A friend turned me on to something called the Burned Haystack Dating Method. Here’s the deal. You want to sift a lot of hay or do you want to find the damn needle? You torch the haystack and see what’s left.
To some degree, I’ve been doing this for a while, but this method has prescribed rules and it’s — can you imagine — even less forgiving than I am.
Armed with this take no prisoners rulebook, I put up a Hinge profile.
Here’s a guy who tells me he thinks he’d have a great time should we meet for coffee. Here’s a guy who taps the heart where I say I won’t compromise on politics, but in his profile, he’s a moderate. Here’s a guy who says he wants someone agreeable and feminine. These are guys who wanted to match with me, let’s be clear, they’re not my picks. They see my profile and think, yeah, that’s for me, and they message me.
No, no, and no.
The guy who thinks he’d enjoy going out with me is only thinking of himself, and saying so right up front. The guy who likes my stance on politics is either pretending, pandering, or doesn’t read for comprehension, so no. The guy who wants someone agreeable and femme, I don’t even know where to start with that except to say … no.
Bare bones effort, boys, she says, in the voice of the hockey bros in Letterkenny.
I have a few matches I’ve initiated, but none of them have matched my effort to connect. They get a hot minute to engage in the barest of getting to know you chats and then, nope. It’s 2024, you should know how to converse in text. Unmatch.
It’s efficient at least. I feel much more in control when I’m setting things on ablaze, rather than staring at all this hay.
Do I find fewer matches? Yes. Is this a good thing? Yes. Do I spend way less time looking at the apps? Again, yes.
I’m all for it.
The popular dating apps Tinder, Hinge and the League hook users with the promise of seemingly endless romantic matches in order to push people to pay money to continue their compulsive behavior, according to a federal lawsuit filed in San Francisco on Wednesday. — NPR