An essay on why I kissed (online) dating goodbye

Aby Go
4 min readOct 27, 2018

Not so long ago, a tweet went viral narrating a certain gentleman’s experience in taking part in a prank that brought hundreds of men to Union Square and pitted them against each other in a Hunger Games-style competition for the attention of their Tinder match. While the mastermind of the prank, 22-year-old New Yorker Natasha Aponte, received a lot of backlash for the stunt, the social experiment perfectly showcased the superficiality of choices we make in online dating and sparked conversations on how we should be treating each other on dating apps and websites.

I have been on various dating apps like Tinder and Bumble for nearly five years now, swiping right and left the way I would browse for shoes online. While my interactions with men have been mostly pleasant, my recent experiences can confirm that online dating has changed the norm — and not in a good way.

I met an Australian guy on Bumble who I spent weeks getting to know and having great conversations with. Just when I thought we had a genuine connection, he tells me that all he really wanted was to hook up.

The dating apocalypse has arrived, welcome to hookup culture. With so many options literally at the tip of your finger, who has time to date? You’ll be surprised at the number of times immediately after matching with someone that I’ve been invited…

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