"Last year, I went through a breakup and threw myself into internet dating. I started experimenting with mirror selfies, and spent whole evenings trying to take artful photographs of my own bum. I agonised over my three-line bio. I even put a notebook by my bed with the Hinge prompt most spontaneous thing I've done written on the first page, so if the answer came to me in a dream, I'd have a pen and paper handy."
"The thrill of scrolling on Hinge, when I first started dating, was that it felt like shopping for an alternate future. I'd pore over pictures of men cradling small dogs and swinging tennis rackets, and get high on the thought of all the tiny dogs and tennis games we would enjoy together. I started hiding my phone in a cupboard in the kitchen before I went to sleep,"
"When I went out on in-person dates, they weren't always as fun as my fantasies. The flesh-and-blood men I met in pubs usually seemed smaller and less substantial than their 2D profile photos. I often got the sense I didn't quite live up to the Hinge me, either. My real voice always sounded so much louder and less sultry than my voice notes."
After a breakup, a woman plunged into internet dating, obsessively curating her Hinge profile, experimenting with selfies, and composing prompts, treating profiles as shopping for alternate futures. She hid her phone to resist feeling pulled toward imagined lives and experienced motion sickness from rapid scrolling. In-person dates often failed to match online impressions; men seemed smaller than their photos, and her live voice felt less alluring than voice notes. Encounters included awkward refusals and comparisons to others, revealing a tension between curated online identities and messy reality. Despite fantasies, the process generated oscillation between possibility and disappointment.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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