Confessions of a Hinge Power User

September 10, 2024:

That’s all changed. “To be honest, I probably have missed out on a lot of dates because of the way Hinge is set up. You can’t search for keywords in your direct messages. You can’t search names. You can’t search by location.” But it hasn’t stopped him.

The longer we spoke, the more it became evident how much his story was part of a growing chorus of power users hungry for romance but bound by the sometimes unfair rules of the game.

Our uneven dependence on dating apps is to be expected, University of Warwick professor Carolina Bandinelli told me when we spoke about Gen Z’s push for app alternatives. Bandinelli’s research focuses on the shifting cultural codes of online relationships and over the years she’s noticed app makers have gotten eerily good at “replicating the solutionistic ideology of digital technology.”

Even as younger generations bring a new look to dating culture, which has contributed to thinning profit margins for tech companies, “I believe we are going to live in a world where dating apps are very much present, but they are not the only way people meet—they have never been, for that matter,” Bandinelli says.

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Do you have an unusual story about an experience using dating apps? How has the internet shaped your relationship to romance, sex, and desire? Email jason_parham@wired.com with the subject header “WIRED Desire.”

Still, it does get exhausting. Of JB’s 200 dates, the majority were first dates, and he estimates only 10 to 15 percent included sex. “I sometimes don’t even want to look at the apps. I definitely hit the fatigue people talk about. What do they call that? The paradox of choice or whatever.” He takes breaks from time to time, he says, but “then you open that shit back up.”

I ask if he’s learned anything in all this time.

For one, “I’m not shutting the door just because someone doesn’t respond for a week or two.” He believes most people are too quick to cut off a connection. “I try to stay open-minded and not take anything personally. At the end of the day, these are strangers. You don’t know what’s going on in that person’s life right off the bat.”

Just as his relationship to the apps has changed, so has his approach to dating. Immediately after the relationship with his most recent ex ended, in April 2023, “I would just take girls out to dinner, drinks, this, that, the works. I’d try to be funny. I was spending hella bread—like $250 a date.” Now, he says, there is less impressing going on.

In part he credits the change in mindset to rapper-turned-pundit Cam’ron. “Did you ever see Cam’ron’s response to Jordan Poole taking Ice Spice out? He was like, ‘You spent $500,000 on an Ice Spice date. You’re a munch and you’re playing like a f***ing munch.’” Poole denied the rumor.

“I know it’s a little problematic,” JB continues, “but that became my thing. I keep it chill—pizza and drinks. It becomes very clear if they actually want to get to know you, or if they are trying to get their dinner paid for. It’s a great way to cut through bullshit.”

He met the girl that he’s dating now on Raya. “It’s pretty serious. I do like her a lot.” Only, their chance meeting almost didn’t happen. “I was on the fence about going. It was a Sunday. I was very tired. She was cool, pretty. So I go meet her—and she’s stunning. We had an amazing conversation,” he says. They’ve been talking to each other for two months now. “I should’ve probably stayed home and slept that night, and not gone out drinking with her, but then I would not have met this girl who I’m thinking about deleting the apps for.”

That day hasn’t arrived, and it may never. For now, his accounts are active. “You never know which date is gonna hit or not. It’s a crapshoot,” he says. “It’s lowkey addicting.”

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