By Patrick Bateman

This post was written on August 22, 2020.

Lust = Use of Dating Apps

A chart that makes me weep – meeting online is not nearly as fun as meeting in a bar

The growth of online dating is well documented. However, what seems less understood by academics and big journalists are the nuanced social changes that have occurred as this form of dating moved from websites to phones and apps. I believe what started out as a harmless tool, has become a dangerous habit with devastating consequences if it continues its trend as the dominant means of grouping men and women for dating.

Been out of the game. What is Raya?

I will admit that I used dating apps in the frontier era when it was dominated by Match.com. The newest innovations back then were sites such as PlentyOfFish and Lovestruck, both popular with me. This was during the years when their use was done via websites, not apps. This era required a bit more thought and effort to achieve any kind of success, or to not scare anyone (same result back then, really). You had to fill out your profile in detail, or you would get limited responses. However, and this is important, these sites were not widely used by everyone at the time. I couldn’t rely on these services. It was simply a tool I could use alongside the time-tested method of meeting and speaking with strange girls in person. Having fewer people on these platforms also heightened the time and effort towards analysing profiles, perhaps to an extreme. Justifiably, the stigma of online daters being desperate (or “creepy”) remained present, keeping many offline and requiring everyone on them to be cautious and put their best online self forward. So it wasn’t just about your glamorous photoshoot. It is (or was) probably about as close as online dating could get to meeting in person.

Online Dating in the UK – Tinder already at the top by 2014

Fast forward only a few years later and by 2014 Tinder had taken over the market. From that point on, any other apps had to join-in with the “play-the-numbers-short-attention-span” method of allowing users to swipe rapidly through photos. It became addictive like a game. Suddenly everyone was on it. Other apps came in to the market and you would be hard pressed to meet anyone in a city such as London that wasn’t using one of Tinder, Bumble, Happn or Hinge. Sometimes all of the above.

By 2020 surveys of American daters state the multitude of options has not made it easier to find a partner. So in a period where you have access to thousands of people at your finger tips at any time, in addition to traditional possibilities via your social lives, it is more difficult to find a partner? But that, leads us to the point. The Pew Research Center doesn’t get it, nor do academic studies and many journalists on this subject (although The Atlantic put out a wide ranging article that covers some of the more important points). Pew tries to link the problems of daters to a myriad of political or lifestyle issues. These kinds of surveys tell us a little, but not the bigger picture. If you are on the ground in the action though, you know what is at play.

These apps act like any sort of app, or game, or drug for that matter. The images and matches on Tinder constantly fire dopamine to the brain. This form of selection merely leaves dating down to the shallow aspects of choosing partners. Yes, strangers choose each other in public largely based on appearance. Yet there are a lot of other visceral aspects that make attraction in person work, that is not available online. You get talking to someone in person and become surprised by the attraction you feel for him or her. They weren’t the “hottest one” in the bar, but you just clicked. On the apps you have a little banter but your focus is on those photos. Which also leads to a never ending feeling that you can always find someone better or new on Tinder. It takes no effort, just keep swiping, even while texting with someone. Try doing that in a bar.

Men in 2020

The result is a society in which men no longer approach women in person. Men don’t even know how to attract women. I can’t imagine going through life without having ever had to experience the fear and thrill of approaching a strange woman. It builds character, it builds confidence. Done in a respectful way, it is what it’s all about when you are young and single. But it’s like anything. You will fail. So if you can just sit here at home and swipe away to meet someone why not? Low cost strategy, in terms of emotional investment. I am sorry but getting “ghosted” or “rejected” after a date is not the same as facing rejection in public with a stranger and your friends all watching. There is no emotional investment online. You walk away from that bar with only that on your mind, because you really targeted that girl for a reason. Compared with simply just turning your phone back on and swiping through to the next match, because you didn’t really know or care about that other girl after all. Women are frustrated by this as well. There’s a large sample I have met that imply they don’t want to use the apps, but men aren’t talking to them in public anymore. What choice do they have?

These new dating programmes encourage the shallower aspects of our society. So you aren’t meeting someone, you are meeting an avatar. Things go haywire on the first few dates because nobody is used to building attraction in person, or you’ve built all kinds of ridiculous expectations based on an avatar. The occasional couples that do make it, are always at risk of breaking down if one of them can’t break loose of the app addiction and decides to take a cheeky peek at Tinder (likely more common than anyone would admit). It’s a total breakdown of the male-female sexual market. Instead of complimenting other methods, it has become the dominant and dysfunctional form of dating.

These dating apps are a modern form of lust. Lusting after images on the screen and that we build in our head about an avatar. Lusting for more, always someone better looking on the next swipe. Creating massive sex appeal that gets ramped up in our minds for days, without any associating personality to counter this until the first date. The hottest guys and girls having unlimited choice. The lowliest guys and gals having their fragile egos destroyed. I have a hard time seeing how this is good for anyone. Online dating isn’t a bad thing, but what it has morphed into is toxic and should be considered sin.