Dub-less in Dublin

When I moved to Ireland, I started a Hinge profile (sort of) as a joke, but more so as a way to mindlessly fill my time because I had no friends and not a lot of coursework yet (operational word here is yet).  I was catching up with my mom on the phone one day in the first couple weeks living in Dublin and I told her I had made an account–but mostly as a joke, obviously.  Because why take something seriously that would likely end up as a futile effort to find love (or anything close to it) in your early-20s?

Her response was not what I expected from a woman who met her lifelong love at age nineteen in a dingy Ben & Jerry’s in Freeport, Maine. She told me not to write it off because isn’t Hinge the app that’s meant to be deleted? She has thus failed to understand capitalism at a very basic level, and dating for that matter. You get lured in by the sparkle of attractive people, banter via text, and first dates in which the men pay without hesitation. And at the very least you have hope. Hope that you, too, will eventually delete Hinge and exit the dating scene gracefully and on the arm of a significant other, just in time for the holidays! My mother was more invested than I in the idea that an algorithm could find love in my early-twenties, and like any good daughter, I decided to trust the process.

Well, a couple months in, and in true capitalist form I am not on the arm of a significant other, I am still on Hinge, and plan to remain on Hinge with the small hope that a huge corporation hasn’t lied to me in order to keep me a loyal and mindless patron of their product. Gone are the days of meet cutes at coffee shops and bookstores, blind dates and friends setting us up. Instead, we have higher expectations for a series of zeros and ones to find us a good match than our dearest friends introducing us to a friend of theirs.

But, for as long as I can remember, I have been able to create something from nothing: a term paper from multiple nights of no sleep, a delusion that he likes me from a brief moment of eye contact, and now chronicles of dating in Dublin. And to provide even further entertainment, I will not only give you my own stories, but the stories of my roommates as well. Cleverly calling ourselves Dub-less in Dublin simply because the win column is empty, leaving us defeated and wondering if this season will have a comeback or will we be the Bad News Bears, so close to victory, but ultimately falling short.

Falling short in ways not entirely different from the men who claim to be six feet tall in their profile, boasting a height that is so obviously incorrect when posed next to their friends. What you can’t tell from my profile is that (if I stand up straight) I am close to five feet ten inches, many of my friends are just as tall and many are taller. This is to say, I know exactly when to call bullshit, and many of the men on Hinge are full of it. Most of the time I can tell just by their profile if they are lying about their height. And if they are willing to lie about their height, then what else are they lying about?? I will never know, because I X them out immediately. But in an effort of making something out of nothing, I have a newfound respect for the men who put their height as five feet seven inches. I know they aren’t lying. But I still X them out because, remember, I’m nearly three inches taller than them.

As the year goes on, I hope to share many of the dating stories I and my friends experience here, on a quest to find love, you know? In an effort to not take myself or online dating too seriously, I fully intend to exploit the good, the bad, and the ugly. Because if Hinge will profit off my personal life in the effort to sell love packaged in a series of zeros and ones, then I will have my hand at profiting (even if only in laughs) from the app that’s meant to be deleted.