I chat with a few guys but for the most part our conversations don’t last longer than a day or two. So I find myself checking back into the app to see if there are any updates and as a result, I forget about conversations all together.
One guy I end up talking with who we’ll call Sean* fits into my age, height and location preferences so, with this app, that means it’s already off to a good start. We have a mutual friend so before I reply to his initial message, I creep his Facebook profile to make sure his photos aren’t totally deceiving and his Facebook wall is relatively normal (i.e., no inspirational quotes or too many shared memes).
I find out that he lives a two-minute walk away from me and we’re practically neighbours so I ask him out for drinks that evening at the bar across the street from us. ”
I write him off and continue using the app with even less hope than before because it seems it’s already slowing down. I get less notifications that men are “interested” in me as the week goes on and a few of my conversations go into inactive mode because the other person already deleted their Dating profile.
He agrees, but in classic dating app fashion, he bails on me an hour before because his bed is “really comfortable
One night that weekend, Sean asks me if I’m free. Despite being annoyed by his lazy bail earlier that week, I have no plans after 10pm so we grab a couple drinks at the local bar.
When he arrives he apologizes, joking that he’s worried I’ll write an article about him because I’m a journalist. Ha.
The date actually goes alright and we have a lot in common. He’s not standardly my “type” but it doesn’t seem like he’s looking for The One either. Plus he agrees that the app is flawed and, in comparing other dating apps, we ;s is trash.
That may be in part because notifications for Facebook are confusing-I legitimately can’t figure out how to turn mine on for Dating messages
I’m literally yawning once we’re a couple hours in and I try to hide it to no avail. Not because he’s boring, but because I’m exhausted. Perhaps Dating has taken a bigger toll on me than I thought. We agree to part ways and he tells me to let him know when I get home from my two-minute walk. Later he says we should go out again and I agree, partly because I don’t want to seem like the asshole who went out with him just to write an article about it.
At this point I’m feeling less inclined to go back on the app altogether because I frankly don’t want Austin dating ideas to chat with anyone on that godforsaken forum ever again. At the end of it all, it actually makes me miss Bumble and I consider downloading it again for the seventh time. If all else fails, right?
So if any Facebook reps are reading this, please fix your dating feature because my fingers ache from pressing “pass” over and over for the past week and tbh it seems like you launched this one before it was ready for real life humans.
Overall though, it’s hard to imagine that those who’ve already given up on Facebook (i.e., a majority of your users) are going to actively put the fate of their relationships into your hands. A better solution may actually be to let this sink along with the rest of the ship. Thank u, next.