"Oh, he never texted me back. I've been ghosted."
"I mean, it's no big deal, we never even met up."
"It's just casual, you know? Who cares if she's still using Tinder?"
The twenty-first century has brought about the delightful phenomenon of app dating -- dating from your smartphone! Eligible singles from the area have been magically distilled into witty profiles, complete with bad puns and grainy mirror selfies! Swipe endlessly through local hotties (and a lot of notties) as you ride the bus, avoid homework, and chat with your friends. Easily built into your daily routine, this is a spectacular way to meet people and boost your self esteem as your phone pings that *gasp!* you've matched! Here's your future soulmate -- but what should your clever opening line be?
The lovely high of matching never lasts long, though. Unfortunately, app dating, or smartphone dating, is a cold game of marketing and wooing. As you were endlessly swiping through the sea of bad pickup lines and wondering "Is that their dog, or just clickbait?," they too were evaluating why a photo from prom 2012 wound up on your profile and what you look like now, all while swiping through other profiles full of cute smiles with hip song lyric bios. Sweat begins to bead on your brow as you wonder what first message is most likely to make them fall in love with you-- which part of their bio saying, "Professional surfer, 6'3", love dogs and rap music" should you reference to prove that you are quirky, smart, understanding, and interesting?? Alluding to Beyoncé's "Surfboard" is probably not the direction you want to go if you want them to bring you flowers and romantically walk with you around the lake while reciting poetry. Perhaps you should ask them who their favorite rapper is? With bated breath, you hit send and wait anxiously for "Greg" to reply.
Fast forward, and you and Greg have been Tindering back and forth for a few days now, moving on to sharing numbers and texting. They were your daily match on Coffee Meets Bagel today, and you feel that it's kismet that you've matched on two separate dating platforms. You know they're going to text you in the morning before work, once during the lunch break, and marathon conversation with you from 10pm until 2 in the morning. They're sweet, funny, feminist, and interested in what you have to say! You've told your friends about them in passing, trying to mention them casually by saying, "Oh, yeah, this person I'm talking to also likes Frank Ocean..." Without meaning to, Greg is built into your routine and talking to them is something you expect, a way you get through your day. You're still swiping around, but not seriously -- after all, you have Greg.
As you consider asking Greg if they want to meet up at a well-populated coffee shop during daylight hours, you realize Greg never sent you a morning text. Maybe they just woke up late and didn't have time to respond to your thoughtful treatise on gentrification in Oakland? Heart starting to hammer, you try and put it out of your mind and go about your day. Lunch goes by. No text from Greg. You reread the last text you sent -- did it send? Was your carefully researched rant presenting false information or offensive? No and no. Maybe Greg is just busy today. You try and go to class as normal, but you jump every time your phone buzzes. No message from Greg.
By 10pm, when you and Greg usually start analyzing the mysteries of the universe and sharing nostalgic childhood stories, there's still no text from him. You're doing your homework and trying not to stare at your empty home screen, but you can feel the dread start.
Two days later, and still no text from Greg. You've reread your entire conversation, wondering where you went wrong, but there's nothing to indicate why Greg would suddenly lose interest and fall off the planet. Your final text to them, casually asking if everything is going okay, went unanswered. After checking their Tinder and Coffee Meets Bagel profiles, you realize they've moved on and changed their bio to say "Just a quirky bookworm trying to make it in this world of fiction. 6'3", because people seem to want to know that on here." What happened to the rap-loving, dog-loving, professional surfer they were presenting themselves as earlier?? At least the fact that they're 6'3" has stayed consistent. It's over, and you've been ghosted for no reason.
Hardening your heart, you return to swiping and scoffing at your daily matches, trying to forget about Greg and all of the late night conversations and the castle in the air you built for the two of you. Your friends ask about Greg, knowing you were talking to someone cool, and you just bitterly say, "They ghosted me. It doesn't matter, we were only talking for 6 days. Dating is just an amusement constructed for us by the establishment to distract us from the fact that we're losing privacy rights and the ability to participate in government every day. I should be concentrating on breaking down the corrupt capitalist system anyway." Privately, you think to yourself that it would have been nicer to bring down corporate America with Greg, but oh well.
Such is the way of dating in this digital age, where everything and everyone is accessible to us with a few swipes across a screen. Inundated with faces from various places, the idea of dating using your smartphone seems like the easiest, most low-maintenance way to chat, fuck, and date other singles (or secretly-not-singles or openly-in-open-relationshippers, as it were). The concept of becoming attached to someone based on seeing 6 poorly lit, badly composed pictures of them seems absurd -- and even more ridiculous is the idea that someone could mean something to you if you've never met and have only been texting for a few days. There is no legitimacy to a relationship begun on an app; it feels wrong to have expected more than a hookup from someone you talked to online for a few days. Somehow, being left with nothing but empty, mussed up bedsheets to grasp feels like divine justice -- of course they weren't going to stay and ask you about your day. The thoughtful messages of the courting process were just a blind for the fool who never wanted to see the truth in the first place.
The loneliness and heartache that can happen after an app-dating encounter, whether a meeting occurred or not, seem to have no place in the elevated visions of societally-recognized heartbreak. The sympathy extended to heroines in movies who sob along to rom-coms over gigantic tubs of ice cream after their partner of three years breaks up with them seems entirely unnecessary to extend to someone who was ghosted, or fucked and chucked. There is a shadow of "didn't you know what you signed up for?" cast over every app-dating encounter. If it went badly, it is always the fault of the medium you were searching for companionship through. Somehow, the impersonal method of first connecting through text bubbles delegitimizes heartbreak and does away with the expectation that human beings should be treated decently.
Yet in a digitized time when we are all desperately connected to our smartphones and laptops, headphones functioning as umbilical cords connecting us to our precious online world, trying to date and find companionship using a smartphone app is the most natural thing in the world. If everyone is on their media and nobody will raise their heads and unblock their ears in the "real" world of physical space, what better way is there to meet people other than the medium of an app? While it may seem like a myth or an acid trip to envision a happy, healthy relationship coming out of meeting someone through an app, it does happen. And on the flip side, real heartaches and loneliness can also come from smartphone relationships, which are just as legitimate as in-person heartbreaks. Talking to someone, whether it's through text, phone conversation, or over coffee builds a connection and integrates communication with that person into your life. The thrill and butterflies of meeting someone for the first time happen through blue text bubbles just as they do making eye contact with blue eyes in a record store. Vulnerable conversations and acts of trust occur online just as well as in person.
Rather than repressing smartphone heartbreak and playing off participation in app dating as a ridiculous experiment, let's legitimize the tragedy of ghosting, of people who never text back after meeting you, of falling for the dicks who tell you it's only casual after you've been exclusive for months. To all of the people who never got a message back and wondered what was wrong with them -- you're perfect, and you eat that breakup ice cream! Bitch to your friends about the Tinder dudes. Tell that OkCupid match to communicate better. Demand that the Grindr guy take you on a real date. Sign the ghosting Coffee Meets Bagel guy up for Trump campaign emails. Light the world on fire, and don't let anyone ever tell you it's ridiculous to be hurt over something that happened through your smartphone.
