“He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
Here I am, having just joined Hinge. Swimming down to the deepest depths of the abyss that is internet dating. Swimming through a jetstream of thousands of faces. Not swiping left. Not swiping right. Just swimming through profiles and tapping X or leaving some sort of unique comment about some sort of part of their profile.
Never anything reused.
And yet still just a signal in the noise.
Acting the bit a fatalist. Amor fati and all that.
Fuck. Sometimes I wish I could just use a template. that’s like one of the worst ways to make an effort to authentically connect with someone.
I’m feeling somewhat apprehensive that this is gonna work. Only one way to find out, I suppose.
Which is what I’m currently doing in an active and passive manner. More somewhat active at the moment. Maybe more than I should. Or perhaps this is just another distraction to slip on and have me fall on the ass of the previous thing that was absorbing my attention at the top of my mind.
Preemption. Of course. The act of temporarily interrupting an executing task, with the intention of resuming at a later time. Yup. That pretty much describes the modus operandi of my current life. a never ending stream of expiring time slices. if it’s something that ate up a bunch of my energy then my attention will very likely be back to it at some point. Preemption. It’s a thing.
“An interrupt is scheduled to allow the operating system kernel to switch between processes when their time slices expire, effectively allowing the processor’s time to be shared among a number of tasks, giving the illusion that it is dealing with these tasks in parallel (simultaneously).”
It’s kind of addictive flipping through people. Making sense of little stories and styles that people share. And voices. And videos. The dopamine doesn’t really hit all that hard unless someone matches though.
Technology is so cool sometimes. It allows me to fuck up, fall over, and flail wildly, at scale!!!
I definitely like the little voice snippets the most though. Those short thirty second sound snippets. So good. And over these past couple of weeks since I joined, I’ve browsed through hundreds of people. That’s way more leads you can quickly qualify compared to the number at a bar or some other thing like that.
Sometimes I feel like I’m shopping for a person. This is a weird feeling.
It can be argued that, in a way, I am. That it’s not just a feeling. It’s a reality.
Anyway, a profile runs into my face and it has an audio snippet. The prompt is: I’ll fall for you if…
And her response is, “If you asked me to jump into a time warp of unknown dimensions of space and time, I’m really sure I’m down. I’d be super down to go into the vacant abyss of timelessness and time endlessly happening at the same time. I’d be super down. Yeah.”
That response. Wow. That, now, just wow.
It was so amazing I turned on screen recording and replayed her response. So I could record that. I have never done that before. Ever. I didn’t even flip through her profile while I was recording.
Just her response.
And that awesome response of hers had me wanting to reply. So I started to. I typed a response. Wasn’t happy with it. Typed another response. Flipped to another application. Got distracted. Started typing a response. Was unhappy with the response again. Switched apps. Got distracted.
And each time I switched between the Hinge app and anything else it’d clear what was written in the response box and take you back to the persons profile. Which is one of the reasons I was switching back and forth.
I was overthinking my response.
Way too much.
I had a response, then I thought maybe there might be something more clever, then I wasn’t happy with grammar.
I had a certain number of characters to write something unique, authentic, and witty.
And finally I have it written in a way that I’m pleased with in the Notes application. I copy it. Switch to the Hinge app… And the profile is gone.
The app had crashed.
The profile was gone.
And I can’t fucking search for them. I could change my dating preferences to more accurately reflect what was on their profile… BUT I ONLY WENT SEMI CREEP INSTEAD OF SUPER CREEP WHEN I RECORDED STUFF SO I DIDN’T HAVE THE ACCURATE INFORMATION.
Something that wasn’t because something wasn’t sent.
Someone missed due to overthinking the reply.
Who knows, maybe she’ll come around again. Or maybe I’ll find someone better. Or maybe no one at all. Which is automatically an inaccurate statement because it’s a universal quantifier. Dunno, we’ll see. Dunno about really much of anything anymore. Yup.
But I have this response that I’m pretty pleased with. It’s silly and somewhat cringey, but I’m going to fucking roll with it.
The worst part about this whole thing? If she’d said that to me in person I’d very likely have responded quickly with something spectacular, because it wasn’t spectacularly overthought.
I have so much more faith in my ability to operate in realtime. In the moment.
My response. The response that met exactly the number of characters that a response is limited to. That response was:
Existential and timeless🧐🕰️ What if I only had a You Matter Machine that’d transport your particles before or beyond space, time, energy, and matter existing, enabling exploration of the unknown unknowns?
Sigh. I was so happy with that one. But alas, the fatalist in me still whispers, “Signal in the noise.”
Aside from all that thought, beyond the Time Machine, the You Matter Machine, and the darkly funny story of something missed because of something overthought.
Something missed because of something overthought. Something overthought causing a missed something.
Pretty sure there’s a little lesson to be learned here for me. Overthinking catalyzes missed somethings. Which, well, that’s just wonderful. But not.
If only that sweet brain of mine didn’t make an effort to predict every outcome of every reality of every interaction, which sometimes becomes more pronounced when new people are involved.
I wonder what I’m going to think when I reread these posts.
I wonder who the fuck is actually going to read this posts.
For fucks sake, wipe your ass and get off the pot, stop reading this post, and go spend some quality time outdoors or something. Make sure you wipe before you stop reading so that way one hand is holding that screen, and the other working with the toilet paper.
God forbid you put the phone away before wiping your ass.
And why don’t you direct that fucking face of yours anywhere else other than the screen you’re probably reading this on now? Or maybe listening. But you wouldn’t listen to this on a screen. Unless it’s the future and you can do shit like that.
That last post covered the Abyss That Is Internet Dating
This one’s addressed Something Possibly Missed Because Something Wasn’t, Overthinking the Audible Time Machine Input, the You Matter Machine Output,
I like thinking of myself as us. I guess that’s why writing the next sentence is just so damn easy.
So I guess that leaves us with Something Sent next.
Hopefully well before freaking 15 minutes before the next day.
I am going to March so much better with this.