Unsupervised Leo on The Apps

Swiping, Scheduling, Getting Gastroenteritis from My Kindergartener, Cancelling

For starters, I paid a shitload of end-of-month/beginning-of-month bills yesterday and I am not even sure why I am on “the apps” when the cost of living is doing me so hard already. Okay, not entirely true. I mean, intensely true about the cost of living, but I have a very direct point + purpose for being on the apps, which is to pull myself out of social/human-interaction hibernation.

Knock knock. Hoo’s there? Photo by me, edited in Snapseed.

Some preliminary information, to set the stage, and a disclaimer.

The disclaimer is that I am using the apps as myself, stating all of my accurate information about age, height, weight, abdominoplasty scar, number of human offspring, limited available dates for socializing, inability to host, as well as providing unfiltered images from this 2024 year. The response to this factual and true information is the only data set that I have. I am also using only free/unpaid tiers for all apps.

I have profiles up on three apps, and I didn’t do any market research so I don’t even know if they are The Big Three or anywhere in the ballpark. Tinder and Feeld I have used before—Tinder off/on since 2020 and Feeld last summer when I was similarly aiming to leave the comfort of my hermette house and engage with real living people. Stir is an app aimed at single parents and it’s my first rodeo with Stir, with the most notable profile being a man who acknowledged that he was not a parent but could maybe be my Daddy if the vibe was right. Okay.

In the beginning, aside from the few minutes required to set up profiles on each app, I spent approximately 10 minutes/day “swiping.” Within those 10 minutes, a fun game I played was “swipe until I ‘like’ somebody or until I see someone I know—whichever comes first.” After a few days on each app, there were enough chats going and enough meetups planned that I haven’t been actively swiping in over two weeks. This means that I get emails and notifications daily from each app trying to convince me that I am missing out on potential action by not engaging with the app. But of course, one can opt out of those reminders and notifications. (Or one can feel smug about how many people are looking when one is not even in the arena looking back. I am not saying I feel this way, but one might.) As of now, my only engagement with any of the apps is in responding to messages on active chats.

Tinder Stats

• After less than 48 hours with a profile = approximately 20 minutes swiping, I had 11 matches.

• Dud Matches (I initiated contact and they didn’t respond) 2

• Dead Chats (Chats that went dead after some polite back/forth) 4

• Dates Scheduled 2

• Dates Cancelled by Me Due to Illness 2

• Chats That Are Still Active with Potential for IRL Meeting 2

• Guy Who Asks if He Can Video Chat His Dick at Me Every Day 1

• IRL Meetups 0

Overall Assessment = I think I would be more into the Tinder dynamic if chatting, texting, and sexting was my thing—but it isn’t. I prefer meeting people in person, and realistically I have limited time to do so. The average Tinder user wants more immediate attention, which is totally fair and I am not critiquing that desire.