The Story of the Pistachio: Chapter 3 – Swipe Right You Ass Hole

Well here we are, the next chapter of my pistachio story.

This chapter is not on the relationships of my past like chapter 1, or a particular love story like the chapter 2. Instead this time I am digging deeper way beyond my own pistachio shell, and into depths of a much greater issue within this dating app fuelled world.

My original struggle with being unable to develop interest in guys for more than 12 whole seconds has now been fixed (phew!) yet I am sitting over here exhausted and utterly annoyed..

I did what I needed to do gosh darn it!!  I opened up my stupid shell!!

So why does finding love still seem even more impossible than ever???

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The Story of the Pistachio: Swipe Right You Ass Hole

The other day, I went on one of the best dates I can remember. He showed up looking better than his pictures instead of balding and 30 pounds heavier.  He was a gentlemen opening doors and paying, instead of taking shots alone in the corner of the bar with my credit card. We shared a favorite cartoon, BOOM. Same music, BANG. Same religious views, POW..and that kept going and going all night.  Add an endless amount of laughter and goofing off together and I was like..

Whooo hoooo!  YES!

Future plans were made and we agreed we couldn’t wait to see each other again…But then…

Uhhhh…HELLO? Are we playing like, peek a boo?
I never heard from him again. 

A few days later, I had a date with a fella I have been regularly chatting with for weeks. I get to the restaurant to find out that he uhhhhhh just did not show up?  No call….no text.. no pigeon telegraph, nada! My time wasted getting to know him and time spent combing all my hair that day really put me in a shit mood.  I had some hope for this one (very rare) so that shit mood easily led to the only known cure of a bottle of wine and liter of ice cream down my throat.

So we have two complete extreme ends of the dating spectrum, yet somehow with the same disappointing outcome:

ABSOLUTELY FUCKING NOTHING

That day when I was waiting at the restaurant alone, not able to get hold of the dickwad who stood me up, it triggered me to sit and reflect on how much the dating world in 2016 has changed.

I never used to get stood up and I also never used to go on amazing dates and it end there, not to mention the ridiculous amount of flaking. But somehow these not so nice behaviors are happening more than ever.

But Why?

As I sat there contemplating different tools I could potentially use to poke his eyeballs out with, my phone beeped. I took a looked down to notice I had missed 6 new notifications.

Hmmm. Dating apps, are you the culprit? Nah…Nooooooo way!

How can something that was designed to make dating easier, actually be making it more problematic?

I open my apps to see I received 3 charms, 1 match, 2 hearts and 1 super like..then it dawned on me.

oh shit….

HAS DATING TURNED INTO A FULL BLOWN GAME??

To figure this out, I needed to look deeper into the levels of the “game “and research the strategies of the “players”. So I put my 100k worth of education debt into use and I conducted myself a little study.

Below are my major findings…

Level 1 – Swiping Right

Most Women will ignore any first picture that is not appealing, and only swipe if one is revealed. Girls also actually read profiles. If you don’t have one, it is more likely that you are labelled as a hook up.

Men have the opposite approach where they mostly always swipe right on the first picture. Most men do not read profiles.

Level 2 – Match

Most Women will wait to see if the guy messages them, with only a small percentage who message first.  Most men will send the first message.

Level 3 – Small Talk

Chatting commences during this level, where both players start losing interest or completely drop interest without notice – aka ghosting.  If banter is interesting enough, a small percentage advance to the next level.

Level 4 – Planning

Once real chatting begins, both players reveal there is a very small threshold before they can actually meet the other without losing interest.  If you are able to schedule this within the limited threshold, you get to advance to the last level.

Level 5 – Meet up

The final level is where you finally meet face to face.  Players either stay at this level a few times or instantly restart the game with one of their other players in the pipeline.

 Most players on average match with 12 new players a week, permitting them to be on any given level with anyone at any given time. Most of the time players use at least 2 apps, and will check the apps once sent a charm, token, heart, superlike or message at any time, causing new games instantaneously begin. Players say on average there is 5 days before they start losing interesting without planning a meet up.

Most players do not feel any guilt if they do not respond to a message or if they decide to stop chatting with another player. 40 percent of these players have felt hurt or mistreated by people on dating apps.

And finally, 88 percent of people say that using dating apps sometimes does feel like a game.

Thoughts

Hmmm, well.. to say I am in any way shocked at the results of the my questionnaire would be a big opera singing lady fat lie! The findings above support everything I have been questioning but now bring up even more theories and questions.

If we all feel like we are playing a game….  are we forgetting that the other player on the other end of the phone is a real human being with feelings and not some plastic pawn?

This game approach is making it difficult for people to commit to the meet up or following through to most actions, really.   It is allowing for society as a whole to make it acceptable to not communicate with consideration.  Just not make that call to say you can’t make it because your aunt broke her back..Or just man up and say “fun time but don’t see this happening”.

We are walking around with this mindframe of why commit to 1 when we have 10 other people we can go out with this week and then the next, and then next. And even after we perhaps have gone on a brilliant date, it’s hard to keep moving forward when we know there are dozens of other dates awaiting to meet up. Our attention span,  holy crap! It is worse than a freaking fruit fly. We loose interest in less than a week of chatting before dropping that person like a hot coal and moving on. So much moving on and on and on it’s as if  we are totally addicted to meeting people, and I believe we are.

Prospective dates are just too accessible now making it feel like anyone you are or can date is completely disposable. Is this when it became socially acceptable to be an inconsiderate dater?

Is this when we all became ass holes??

RESOLUTION

When we match and chat with dozens people a week, managing all these new opportunities can be difficult, I get it TRUST ME! 
 I am not the most organized person, so when you see below that I have a whole folder on my phone dedicated to dating and with 85 missed notifications, you can see  I am no exception to this rule.  I tend to be the go to girl if you need a laugh, just check my Facebook and you will find some new dating horror story I have naturally spun in to a joke because I see no other choice. Dating for me has practically became an exhausting full time job with poor benefits, and the only type of payment sadly comes in the form of liver damage. So even though I do not mistreat the guys I talk to, I am still very much part of the problem.

So what have we learned? Well,  in a nutshell…

Before every single single person was immediately obtainable, the amount of ghosting, flakes, no shows, and related selfish behaviors never used to be this nasty.

With 50 new matches at our fingertips each month, curiosity of each new possibility increases, while the value of just having one wonderful person decreases.

We are addicted to instant gratification, instant ego stroking, while feeling no repercussions if we negatively affected someone else during the process.

Just like any other type of addict, we are treating others like shit and acting like ass holes without even realizing it.

So maybe it is time for us to take a step back and put ourselves in check.

I am not saying if someone sends you that initial message and you don’t respond you are an ass hole. Not at all! But once you actually start to really interact with them, if you are on level 3 or 4, remember that this is real life and you are dealing with a real person. Perhaps be conscious that not everyone you are chatting with is as advanced in this “game” and might be more affected by something like a sudden drop of communication. I think we all really forget these things, and it has conditioned us into this selfish dating behavior.

So moving forward be mindful, put yourself in the other person’s shoes, be mature and be real with people, don’t treat others the way you wouldn’t want to be treated,  if you are not feeling it just tell them, calm the F down on matching with more people than you can handle, and just seriously, just STOP being an ass hole.

<3 Michelle

Want to read the next Chapter?!?

The Story of the Pistachio: Chapter 4 – “The Ones”

Related Posts:

The Unattainable Girl: The Story of the Pistachio

The Story of the Pistachio: Chapter 2 – The Bearded Man