The Beginning
A few months ago (could be a year at this point), a couple of my friends on Discord got drunk and decided to make a joke Tinder profile of myself. They used a bunch of random, old jokster photos of myself, set up the profile with absurd tags and started swiping. I found it pretty fascinating how the Tinder profile had worked out. I got a bunch of matches with a ton of random german men -- we would send them a video of Vin Diesel's music and we'd joke that I was an avid fan of Vin Diesel and whatnot. It was pretty funny, but I wondered whether or not I had a chance to match with anyone that wasn't a creepy german male, so I thought I might as well give dating apps a try.
My First Attempt
I set up my first Tinder profile, I took some very unserious pictures of myself with sunglasses, added a pretty crap bio which went something like "oh im just a guy who likes to play videogames and eat food" and left it at that. In about 3 days I only got one match -- it was a person with a joke Justin Bieber photo with the caption "maybe you can fix me". The conversation hadn't left any good impressions, we joked about Justin Bieber and the moment I sent a message wondering about how she was doing, I was left on read. That should've been the end of it, I pretty much gave up knowing that I could only get one match and promptly deleted the app.
My Second Attempt
I told my friends about the prior social experiment and they pretty much told me that I should've given it more time. I thought I might as well try again, but this time around i chose a different app, I decided to use Bumble instead. Bumble works in a pretty interesting way - on Bumble your matches have to message you first within 24 hours. Often-times this means that if you match with someone, you'll probably never get to even text them. But on odd occasions you might actually get a message from your match, which is pretty rare all things considered. So, I made a Bumble account. This time around I decided to take things a bit more seriously so I took the time to make a better profile with a proper bio and I chose tags that better suited my interests. I genuinely don't have ANY serious pictures of myself (no one really takes any of me and the only ones I have look like shit), so I took the time to stack some chairs on top of a desk and I (no joke) spent about 20 minutes posing in front of a phone camera like knob-head trying to get a decent picture of myself. After some struggle, I landed on a picture which I thought looked good enough, I didn't look like complete crap and the grainy phone-flashlight aesthetic looked pretty cool. So, I had finally landed on a profile which I was pretty happy with and I started swiping. I swiped a lot of people, surprisingly enough I did match with a few, some didn't bother messaging me, but some were more eager to actually have a conversation. I even matched with a transgender person (not really my thing, but I was essentially swiping with only one eye open)
A Promising Match
Oh boy, here we go. One fine evening, I had matched with a very pretty girl. I remember that day pretty fondly, I was playing Half-Life 2 Deathmatch with some friends on Discord and I was drunk on beers. Bumble has a feature where you can use an "Opening Move". Essentially, it's a feature which allows you to pick from a list of random conversation-starter questions. The one she used was "What would you do on a rainy sunday evening?" A pretty benign and default question. I honestly had no idea whether or not I should answer with a joke or be serious. I asked my friends about it and one of them opened up Chat-GPT to come up with a "hip and cool" response. As funny as it was I just decided to answer with a joke. I said something along the lines of "I'd go out into the middle of the park and soak in rain water" like a delusional person. The thing about these "Opening Moves" is that your match has to answer them too, and their answer would only show up after you have answered. So, after submitting my answer, the prompt faded in her answer which, hilariously, was the most normal thing like "I'd lay in bed and read a book" or something like that. When I saw her answer I burst out laughing and thought I'd blew it, but in reality it wasn't like that. She responded with a simple follow-up question -- "Do you like adventures?". I answered with fond interest and we sent each other messages back-and-forth for the rest of the evening. The next day, I messaged her simply asking how she was doing and pretty much we'd chat quite literally every day for the next 2 weeks, talking about whatever came to mind, getting to know eachother and all that good stuff. She'd gossip about whatever stuff was happening in her environment and it was pretty sweet all things considered since, honestly, I didn't really have anyone to text like that just about anything. Things were moving along well, we exchanged interests and we even exchanged playlists even though our music tastes didn't match whatsoever, we switched to Discord after about a week of chatting and we even watched Spider-man 2 together, which was pretty fun. Eventually, after about a week of talking, she invited me to go on a walk and to just hang out and chat about stuff. I felt ecstatic that day, I have never been in a date prior to meeting her online and I thought "damn, could this be it?", who knows? We were due to hang out on Saturday. We had also agreed to do a little temporary trade. She told me she likes to read books and stuff and I told her I had always wanted to get into reading books, so I asked her if i could borrow one. She agreed if I'd give something in return so I don't steal her book without giving it back, so I proposed that I'd give her my copy of the Silent Hill HD edition for the Playstation 3 and she, a bit reluctantly, agreed. So it was a deal, we'd meet on Saturday to hang out and we'd do the trade. While I was really happy about the proposal of going to a date with someone I found attractive, I also kind of dreaded it. You know, we were on really good terms and we were chatting quite literally every day, so meeting her in real life was scary, because IRL I am quite reserved and introverted and maybe not quite as chipper or energetic as I can be online. Oh well, there was no going back now, and I had agreed, so there was no way of avoiding it. The Saturday we were meeting at, that weekend was actually her birthday. So in preparation for the date I had decided to make her a heartfelt gift. This is pretty embarassing to write about, and I never shared this detail with anyone else. Pretty much, rather than being a normal average and romantic Joe gifting flowers or chocolate bars, I decided to draw her a birthday card. I drew a fairly simple drawing of her next to a lake, surrounded by happy looking cats in a circle, holding hands and who had also brought a birthday cake and a vase of tulips (she mentioned she liked tulips, so I added those along with other things she said she liked). To this day, I still don't know if this drawing was a good idea, probably a pretty stupid one all things considered, but hey man, shit like that is more timeless and heartfelt than a bucket of flowers that will rot away in 2 weeks or a box of chocolates that will be eaten in about the same time. The birtthday card took me about 3 hours to draw. Sadly I don't have a picture of it anymore, but I do still have the sketch.
My First Date
The day had come, It was finally saturday. The day prior was her birthday and today was the day we'd finally meet after about 2 weeks of day to day chatting. I tried to make myself look as presentable as I possibly could, put on my one and only cologne and deodorant I had, styled my hair to look it's best, put on my green-and-black coat and went out to go meet her. I was very, very stressed out. I walked to our meet-up spot next to a coffee shop and stood there waiting. I messaged her on Discord saying that I was at the spot and she said she'll be a bit late. Eventually, after a few minutes, I got a message that said "Girl in red and black jacket with orange book" And there she was! Just as she had described. No joke, she was really pretty. She was almost the same height as I was, had very bright gray-blue eyes and fairly short black hair. She gave me a book and we both turned to start going on our walk. The first minute of our meeting felt a bit awkward, but we eventually started talking about... stuff. We talked about varying topics, things like what we like, what we plan to do, education -- all kinds of random shit. As it probably should be, the convos did feel a little bit "forced", but when people meet IRL for the first, I feel like that's a given all things considered. We walked around the streets of Rīga, walked through various parks. While our conversations did seem harmless at that moment, there were a few strange moments I still find a bit strange... The first was that she was very eager to move out of Latvia. I asked her what she didn't quite like about the country and she said "everything". It wasn't really ever in my plans to move out of my home country, but I toyed with the idea and turned it into a decent discussion. The second was that she asked me what my "unpopular opinion" was. I took a moment, thought I might as well say something very usual like "ohh you know I kinda like pineapple on pizza", something very default and not actually too "unpopular" or "controversial". My answer was that I don't like sunbathing. I don't like doing it because it gives me a sunburn and I don't really look that good with a tan. She found it a bit funny, so I asked her the same question again. Her answer was only what I'd describe as "interesting". She said that she thinks that "not all feminists hate all men in the world". Prior to meeting her, I had already known that she was into all the feminism stuff, but I still felt a bit baffled, because I had said something very benign and she throws a bombshell like that on me. I didn't even know how to feel about that, should I feel flattered?? Like what the fuck do I even say? I don't really know how I reacted, but I probably just laughed it off and said "yeah, I agree" because, well, I do. After that, we started talking about how she was a feminist and how it all started, yadda yadda, we talked about smoking and how she vaped and that I was a cigarette smoker, a bunch of very default shit. Along the way, there were some strange moments like we walked past an old woman who said "Wow! What a pretty girl and pretty boy!" probably because we had matching outfits (mine was a green-and-black jacket and hers was red-and-black). We also walked past this very paranoid guy with barely any teeth and a cigarette in his mouth who walked up to us and asked us where the bus station was. We got pretty fed up with that guy and the girl pretty much told him to fuck off. Funnily enough when that was over and done with she said something along the lines of "Yeah, I can be kind of a bitch sometimes." Bruh. She told me she had to go back home to clean up, I guess after her birthday party or something like that, still don't know if that was like an excuse to go away or an actual reason. And so, we stood on a crossroads, I gave her my copy of Silent Hill for the PS3, and I also gave her the surprise birthday gift. She had a very surprised expression (:O) and looked pretty excited about it, I told her what it was, said bye, and we parted ways. After the date was done and over with, I took a tram, bought myself a bunch of beers and went back home.
The Aftermath
I felt VERY conflicted after the date. On one hand, it never truly felt like anything was very obviously wrong. I didn't make any awful moves on her and really it just quite literally felt like a walk in the park, albeit with a few bumps along the way. When I got home, I messaged her saying i enjoyed meeting up with her and that I hope i didn't "bore her to death". That evening was pure torment. I sat through the entire rest of the day just hoping to God she'd message me back, while sulking at my desk and getting drunk. There was nothing, I got ghosted. At this point it was more than obvious it was all over. She never really ignored messages of mine and she'd always answer even if it took an hour or two. The next day I tried my chance again and I messaged her how she was doing. To my surprise she actually answered. She apologized and said she needed to "take a detox", which sounded very reasonable, because well, that weekend was her birthday after all and so I took the excuse. The day after that I messaged her again, but this time around it was nothing. At that point it was even more obvious it was over. Eventually, she unfollowed me on Instagram and she even deleted her Bumble account (for some ungodly reason). This was my genuine first experience of being left in the dark. I honestly had no idea whether or not she was actually busy or it was all over. I spent whole days and evenings just hoping to myself "please, just message me. just tell me to fuck off, tell me ANYTHING", but it was to no avail. Once she unfollowed me on Instagram it was more than apparent what the verdict was. Our trade deal was still up so I messaged her again saying "well, whenever you need your book back, just message me." and, funnily enough, she did respond. She came up with the excuse that she was busy because she had exams and whatnot. I don't mean to be an asshole, but I knew it was bullshit. Even on the busiest of days she found time to respond. But there's nothing wrong with that, I get it. I personally would just message myself back saying something like "Oh, sorry, I just don't think we're meant for eachother, and it's best we leave it at that.", but I guess she just didn't find the courage to do just that, or just didn't find it worth it. No joke, I was heartbroken. It's probably not very rational of me to take it that way, because we really were just people who had met on the internet and talked for only 2 weeks, but this was my first dating experience EVER. And it left me feeling miserable. For the better part of April, I was genuinely depressed. I gave up on studying, I stopped taking care of myself completely and I felt like I had no hope. Looking back at it, it was pretty stupid of me to react that way. But it really was my first experience I've ever had in this stuff, so I'll use that excuse.
The Aftermath of The Aftermath
To this day, I still haven't gotten my Silent Hill back. I've messaged her about it a few times (with 10 day intervals, both ignored) and I guess I'm never getting the game back. After this soul-crushing experience I tried my hand at Tinder, matched with a bunch of other people, tried chatting with them but got the most dry conversations ever and realized it was all just a big joke. I suppose any experience is always valuable but honestly I don't know if going on dating apps was ever really worth it. There are plenty of success stories on these apps and some people have gotten along really well, but for me personally it's been a frankly pointless endeavour. I did match with some seemingly interesting people, but unless you are the most charmful or sexy person in the world, you probably don't stand a chance. In the end I'd probably call this experiment a massive failure. I lost a game I really wanted to play to the end, felt heartbreak over shit that never mattered, almost fucked up my studies completely because of said heartbreak and wasted 3 hours drawing a birthday card for someone who probably didn't care whatsoever. what a shitshow....