My Experiment with App Dating

Introduction and Methods

It wasn’t an easy decision for me to embark on app dating. Despite a dismal, even embarrassing drought of dates – let alone even the slightest physical touch – for over four years, I stubbornly resisted using apps to help find me a date. Perhaps it was pride, perhaps it was a self-instated penance for the drastic miscalculation that ended my last loving relationship, but I evidently preferred to wilt away alone rather than join the flock of app daters – especially at age thirty-nine. The ascetic in me is much stronger than the hedonist.

I like raw reality; I like experiencing a moment, a place, a person for what it or they may be without preparation or affectation; I want all strengths and all vulnerabilities on display; I want the sounds, the smells, the awkwardness and the tenderness of the experience of meeting someone new for the first time. I’m not attracted to preparation and projection, especially digital ones, which are far too generous in their pixelated exaggerations. The best way to lose my attention is to try to attract it – the bigger the sign, the more I’ll consciously ignore it. But not that anyone cares to have my attention; rather, it’s others’ attention I’m seeking at this aging juncture of mine. 

Dating a beautiful, intellectual, fun, extemporaneously-minded, and independent woman is exactly what I lack and want in my life. I just didn’t realize, nor accept that I couldn’t meet such a woman in person among the raw, un-projected, un-pixilated reality of daily corporeal experience. But evidently I can’t.

Maybe it’s my ripening thirty-nine year old presence, whereby I’ve lost my youthful suppleness and whimsical aspire. Or perhaps it’s that the woman I seek has long vanished into the paradox where she’s already taken because she’s precisely that beautiful alchemy that I – and others – seek. Whatever the reason, I underestimated the lonely world I’d stumble about in my middle adult years. How naïve, how pompous.

Not only have I not dated anyone in over four years, but I’d have to squint to even count the dates I’ve had. That would embarrassingly be…six. Six dates in over four years. I don’t know what other single people go through, especially at my age, but six seems low. Regardless, it’s a lower number than I’d like.

So why am I failing? My temptingly immediate response is that I’m unattractive. My friends have argued against this melodramatic perception, pointing out correctly that I’ve been privileged to date very attractive women in the past. To try and prove I could indeed still score a date, one friend stole my phone off the bar room table last November and downloaded Bumble. Actually activating the app was not an option as I painfully, meticulously curated my profile, over-analyzing every pixel on the screen just like the digital sheep I previously refused to be. It would take a different friend’s intervention a month later to also steal my phone and active the thing. It was at that moment among the blasphemy of a whiskey-soaked bar on Christmas night, 2018 that I suddenly, uncomfortably, reluctantly started using a phone application to find a date.

The first woman on my screen was absolutely gorgeous. I was giddy with surprise and frantically asked my friend how to move the screen so that I would “accept,” or “match,” her, or whatever it was called (evidently that’s called a “swipe right”). And so with a graceful, bar-lit finger flutter to the right, I swiped appropraitely and immediately matched (meaning at that point she had done the same for my profile moments before). A flirtatious, yet comfortably superficial message thread soon began. Phone numbers were exchanged and plans were set to meet following the holiday. This was going to be amazing! If only I had tried this years earlier.

A week of hollow blue and gray text bubbles later, she vanished as surprisingly as she arrived. That, I soon learned, would become my theme of my app dating experience. I would go on to match with less and less people, and eventually I wouldn’t match at all. I even started to conspire that the apps built in fake accounts of attractive people for newcomers like to me sucker into. The apps would then provide a dopamine burst of acceptance, only to take it away later and hold any subsequent high for hostage.

Disillusioned, I eventually tried another app called, “Hinge,” that was more direct by requiring users to answer various questions, or “prompts,” about themselves, along with pictures to display (i.e. to judge). Hinge also allows either person to initiate the conversation, unlike Bumble, which requires the woman to initiate first. Like Bumble though, Hinge also had an initial flurry of activity, whereby I thought I was about to find my stride and finally start dating (!). But alas, Hinge, too, soon became a silent cacophony of matches that never responded, or those that responded once only to echo into silence. There were a few that kept the heartbeat barely pulsing, but after scheduling a time and place to meet (oh my – an actual “date”? Noooo….), they would inevitably cancel because they “had a thing” or “weren’t ready to start dating again,” or just because of “(choose your excuse)”.

But it wasn’t all silence. I did manage to have a great first date with someone that I found attractive and interesting. That was until after a great second date she somehow conjured we weren’t a match after all despite every other indication to the contrary (and to others – even the bartender uninvitingly chimed in that we seemed to be a great fit). But no – she was convinced we weren’t. But then she changed her mind yet again and decided that we were a fit, so we planned a third date. But after that we were once again not a match. At that point I was then certain we were not. I’m out. If sabotage was her goal, she succeeded.

So after eight months of app dating, something seems wrong, but I’m not sure what. I want to analyze my experience and try to glean results as though I’m extracting conclusions from an experiment using various apps to date: Bumble, Hinge, Tinder, and OK Cupid.

Results

Woman #1: She was an obvious and immediate match (the one just mentioned in the above paragraph). In fact, the intellectual synchrony and flirt was so strong and rare that my prefrontal cortex instated emergency overdrive to silence all the nonsensical emotional noise clamoring from my temporal lobe. I consider immediate, intense experiences the least factual, and thereby the least trustworthy human experiences because they rely heavily on unrefined interpretations and emotions. Humans love a good story. This makes sense evolutionarily because stories elicit empathy, and therefore community, and therefore progeny – biology’s ultimate goal. But assigning too much significance to these often inchoate stories can be disastrous. Just ask any journalist their opinion on interviewing witnesses to an unexpected crime or event. They’ll get as many different accounts of “what happened” as there were witnesses. 

So I ignored most of my neurochemicals and just tried to take the moment for what it was: a date with an interesting, attractive woman. But following this date, she quickly became convinced we weren’t a match despite numerous objective considerations that we were, such as a graduate education, career paths and interests with the human brain, similar esoteric music interests, having no problem closing down a dive bar on a Tuesday, and sharing experiences of the same obscure Oregon swimming hole. Yet, even the slightest physical interaction with her felt like accelerating down the freeway with the emergency brake on. I’m certainly not one to push things, so I just gave up. And by date three I completely surrendered to what she seemed set to prove all along anyway: that we were not a match. That self-fulfilling prophecy was actualized.

Woman #2: She’s an ardent Catholic – and by ardent, I mean fanatical. She’s more so than she led on in her profile when, after the first date, she gave me “homework” (yes, in quotes) to watch various YouTube seminars of an academic Jewish-turned-Catholic so we could discuss it on our next date. I told her I’d do that if she’d agree to watch Road House in its entirety with the closed captioning turned “on”. Evidently she’s not one for compromise, nor sardonic humor. Next.

Woman #3: She was sweet, cute, probably looked too much like my last girlfriend (but hey, I guess I know what I like), and an opinionated (a good thing to me!) lawyer with a broad intellectual base for discussion. I like it! And I even happened to pick her favorite wine bar for our first date. Naturally, I had to once again tap the prefrontal cortex brakes because I was a little too excited. But this was just a small neurochemical tap to make sure I was in control of the mainframe system – I wasn’t going to go so far to quash a good date or opportunity. Ultimately, the date went well. We talked, we laughed, we exchanged opinions from movie themes to politics, and we planned to meet again soon. We did meet again soon for a Sunday coffee walk around Mt. Tabor. It was lovely. And then I never heard from her again. I don’t understand.

Controls. The true, naïve control in this experiment is what I had been doing for over four years: nothing – no dating, no apps, no romance. This is actually a decent control, although I’d like to have various versions of me that change my profile to accentuate or diminish certain traits and qualities (without actually lying), versions of me that get dates but don’t use an app, and versions of me that use other methods of dating besides and app (whatever those may be), and compare all amongst themselves. But, of course, I’m not going to – or I literally can’t – actualize all these controls, nor my duplicate selves. The naïve control of doing nothing for years, however, is certainly of value.

And that’s eight months of app dating for me after over four years of not dating at all. It felt like both the start and finish to a race from the same gunshot: I’m finally dating again, and I’m done forever. Maybe this is normal, but after comparing my experience to others, it doesn’t seem to be. I think there’s a unique problem with me but I don’t know what it is. I’ve spent too many bike rides and slow, summer wine swirls on my veranda trying to identify my follies, but I haven't yet been able to pinpoint a particular cause.

Conclusions

1) I’m unattractive. On paper, this would be the most obvious explanation of my results: I’m unattractive to whom I’m seeking. If true, I can’t do much about it but try to look my best and conform my actions to meet others’ expectations. Perhaps I come across too old, too physically unappealing, too weird, too intense, and/or just confusing given the divergence of my disparate interests and hobbies, degrees, and careers – all of which I feel are important to disclose on a profile when seeking a match, but all of which may be a turnoff when grouped together.

Data from my past suggests that I’m considered at least attractive enough to get dates because I’ve dated long-term in the past. Moreover, I’ve dated women I’ve deemed to be quite attractive. So maybe it’s just my age with its contingent loss of attractiveness that, combined with unattractive non-physical qualities, renders a woman uninterested in me. I haven’t directly asked a girl this though, so I can’t definitively confirm or reject the hypothesis that I’m unattractive.

2) I’m too picky. I’ve reached an age where my friends no longer have many single friends, and the ones that are single I usually don’t find attractive. I’ve also noticed a mutual standoff that forms whereby each person is negatively judging the other person because they’re still single in their late thirties, hence, there must be something wrong with them (and there very well may be! Me included). Additionally, attractive women can easily find a date via any avenue they desire due to the plethora of lonely single men like me. 

I’ve been told many, many times to lower my expectations. For anyone that knows me, that may be the last thing I’d ever do. I expect a lot, whether it’s from my friends, my family, my career, the voting public, scientists, politicians – and certainly of myself. I am a perfectionist. No matter where I’m at in life, I always see a higher plateau to reach. I strive for and seek excellence in life, and I’d probably die in its pursuit. So yeah, I might be too picky. It doesn’t mean I should be though. I’m just a person with very high, if not impossible expectations of myself and the world around me. I’m a born perfectionist, which likely transposes unrealistic expectations to those around me whether I intend to or not (see previous blog entry, “Perfect Tense,”). Nonetheless, this perfectionism may be a factor in the failure of my app dating experience.

3) There’s no matches left. I want a great girl, but at my age all the great girls are coupled and/or married. Blah, blah, blah – I’m old.

4) I’m invisible. The apps aren’t showing me to others because I’m not paying enough and/or because there are disproportionate men vs. women using the platform. I’m willing to pay more if the apps would prove it was effective. But I don’t think many people pay much, if anything (especially women due to the numbers of men on these sites), yet it seems to work for other men. To test this, I tried buying the most expensive package on OK Cupid. That was a disaster. Trying to avoid being disrespectful and mean, I’ll simply say my level of interest in the profiles I saw was below 0.5% (less the 1 out of 200) throughout the month I purchased. I now think I picked the wrong app for this experiment, as I’ve been made fun of for even using OK Cupid, let alone giving it money, but the others hadn’t worked for me so I went with a platform that seemed to be well established and new to me. Alas, I have more comedic (even sad) screen shots of profiles from OK Cupid than from any other app. To be more fair, I’ve since tried paying for various packages on Bumble and Hinge and the results were exactly the same: nothing. The problem isn’t being invisible or not paying.

5) I don’t work well with the app pairing algorithms. I have no way to test this. Each app uses its “proprietary, proven successful algorithm to help you find love”. I do feel the data and metadata of my bio may stretch a conventional match-making algorithm, but when I see people on my feed that I obviously have nothing in common with – twice – I know the app is just sending me through the line like all the other sheep. Indeed, we all eventually end up standing in the same line. But again, I have no way to test this. It’s simply another possibility contributing to my poor app dating results.

6) I’m not selling myself well. This seems likely, although I’ve had many friends and family help curate my pictures, captions, prompts, and bio to help woo the best, most lovely lady possible. When I reach a point that one person deletes something on my profile and the next adds it back, I know I’ve found my maximal equilibrium. Yet, my friends know me and can’t be completely objective. I do have a propensity to come across abrasive and raw, but I think this is buffered if a person actually knows me. My friends know and accept that I’m highly sarcastic and deadpan, and I cut deep and quick – it’s a part of my scientist nature. I’m a skeptic, a realist, and an analyzer. However, an ironic benefit of this sarcasm is that I’m sincere. My punch line reveals the truth that isn’t said, but implied; I won’t feign an impression for the sake of anodyne social lubrication – I’ll simply make an implicit, if not missed joke to illuminate the truthful substance of the matter that no one is saying out loud.

Some say this approach is bad for a dating app, or even dating in general, and it probably is. But I’m looking for a lifelong mate at this point, not just a date (although most friends think I should take whatever I can get – even if for a night!). So long as I don’t come across uncouth, I feel a balance of sincerity with a nudge of challenge may help me find the right woman. All that said, I feel I’ve done my part to “peer review” my profile, but it isn’t working. I may not be selling myself well.

7) I don’t match well in Portland, Oregon. I love Portland for many, many reasons. But I am at odds with its rather passive, flakey culture. People can be very sensitive here, often insecure, they can be easily offended, and making plans and saying the right things are more important than actually following through with those plans and doing the right things. I do get pings of interest on my apps, and even in person after a good conversation and an exchange of information. But all that usually follows is just silence – no response. Flaking on plans is an accepted attribute in Portland, and it can be maddening. So perhaps I come across too strong for the Portland crowd – too aggressive, directed, intense, and in all honesty, real. There could be an intimidation factor at work as well in such a fluffy cultural environment.

For a control on this particular hypothesis, I was in Dallas, Texas recently and decided to activate Hinge just for the experimental value (well, mostly for the experimental value). Within two hours I had matched with three attractive women, two of which immediately suggested plans to meet – they actually responded, even after realizing we’d miss each other with them being out of town for the Labor Day weekend. I was amazed. Such immediate responses, let alone responses after realizing it would be a missed connection would never happen in Portland -- there would simply be no response at all. Now, I can’t ascribe too much value to these data from just a few days in Dallas, but the initial impression was starkly, refreshingly, different from Portland. Alas, Portland, Oregon may not be the best city for me to date.

8) I’m still hung up on my ex girlfriend from four and half years ago. While I’d be embarrassed to admit it, I need to consider this possibility. I’ve written about this relationship and its fallout ad nauseum in essays (here) and in music for the past four years, so I don’t need to belabor this any further. Yet, it’s possible this mental block continues to affect how I see myself and other women, and that this block still interferes with me moving on and finding a new match.

(9) All of the above.

Like any experimental conclusion, I should provide a cogent analysis that leads to implications and next steps. But for the first time in any scientific experience, I can’t write a conclusion. I cannot determine what the implications are, nor what to do next. I’ve spent many, many hours -- often with the imploring assist from a bottle of nice wine – searching for a conclusion to my data. yet, I cannot conclude why the dating apps have failed me (or why I have failed them). 

And so I exit this experiment just as lonely as I entered it, if not more so because now I’ve actually completed the study and have no conclusions from which to formulate optimistic next steps – steps that could lead me towards successful dating and finding a partner. An experimental outcome such as this would be considered a failure in science; in fact, it wouldn’t even be written up and published at all. The findings would instead slowly fade in the back corridors of an abandoned notebook until the data is forever lost, potentially only to be foolishly, albeit ignorantly collected again by some unsuspecting curious optimist in the future.

For the first time in my life, I am submitting a scientific “report” (this essay) that has no conclusion. Doing so is anathema to my being and training as a scientist. I’m left uneasy; I’m left vulnerable. Yet, perhaps that’s where a conclusion is found: to find romance, I will first have to accept the failures, the imperfections, and the vulnerabilities of not just my app dating experiment, but in myself and the others out there trying their best to glean success from a life that often lends no conclusions. Perfection, after all, is the loneliest planet for any human to inhabit. And we’re all just a little impossibly lonely, yet undeniably human. Me included.

References

There’s no better reference than the below. I wrote this back in 2007, although I feel like I could have written it yesterday. That’s interesting. And revealing. And alarming.

If I Could Be (09.22.07)

just another night all alone

silent is the only mode on my phone

i guess that’s alright

sirens singing me lullabies

when the city streets laugh they sounds like cries

i guess that’s alright

if i could be what you need

tell me please and i’ll try to succeed

and try to believe

that i can make you smile, and laugh, and sing, and want to lie with me now

i won’t touch you

i’ll just look at you and dream

just another night to lie in my bed

to dream about all those things that you said

i guess i’m alright

chords to play without a melody

but would you even listen if i could sing?

i guess i’m not alright

if i could be what you need

tell me please and i’ll try to believe

that i can succeed

to make you smile, and laugh, and sing, and want to lie here and be with me now

i won’t touch you

i’ll just look at you and dream

if i could lie to you

to get you to side with me

believe in us and in me just tonight

i’ll take you home and sing to you

and be the song you never knew

if i could be yours for just tonight

i’d be fine

i’d be fine


Addendum

Can someone please introduce me to Hannah Reid? Thank you in advance.
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