Greetings from the emergency room, where I just arrived after ending a first date early. My date’s dad is a doctor, and after I showed up with a mysterious lump in my neck, (moments after meeting him, I asked him to touch it for a potential diagnosis), he recommended that I go to the hospital.
I’d never left a date to go to the ER (but I’ve thought about trying to get out of a date with that excuse), and this quick exit luckily marked the end of a week of marathon dating.
I’d gone on exactly one online date before this week, an OkCupid test-run after pressure from my two best friends, whose couch I’d crashed on for two months after a bad breakup.
And after a year of being very single without much mingle, I thought it would be funny to try a bunch of new-to-me (i.e., non-Tinder) online-dating sites.
The first thing that made me anxious about online dating was that I had to delete all my favorite apps to make room for the new ones, which promised to find me love (or at least a one-night stand). I sighed as I deleted the This American Life app, but I knew that it would never get me laid … unless Ira Glass divorced his wife and I used it to find him.
I signed up for a smorgasbord of different apps/sites that took over my life as well as my iPhone memory: JSwipe, Grouper, The League, FarmersOnly.com, Sizzl, Bumble, Glimpse, Score, Tatsebuds and Bristlr. Finding dates became a part-time job; I considered hiring someone from TaskRabbit to manage all of it. I imagined that the ad would read, “Seeking: a modern-day yenta.”
It was exhausting.
Dating involves a lot of waiting. Waiting for an answer. Waiting for a call. Waiting outside the bar alone for 15 minutes because his BART ride is late. Online dating is all of the waiting, plus the isolation of scrolling alone in bed for a match.
Online dating is also a lot of time spent trying to figure out how everyone on Bumble can be an account executive and wondering what the hell an account executive is.
I have only a few dating rules — no smokers, no one currently in jail and, preferably, no one with my dad’s name (sorry, Barrys of the world). After a week, I haven’t found the love of my life. Or even the love of my Friday night. Or even a guy named Barry. But I made some friends and got some stories out of it. And that counts for something, right?
JSwipe
I’m Jewish by birth, not by practice. My friend Craig told me about JSwipe months ago, and I was intrigued by the smiling Star of David and “Mazel Tov!” when a match occurred. I’d never dated a Jew, much to my Bubbe’s chagrin, and I figured I’d give it a shot.
My pickup lines didn’t go well. A cute New Jersey native didn’t like my Bruce Springsteen reference.
But then a guy wished me a “Shana Tovah” and sent me a New York Times article about bagels. Dream-Jew alert. He and I met for a beer, which ended up being a $31 beer. We bonded over sticker shock … and that was mostly it. But he was nice and didn’t murder me — my top two qualifications for meeting someone from the Internet in real life. And now my Bubby can die happy knowing I gave Jewish dating a chance.
Grouper
Grouper is an app that matches six people on a date. The crowd included me and two wingwomen and a guy and his two wingmen.
The date was fine, albeit very platonic. A few drinks in, we all headed to the Mint for karaoke, where my friends promptly left, and I ended my night alone with three men singing ’90s pop songs until I realized how bizarre the situation was and left before we could all sing NSYNC together.
Unsurprisingly, I didn’t find love on a group date. All three guys did tell me they would choose me, but I think that that’s because I was the only one who stuck it out.
The League
The League app put me on a waitlist, just like a certain elite school that I had applied to for undergrad did. Disheartened by my 145,596th place in line, I decided to switch gears since I had a better chance of getting into an actual Ivy League before it was my chance to find elitist love. I moved onto something that wasn’t technically an app but that I thought might work.
UberPool
I had tried to use UberPool before to meet men. Two guys I met in a ride invited me out for drinks, and a week later they invited me to a birthday party at the Tonga Room, where they bought me piña coladas. Intrigued to see if this was at all romantic, I invited one of them out for dinner during my dating marathon. We enjoyed each other and dinner … on a platonic level.
And during this whirlwind week of dating, I picked up another guy in an UberPool who asked me out for drinks after I used all my best jokes on him.
FarmersOnly.com
I’ve loved farmers ever since I started shopping at farmers’ markets and realized that most of them are bearded, strong and hunky, and have access to good produce or cheese.
So when I realized that FarmersOnly was not, in fact, only for farmers, I signed up. There’s an option for non-farmers, which I chose — “Big City, but want to meet country folks.”
I pictured men in flannel with muscles and farmer stands where I could visit and get my free produce each week.
The website did not help me find my Prince Farming. The minimum-distance range was 200 miles, and as much as I wanted to take a tractor ride, I didn’t want to go that far to do it.
I kept “favoriteing” candidates who were close by, but only one messaged me. He started with “Howdy” (I couldn’t make this up if I tried), but because FarmersOnly has no app, it was hard to keep up a conversation.
I also realized that FarmersOnly might not be for me when I saw this description of a dream date: “She can work in the rain, mud and manure all day, then get cleaned up pretty and go to town for dinner.”
I do NOT want to work in manure. I needed to get back to city folk ASAP.
Sizzl
Sizzl is an app sponsored by Oscar Meyer that matches people based on their bacon preference. Genius.
My high school boyfriend’s mom used to know if I had been over because the house would smell like bacon. Then in college, I read too much Michael Pollan and mostly stopped eating meat. But despite being a mostly-vegetarian-except-in-cases-of-drunkenness-or-dumplings, I signed up.
First, I took a quiz about bacon preferences. My results: Pork Bacon Lover, Loves It Crispy, Bacon Splitter (meaning that if there was one piece of bacon on the table, I would split it with my date). That last answer was a lie, but no one wants to date a bacon taker. My future boyfriend could find out the truth at a later date. We all have to fib a little when it comes to love and pork.
Sizzl lets you rate a mate by holding down a “Heat” button. When you match with someone, you hear a bacon-sizzle sound, which made me hungry for bacon. Pavlovian response much? My matches must have also been hungry for love. It was the quickest I’d been messaged.
I got some great pig-themed pickup lines, like “What’s shakin’, bacon?,” “Tomorrow we could be eating bacon together” and “I’d order extra bacon if it meant more time with you.” I responded with gems like “You’re bacon me crazy” and “Wanna be my bae-con?”
I didn’t do so hot. But my puns did warm the bacon-loving cockles of one heart, and we are planning to meet for ice cream — and, maybe if things go well, bacon the next morning.
Bumble
Bumble is like Tinder, except women speak first, eliminating the surprise dick-pic greeting. Which is great, except for part where I have to talk first.
I’m a feminist, and I believe that women can and should make the first move sometimes. But making the first move ALL the time was a bit exhausting.
Bumble had the best-looking and most accomplished men of all the sites, so I started swiping yes to almost all of them. I got too many matches to keep up with, so I tried to cut down and started eliminating guys for ridiculous reasons — for example, Hani, who is probably perfectly nice, but I ousted him because our names are just one letter off, and that would be confusing. (Hani, if you’re out there, I’m sorry, and feel free to judge me.)
I didn’t get many responses. I sent a guy named Harvey a wittily constructed note about Sabrina the Teenage Witch’s boyfriend, Harvey. I didn’t get a reply. That’s the last time I waste my ’90s pop culture knowledge on someone.
Luckily, I was saved at the last minute. A friend from college’s San Francisco–based cousin had matched with me on Bumble. So I demanded that she help with a phone-number exchange. (Does it still count if you get a little IRL help?) And the date went well … until I had to go to the emergency room.
A note: An alarming number of guys on Bumble have profile pictures with President Obama. Does the president know he’s being pimped out for dates? Also, lots of guys have opinions on the Oxford comma in their bios, which, as a writer, I appreciate but find confusing.
Honorable Mentions:
I filled up my iPhone memory with a bunch of other dating apps that didn’t work for me (but maybe they’ll work for someone with more patience).
Glimpse lets you flirt over your Instagram photos while judging other people’s #filter choices. My Instagram isn’t exciting enough to elicit the attention of the average straight male.
Score reveals photos after determining if someone is compatible with you via a short quiz. I didn’t feel as shallow as I did on other apps, since I couldn’t see their pictures right away. But it kept matching me with people who were between 30 and 168 miles away. If I wanted to commute, I would date someone in Oakland.
Tastebuds matched me with people based on my iTunes library, which I haven’t updated since college. So that wasn’t that helpful.
I love beards and would like to live somewhere where men are required by law to have them. But since I don’t live in a totalitarian state, I went to Bristlr, an app that connects bearded men to the people who love them (me.) But the strange interface and cost per month wasn’t worth the facial-hair appreciation.
