Love, Apptually

An alive girl reflection on love in the digital age

This January, I swore off Hinge forever. I was attempting to shed a bad habit I’d picked up where I started my mornings by opening Hinge, swipe swipe swiping and then going right back to bed in an attempt to nap away the emptiness or disgust or whatever repressed feeling was brought up.

After a week (or two. maybe three.) of letting this depreciative phase play out, I decided to put an end to it. I didn’t want to keep obliterating my daily outlook before I even gave the sun a chance to rise. I deleted the app and started a running Notes doc to track the times when I felt like redownloading it. 

I’m aware now that American Boy is not by Kanye. Forgive me, I noted these in haste in an effort to battle the Hinge cravings. 

Sometimes, when swiping, I think back to my first two months on Hinge. I was fresh off a mild breakup then and the app brought me a seemingly never-ending flow of affirmation and worldly education in the form of young, good-looking and quirky suitors who all lived within the reach of Boston’s MBTA. I ran my profile like a marketing campaign. (One of my top performers was a picture of myself in a bikini holding All About Love over my face — funnily enough I bought the book to thirst trap at the beach and it ended up kicking off my reading journey, leading me here). 

I met five people I liked, one and a half of whom I am still in contact with. (One of the five turned out to be crazy and sort of broke into my apartment building - the dangers of dating apps are real, stay safe out there.) All were exactly my type on paper; I know because that’s why I picked them. 

When I’m on a tech hiatus, I will admit I take pleasure in the virtue signaling of it all. I’m not proud of it, but the delicious nonchalance of dropping a quick - “Oh, I’m not really on Instagram anymore” can sometimes be more of a driving factor than the actual benefits of being unplugged. I’m working on it. Someday I will figure out which deep-rooted insecurity that charming quirk relates to, but I will say it’s gotten me through many a 10 p.m. app curfew. 

Hinge makes me palpably miserable. So, in this case, the reprieve turned into my primary motivator. 

I lucked out, too. Soon after deletion, I started seeing someone I met offline. As I floated in the space between single and taken, I managed to stay off the apps from January to May. I was proud of myself and declared my liberation to my friends. I was finally FREE, reality-pilled, tasting love the way it was meant to be tasted. Then, April came and three major life events occurred; I turned 22, I graduated and I went through the second-most devastating breakup of my life. 

I crawled back to Hinge mid-May, this time under no illusions of what I wanted; validation. And so began a sort of maddening cycle. I swiped through the boys in my hometown, who I had absolutely no intention of seeing IRL, from the twin bed in my dad’s apartment. I got my feelings hurt by my match quality. I deleted the app. I road-tripped and cry-sang along to CTRL on I-5. I redownloaded. I moved to New York in July and deleted. I told myself I wasn’t ready and that I was going to heal the right way, solo and slowly. And then I came across a comment section peppered with beautiful women. I redownloaded.

In case it isn’t clear, I’m actively in the process of getting over a connection unlike anything I’ve experienced before. But I’m not here to talk about life-changing, potentially spiritual connections—I’m here to talk about how they’ve affected my relationship with app-based dating. 

Post-spiritual connection, app-based dating feels less playful at best and like a sour karmic cycle at worst. I’ve learned that each app has a slightly different purpose. Tinder, for example, is optimized for engagement. Hinge is allegedly designed to be deleted. Bumble I’m honestly not really sure about anymore and Raya I have too much willful ignorance to learn about. They all use some version of a collaborative filtering algorithm (Hinge uses a Gale-Shapley algorithm to be specific), the same type of algorithm that Netflix and Amazon use to provide you with product recommendations, except the “products” in this case have to choose you too. And, in addition, likely an internal scoring system that rates desirability (ugh). These components work together to run The Machine which ticks away and supposedly learns our explicit and implicit preferences to provide us with appropriate recommendations. Interesting side note - research has found that machine learning provides better matches when it uses data from implicit preferences, as opposed to self-reported preferences. Hmmmmmm. 

I know it’s not just me that’s sick of the apps. The complaints have started to roll in via TikTok and the think pieces are being written. People are desperate for meaningful romantic connection and more and more are turning to IRL initiatives in order to meet people. It’s an interesting cultural shift that’s led to everything from the rise of run clubs to this singles wall in NYC that’s vaguely reminiscent of a missing persons board. 

The world is fatigued from app based dating. Part of it, I think, is that there’s not a lot of variety. You can hop from app to app but most of the major dating apps are owned by a single company—the Match Group, aka a giant, profit-driven dating conglomerate. After a while they all begin to look the same, I imagine. Another part of it is a classic Silicon Valley trope: we’ve taken a basic facet of the human experience and digitized it. Love has become omnipresent and mess-free like DoorDash or Uber Eats.

While researching, I came across this quote from a Gizmodo article, which puts it nicely: 

“Dating in the US is now the domain of one giant corporation and its minor competitors, all of whom run computer programs that dictate one of the most significant parts of the human experience. Presumably, your perfect matches are out there, but one way or another, the algorithm decides who you’re going to meet.” 

The complaints I have against dating apps echo the ones I have regarding the rapid techification of everything in general. They’re too convenient. I’m all for using tech to simplify aspects of our lives that we don’t care about or would rather not spend time on like organizing email inboxes or doing Excel spreadsheet budgetting. I would argue that love does NOT fall under that category. 

Ultimately, dating via app is appealing because it promises two things: a solution to loneliness (validation) and love without the mess (convenience). You are shielded from rejection because you only talk to people who have confirmed they’re interested in you and the ones who don’t disappear into the digital ether. And as long as you are online, you are shielded also from the vulnerability and painful human-ness it takes to fall in love. It’s like we’re each swiping wearing a straitjacket from within a padded cell, unwilling or unable to go anywhere or hurt ourselves, no? 

I also think there’s an eerie connection between validation and how it mixes with algorithms. In this Kevin Slavin video, he brings up the idea that algorithms acquire the sensibility of truth because they repeat, they “ossify and calcify, and they become real”. Validation, when you break it down, is simply a search for the truth, for correctness. I think we are lending authority to the dating app algorithms in a search for different kinds of correctness — correctness in our world view, correctness in our self-belief, etc. I know in my life, the truth - about the world, about myself - has always felt comparatively rigid and steady when I am in relationships and then flimsy and malleable when I am not. The malleability can be fun if you roll with it and disorienting when you are not prepared. Perhaps the algorithms provide a helpful lens through which to view the world when we are seeking order. We just have to be careful and remember that just because something repeats does not mean it is true or correct. 

Last month I wrote about how Spotify’s AI DJ made me feel like I was folding into myself. I get a similar feeling on dating apps, where swiping through matches makes me feel like I’m standing in a funhouse and watching distorted reflections of everyone I used to be up until this point in my life. Though the typical “type” I go for is diverse in range and really more of an archetype of personality… they still feel outdated and predictable. One of the few constants I’ve known in my twenties is change; every month I can feel my prefrontal cortex developing and new aspects of my personality surfacing like waves. Biting, thrilling and disorienting change at times, I suppose, but I like it. I don’t want it to stop. I surprise myself every year when I look at the journals I’ve filled up. Hinge doesn’t surprise me when I swipe through my match grave. I also know I don’t like the version of myself that I become when I am actively swiping. I’m a little shallower, more insecure and I find myself fixating on aspects of a person I normally don’t care much about. 

You can’t Marie Kondo love. Or at least, my definition of love - the word “love” is famously a misnomer. And as I am writing this now, I think I’ve accepted that along with a fundamental personal truth in regard to my love life that explains why responding to my matches feels like treading through purgatory; though I am far from ready for it, I know I want real intimacy in my romantic pursuits. I want a love, disgustingly real love, where someone will memorize the creases in my face and hug my waist in the kitchen. I want to build something steady and powerful with someone. And it’s not that I think finding that kind of connection via app is impossible. But I do think if I were to find it on there, it would be despite the app’s manifest function as opposed to being a natural result of it. 

Offline love, for all the aches and pains it has brought me, has stuck with me. In addition to teaching me about the world and challenging me to shed outdated skin, it has ushered me into experiencing more life. Letting go of it hurts, yes. It has always been worth it. 

Though I have had successful connections spring out of the Hinge algorithm in the past, they have paled in comparison to my offline ones. The app dates I’ve been on skew less inventive, less playful and less exciting than the ones that have come about organically.

I am thoroughly disillusioned by dating apps. Still, I find myself swiping occasionally. (I know, I’m sorry. Not very alive girl, anti-tech pilled of me. I actually identify as a techno-optimist if that makes any of you feel better.) I’m sure you will too, I honestly think they’re kind of unavoidable if you are young, single and bored. 

The key to beating app fatigue for me has been to try and create less separation between the digital offline. That means actually responding to people and meeting them in person when I can. When I’m swiping I try not to collect likes like Pokemon and instead focus more on who piques my interest and get real about who I would actually spend an hour getting to know. It also helps that my profile has gotten progressively less marketing campaign-esque and more reflective of my actual personality. The Bell Hooks thirst trap pics have been replaced. 

I’ve also kept in mind that the apps are not the end all be all. I stay open at the club, the bookstore, sometimes the subway. And that’s worked out too, for the most part. 

Like any other tech tool, the answer lies in striking a balance between the digital and the tactile. Love will find you when it's supposed to. I think. I’ll let you know if I ever figure that part out.

If you’ve read this far

• I’m interested in your opinions! What do you think about dating apps and how do you feel about the experiences I brought up in this piece? You can write to me at ananyadutta05@gmail.com or leave a comment. Do it on the blog and we at hotliterati.com will love you more than we already do. 

• Tell me the most ridiculous dating app pick up line you’ve received. Never a bad time hearing these.