Attention is insatiable. Dating apps are instant access to exhilarating fantasies, not with other people, with ourselves. Twenty matches. Maybe more. Not a single chat gets a reply because, when we’re unabashed, the humans on the opposite side of our prompted flirtations are often functions for excavating our undiscovered parts. The rule of the game: this isn’t real.

Should it become real, we hesitate. We ghost. And after we’re almost over the last cycle, we sign up again. Reactivate the profile. Our next hookup, or potential soulmate, depending on the week, is waiting. Bumble is an experiment in discernment. Tinder in sex. Hinge in ego death. Raya in status. Trying on different people in different places, offering different versions. Women are discouraged from admitting it. We swipe without intention, too, and it feels just as good. 

Falling in love, and staying in it, is anomalous. Against the rigor of that pursuit — true love mixed with stability mixed with compatibility mixed with timing — mindless fun is an escape. Swiping is for pleasure. The ego loves quantifiable evidence that it’s as desirable as it thinks. In demand. With options, not an option. A date is the reward we’re consciously after. Dopamine is what keeps us hooked. In actuality, the apps suck. 

Bottomless pits of profiles with AI-generated responses and pictures from 5 years ago. No, they don’t look like that anymore. Neither do you. Nobody’s catfishing, that’s just when they made the account. Being seen never really gets old, even when we do. The stack of messages awaiting our reply feels powerful. We let them accumulate, lying that we’re bad at texting back when questioned. Noting the questioning itself as a red flag. A way we avoid the connection we like to convince ourselves we’re seeking. 

When romance is commodified as entertainment in a culture that’s starved of both, love takes a backseat to stimulation. Even if we found love, would we trust it? Self-protection has calcified into warring over who calls first, who wants to see the other more, who initiates what and when. We’re disillusioned with pursuit and pursuing because a relationship requires the willingness to exchange enough vulnerability that heartbreak is possible. 

Are you calling her a slut? That’s why she lies to you.

The unintentional aren’t toying with emotions, though it seems so. They’re interested in themselves and using another’s attraction for self-discovery or self-soothing or self-indulgence. It’s their internal world that needs tending. The swipe is their device of choice. It could be you. It could be anyone. No one speaks of the quiet eroticism in curating your profile. Someone on the other end of that swipe got excited. To the chronic user, their expectations mean nothing. Men are culpable. So are we, and often better at hiding it. Everyone knows decency doesn’t live on dating algorithms.

Non-committal women are shamed. Yet, assuming every woman wants a relationship compresses the female romantic experience into a caricature. The damsel waiting to be swept off her feet, sometimes in distress, though in today’s dating economy, more often unbothered. The distress is the relationship. She avoids one at all costs. Or maybe she’s busy, and wants sex — and sex only. Are you calling her a slut? That’s why she lies to you. She’ll be the perfect girlfriend tonight if you promise not to call tomorrow. 

Would you be more likely to marry her if she hadn’t consented?

“Player” narratives have historically been reserved for men and, notably, people who are into women — anyone who collects women is granted the label. The woman pursuing men with the same appetite is invisible, largely ignoring that we select as much as we’re selected. Picking instead of “pick me.” Fit the bill or lose the thrill. And it is just a thrill.

Apps are discreet entry points into these stigmatized impulses. Unseen and unaccountable. Because when women denounce love in favor of detachment, it’s a moral failing. It’s a scarlet letter. The reputation becomes “she’s easy.” Nobody sees it the other way around. It happens, silently, in corners where judgment exists unnamed; where it can be erased and blocked without repercussions, especially if the distance is set to another town in another city. 

The behavior is condemnable only to those whose superiority depends on condemnation. A collective reluctance to see women in such a disposition reduces our humanity. Not all seek sex and indiscriminate affairs. Some get different forms of satisfaction from the swipe. Whatever we’re getting out of it, the adrenaline fuels us to continue. That doesn’t mean we’re not relationship material. Take her home to Mama material. Put a ring on it material. The woman who swipes right and goes home with you on the first date is not being roused, she chose you. Would you be more likely to marry her if she hadn’t consented?