It’s Not the Dating App, it’s You

Anywhere you go, be it in person or on the internet, somebody is going to bring up how awful dating is and why the dating apps are “bad.” And sure, there are some ubiquitous perils of dating, especially on the internet, but sometimes, the problem is with the user. Call it “user error,” if you’d like.

I’m going to focus mostly on the men. Specifically, the men who date women, but women are guilty of many of the same things on dating apps, and where the parts of Venn diagram don’t overlap there lies a separate set of worries out there. For instance, men don’t often text their besties the location of a date, the time of the date, and the person they’re with along with their social media profiles. Statistically, men don’t have to worry about the stimulus of rejection resulting in the response of murder. I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge any of that.

“Be Yourself” is Terrible Advice

You’ve heard this advice before, I’m sure. Some well meaning friend or relative that knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that you’re not a piece of shit tells you this after repeated strikeouts in the dating world. Giving you the benefit of the doubt, I’m going to assume you’re not a piece of shit. I’m going to assume you’re a decent person. That being the case, why aren’t you having good conversations that lead anywhere?

Well, the biggest elephant in the room that many refuse to acknowledge is that you might not be an interesting person. But don’t get too angry. The good thing about that is you can easily change that. Remember, the goal of a dating app profile is to sell yourself in a way such that someone wants to have a conversation with you in an effort to learn more.

How to be an Interesting Person

As humans, our gestalt is rife with the potential for abundance. In essence, this means that we are more than merely what we do. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts, as it were. It’s time to live like it. With that, let’s get the important part out of the way: you’re more than your job. You might like your job, or even love it, but there’s more to you than your job. You become interesting by learning and sharing what you’ve learned and how it affects you. Lucky for you, here’s a list on how you can get started,