Every time Valentine’s Day comes around, I sound like a broken record with my sulking and never-ending pessimism. If someone could curate the very definition of a “grumpy single person,” they’d create me. Whenever Valentine’s Day rolls around, I’m either single or have been recently dumped or ghosted. So yeah, it’s not my kind of holiday and I can’t pretend to be one of those people who doesn’t get sad about it. But as much as I hate Valentine’s Day, nothing could compare to my distaste for dating apps.
Just to clarify: before I moved to Canada, I didn’t really get the whole courting or dating process. I’m more of a friends-to-lovers type with a tinge of the miscommunication trope (I know, it sounds exhausting). So imagine my surprise when I finally move to a new place only to find out that most people who are in relationships found their partners on dating apps. I was baffled, but I inevitably tried it out. Realizing I hated dating apps was a slow, arduous process. For the first couple of months, I genuinely thought I was the worst conversationalist known to man. After discussing with my other friends what I could be doing wrong, we all found out that I wasn’t the problem; it was just the culture.
It’s unfair to compare my experiences on dating apps to a gay man’s or a straight woman’s experience. Being a queer woman on Tinder, specifically, is the most exhausting and unfulfilling experience I’ve ever had. I constantly see tweets from other sapphics, as well as my own sapphic friends, detailing their own similar experiences.
So let me break down a very common experience amongst queer women scrolling through Tinder. It’s almost a universal experience to have 50-plus matches on Tinder, only to have 2 conversations. It is to be expected that you text first or else you’re never going to talk to anyone. I once had a “super like” just not text me at all. Those who do text first often text with a compliment similar to how women comment on each other’s Instagram posts. It’s endearing at first until you both mutually ghost each other after the third conversation. Everyone seems so incredibly shy, like they’ve never held a conversation before and refuses to let it leave the Tinder space. Even if we exchange numbers or Instagrams, the conversation inevitably falls short because everyone refuses to ask anyone on a date no matter how much you talk online.
I think that’s my biggest problem. I love talking to people in real life. I like seeing their reactions to my jokes or watching their body language to know if they’re as into the conversation as much as I am. I like hearing someone’s voice and seeing if they slip into an accent when trying to tell a story. I like to know if they speak with their hands or if they like twiddling their thumb ring to relieve some nervousness. I like the physical aspects of getting to know someone. I can’t stay up at night looking at another crying emoji because I made a witty remark. I don’t want to stress over hours in hopes that I don’t get left on delivered. It’s more exhausting than living through the miscommunication trope because the entirety of the dating app experience is the miscommunication trope. No one knows how to talk on there without sounding like an NPC or a Swiftie.
If you’ve had a great experience with dating apps, especially as a queer woman, more power to you. But don’t try to go on Tinder because of the bitter loneliness Valentine’s Day leaves you with. Sometimes it’s better to settle for lonely.