What Quarantine Taught Me About Dating Apps - Part 2

For several days, as I held my iPhone in both of my hands and scrolled through more profiles on Muzmatch, my thumb rested just above the "X." 1pm. 2pm. 3pm. 4pm. 5pm. Half of the day had gone by and most of it was spent in swiping left. Both my thumbs grew sore from the constant swiping and tapping. I was clearly on a mission but it was mission impossible!

After about 500 swipes later, I came across a message that read, "sorry but you have run out of profiles. Expand your filters to see more options." Seriously, this would only happen to me! It was like coming across an error message when typing an incorrect password on the computer. Now what do I do? Should I just close this app out or pay the premium fee to see who liked me? Well, I was curious.

I gave into my curiosity and decided to pay the fee so I could see all the guys that swiped right on me. As soon as my purchase went through, I regretted my decision. Why did I do this? This is so expensive! As I scrolled through the hundreds of profiles of all these men, I wanted to hide myself underneath a blanket and never come out. It was like I was cursed. I couldn't decide what was worse. The profiles I was swiping left on or the ones who swiped right on me. It was bad. Really really really BAD! What is this? Ok, I'm not the most beautiful woman in the world. That's Ashwarya Rai Bachchan but I wasn't so bad so why were the most unsexiest men swiping right on me. Bushy eyebrows, creepy mustaches, and possibly hygiene issues. Most of the time I found myself questioning their choice of photos on their profile. Why would someone choose to put up a photo or photos that didn't capture their personality or were just inauthentic? Like why was it so hard to be yourself? I guess it just was.

By some miracle, I did come across a guy who was from New York City and enjoyed cooking. His photos were authentic and natural. His bio made me curious so I swiped right and it was "a match." But when I sent him a quick message, he didn't respond. My head was flooded with questions again. Am I doing this wrong? Why the hell would you want to swipe right on me if you didn't want to talk to me? Are we in a silent film? Am I being punked? Should I not say "Hi" first? Am I supposed to wait for the guy to start the conversation? Are we living in the 15th century? Ugh, whatever! A few days later, his profile disappeared. Great, I got ghosted...AGAIN!

After that, I went through my profile. I saw the photos I posted and read my bio. Maybe there's something wrong with me? I showed my bio to one of my friends and she goes, "Arooba, your bio is too long. You need to keep the mystery on." What the fuck does that even mean? What should I hide? What should I disclose? I don't like being kept in the dark and I don't want someone else to keep me in the dark. I want people to be straightforward with me. Who likes it when people beat around the bush? I don't!

But my friend was an experienced dater and I was a novice. So I listened to her. I ended up making my bio as concise as possible. A few days passed. Then a week. And then a few weeks. Nothing changed. Like naada!

All I got was a message from a random Pakistani guy in England. He said, "Hey Darlin."Yuck! This is not how you speak to me. I'm not your darling. Aren't people from England supposed to be super reserved and well-mannered? Well, I guess not!

After that, I spoke to a close friend of mine and vented to her about the issues I was facing in the virtual dating world. She advised me to install Minder or Hinge onto my phone. Clearly, I wanted to experiment. Because of COVID, I had so much time and it was all going into dating apps. I downloaded both but I didn't create a dating profile on both. If I was on one app, I deleted my account on the other. It just didn't seem right to be on all of them simultaneously. To my surprise, what I found made me laugh internally too many times.