fact, they might walk away with more negativity around love than hope or fuel, and that’s not fair.

Now, I realize not every dating app or site can be generalized to being Tinder-like. A good friend of mine met her boyfriend through Hinge, and they’ve been together for a while and have a great relationship. Another good friend of mine met his girlfriend through Tinder when they were both just looking for hookups, and now they’re gloriously happy, monogamous, and probably about to get engaged sometime in the very near future. I can’t be happier for them.

But this is a rare experience, and it shouldn’t be. Hookup culture needs to find its place and find its way out of the path of people trying to find love.

…

Dating app and site producers need to figure out ways to ensure that everyone’s needs are being met and that we don’t have to jump through hoops or cycle through tens of people before we find something romantic or genuine. That’s just not how it should work.

And as hippie-ish as it sounds, I think we need to stop being so tied to technology in general. I deeply cherish the connections I make with people in person, whether that’s meeting a random hype girl in a bar bathroom or regularly talking to a cute colleague and realizing I’ve developed a crush on them. There is something incomparable about those relationships, and we should be nourishing those rather than straying farther away from them.

Long story short: you do you. If dating apps or sites have worked for you and are giving you what you need, more power to you. That makes me happy.

And let’s also acknowledge that for many people, they fall short. Both realities can be true at the same time, and it’s still important for them to do better.

Online dating could be ruining romance, at least for the majority of us, and I think it’s time to do something before it gets worse.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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