Here’s something that is nowhere near being newsworthy, but I thought I’d share and make it seem newsworthy. Don’t put a picture of your dog on your dating apps, there I said it. Surely someone in PETA must think I’m some kind of animal activist hero, but I like fishing so that’s not really the case. Dating apps are already pretty damn superficial, since the entire premise is to find someone you could “fall in love with” because of their three ridiculously edited pictures and their “clever” caption that says “coffee is my best personality trait”. Well to those same distinguished females, my cute dog is enough for them to want to match with me. Now let’s be clear, I obviously put the picture of me holding my dog to in some way or another spark conversation, but the feedback has left me pretty in shock.

              As I’m writing this, I am single so I have tried Tinder, Hinge, and even Bumble at one point, and quite frankly I did find some success. I’m a decent looking guy, I’d say a solid 6.15/10 on a good day, so I think at times my dating app success has come perhaps from being in some way slightly better looking and I mean really really marginally slightly better looking than the average male in my zip code rather than my dog, but that hasn’t always been the case. Recently I got some responses on Hinge that said “cute pic, now send me one of just your dog”, “I’ll go on a date with you if you bring your dog”, and the most hurtful, “just the dog next time thanks”. What the f*ck is wrong with society, when did we determine someone’s f*ckability on how cute their dog is?

Some of you reading must be thinking why do I care if I’m getting matches just because of my dog, isn’t the point of dating apps in college just to have easy hookups? Well yes, you’re not wrong that is a big driving factor as to why most people including maybe myself downloaded these apps. I won’t admit if that’s why I actually downloaded them just in case my future girlfriend reads this, but yeah dating apps in college are meant for practical, low effort, low budget, high-efficiency hookups. That’s probably the slogan for some whore house in Tucson, Arizona, but if it’s not then you heard it here first. Back to the point I actually got the apps to talk to girls during the quarantine months, and well it’s lowkey addicting. Even when bars and parties are a thing again there’s just a certain convenience to getting girls Snapchat’s by doing the same swiping motion as Fruit Ninja, not sure if anyone remembers that but it was a dope game.

As I realized my dog was the reason I was getting matches, I was thankful for him, but I doubted my sauce game. I felt like I was taking glory that he had earned for me, and that just didn’t feel right. Before I had a picture with my dog I met girls because they thought I wasn’t terrible looking, because from a distance I might look 6ft tall even though I’m 5’11”, and because I always used pickup lines that had to do with Australia to sound exotic even though I’m Spanish-American which is already kind of exotic. Back then I felt like girls were matching with me for the right reasons. In the end, I got off the apps, I met some great girls and had some great times because of them and I had some success with some girls that thought I looked better in pictures, but they had nothing better to do so they agreed to not leave after we got lunch, and it was a successful run. I don’t want to look good in pictures solely because an adorable 5 month old cavapoo is in them, and I don’t want to continue to be swiped on because I’m the only guy who doesn’t have a picture with their car in their profile. I could always just delete the picture with my dog and not get off the app, but I don’t feel that I need the app anymore, life is going back to normal and we should no longer rely on algorithms to meet our significant others, as fun as it may be. I’m going old school, I’m going to awkwardly attempt to dance with 8 girls only to find success with one because she was also rejected by others earlier, and I’m going to once again prove that man’s best friend isn’t man’s only way of getting girls.

P.S.

I will gladly give a TED Talk on this if asked to so feel free to shoot me a dm TED people or whoever organizes them. Thank you.

P.S.S.

I’ll probably end up back on the app in like two weeks.