I Had a Nice Time And Other Lies...: How to find love & sh*t like that (7 page)

On the flip side, the awful-yet-hilarious story of the guy who got so drunk he threw up all over himself and then tried to pretend someone vomited on him while he was in the restroom will be an amazing story to tell your friends at drunk brunch, and will therefore enhance your repertoire of funny shit to say, making you a more interesting and therefore more datable person over all. Moral of the story: If your life looks like a sad Instagram meme of you sitting at home watching Netflix and eating Chipotle every Thursday night, you’re not going to be that interesting to date. So accept that
Hinge date, get the fuck out of your apartment, and go make some ridiculous memories.

Since online dating sites are more diverse than the cast of
SNL,
we figured you don’t want to jump into those murky waters without our help. So we’ve broken down all the sites worth knowing about. Anything not covered here can safely be ignored.

Online dating comes in three forms:
Shit you have to pay for, shit you don’t have to pay for, and apps. First we’ll cover the sites you have to pay for because, like they say, nothing good ever comes free and without an extensive background check.

Because they cost money, these sites require a little bit more commitment. The positive is that the guy might be actually trying to find a girlfriend, but the negative is he could be trying a little too hard to find a girlfriend. No one wants to date some desperate lonely loser who will pay thousands of dollars to find a wife. If we did, we’d be mail-order brides. There’s a fine line between a catch who’s casually online dating and a sad weirdo who is a hop, skip, and jump from finding comfort in the arms of hookers if this whole OkCupid thing doesn’t work out. Keep in mind that you’ll likely get what you pay for. The free sites are loaded with freaks. The
pay sites tend to have people who are a little more serious about meeting people, rather than using a dating site as a platform to articulate their political beliefs and
Lord of the Rings
–based fantasies.

Match.com
:
Seems legit enough. Do you love BuzzFeed quizzes?
Match.com
has all the personality tests of BuzzFeed, but with like, half the fun and twice the pressure.

eHarmony.com
:
Pretty sure that’s for old people, right? I always see that grandpa bro with the white hair on those commercials and I’m like, why would I want your wrinkly face promoting love, sex, and relationships?

HowAboutWe.com
:
This site is ideal if you’re an outside-the-box-thinking overachiever whose idea of getting to know someone includes spending all day with them, devouring fucking baguettes at Eataly or going on a scavenger hunt in a nearby national park. If so, by all means knock yourself out.

JDate/ChristianMingle:
Many success stories on this one, also many Andy Andersons who “bump into you” near your apartment and walk with you to work the next day, despite living in a completely different part of town.

Perfect for the betch whose religion is important to her or the Jewish American betch with the overbearing mother who won’t stop bothering her to “meet a nice Jewish boy and settle down already because I need grandchildren immediately even though I’m only fifty-six years old.”

Grouper:
This company coordinates a blind group date between you and two of your besties and a group of three guy friends. Grouper picks the place and pays for the first drink (but not really because you paid for the one-time service). The date can be extremely awkward, totally fine, or a complete shitshow. In most scenarios there’s one person, guy and/or girl, left with the unattractive friend. (Gentle tip: If you don’t see the ugly friend sitting with you, the ugly friend is you.) After the date you almost always remain single and now have an extra Facebook friend whose updates are more annoying than your mom’s.

InterracialPeopleMeet:
Perfect for the Jewish girl who’s looking to get back at her aforementioned overbearing mother.

SeekingArrangement:
We’re all for getting older guys to pay for shit, but if you’re going to make a profile on Seeking Arrangement you might as well just send out your resume to an escort service. Let’s be real, this shit is “a mutually beneficial relationship” like A1 on
Breaking Bad
was “just a car wash.”

OkCupid:
Maybe you’re not sure you need to fully commit to online dating, maybe you’re Hannah Horvath and you just got cut off, maybe you’re an unpaid intern. Whatever the reason, OkCupid doesn’t require a monthly membership, and the layout doesn’t look like complete shit, so that’s a plus.

The downside:
It gives you a lot of work in the form of a fuck-ton of useless questions such as, “Do you believe morality is universal or relative?” and “How do you feel about documentaries?” If we wanted to do that much work we would’ve applied to grad school.

Plenty of Fish:
Good if you hate doing work (see: OkCupid), bad if you’re not good at writing paragraphs about yourself without any prompts whatsoever. For whatever reason, guys on POF seem less likely to use corny pickup lines. Maybe because guys on POF are smart enough to know that shit doesn’t work? Or maybe they’re too lazy to think of puns? Unclear. The bad news is the homepage looks more chaotic than Hiroshima in 1945. I can’t tell which are my potential matches and which are PornHub ads . . .
Is Chad in Decatur who wants to show me a good time the real deal, or . . . ?

Zoosk:
What the actual fuck is Zoosk? Literally the login page just looks like a more racially diverse version of Guess Who.

Tinder:
Not so much a dating app as it is a “meet up for one drink and then shadily fuck in his backseat in a parking lot” app. If you’re looking to go on actual dates, be prepared to weed through a lot of people because the number of dudes looking for relationships on Tinder is approximately equal to the amount of people who use VHS.

Happn:
For people you want to make sure work in a major city and aren’t secretly living at home with their parents. It pulls a list of guys you “cross paths” with, a.k.a. someone who frequents a Manhattan Starbucks.
Soooo much in common
.

It’s kind of annoying because it doesn’t give you matches so you have to weed through all the people that look like they want to kill you, but it’s also kind of nice in that there’s an endless amount of dudes who live and work around you to scroll through when you’re waiting in line for your iced coffee. I mean there’s no way you’re raising your head up from looking at your texts long enough to actually notice them standing next to you in the actual Starbucks.

Coffee Meets Bagel:
At first we thought this was some sort of Jewish sex ring . . . just us? Okay. Then we watched
Shark Tank,
saw the founders, and were profoundly confused. Anyway, you only get one match per day and, just like your birth control, you get it at twelve p.m. sharp, which is also perfect if you’re the Bat-Shit-Crazy Betch (BSCB) who has less self-control than high James Franco at a Domino’s about texting all the guys in her phone book.

Hinge:
Imagine a world where you don’t have to ask your friends to set you up, because an app does it for you. Betches, that app is Hinge. This app has everything: Some questions about your preferences, the same swipe format as Tinder, a whole lot of your personal information, and some guys that you assume are normal because you once met them at your camp friend’s pregame in 2013.

Bumble:
The idea behind Bumble is that the girls have to message the guy first. The idea of making it even easier for guys to date on dating apps that already make it really insanely easy for them to date is sort of annoying. That being said, if you’re looking to meet guys who are nice but maybe a little shy, and want to have a chance to stand out and not be lumped in with every other dick pic solicitor on the Internet, then this is the tool for you. Having said that, a lot of the guys on this thing are pretty hot, like questionably unreal hot.

For those of you ESL betches out there, here’s a simple breakdown of what we’re looking at in the online dating scene.

Okay, you’ve got your profile set up. Now what? Discerning conversations take practice and a conversational partner who isn’t oblivious to normal social cues. What we mean by that is: Sometimes you can tell a lot more about a guy by what he
doesn’t
say than what he does say. It’s important to read between the lines. As in, if all of his pictures are of him and his grandma and pet lizard, he is obviously a loser.

Wears sunglasses in all his pictures.
Read: He’s probably a lot less attractive when he takes them off.

Wears a hat in every picture
. Read: Dude’s bald.

All pictures are of him alone taken with a webcam
. Read: He doesn’t have any friends.

6'0."
Read: He’s 5'10."

5'8."
Read: He could be an honest 5'8," but he’s most likely 5'5."

Shirtless bathroom mirror selfie
. Read: Fucking run.

Hey what’s up? I’m Jason how was your weekend?
Read: This is a normal person who is interested in meeting you.

Hey I think we would make attractive children.
Read: If he was trying to be funny, this guy is confident and has a sense of humor. If he wasn’t, he’s super creepy and you should like, make sure your address is not written anywhere on your profile.

Hi I’m Jason, I like long walks on the beach, reading Kurt Vonnegut, and walking my bulldog Cooper. I live in Murray Hill
in an apartment with my 2 friends from college and I love to work out on the weekends. What’s your schedule like this week?
Read: This guy is prob too nice for you. The over-share is a sign of someone who doesn’t really have a strong sense of humor or much experience with women.

Hey you have nice tits. What’s your number?
Read: BYE.

I think we have a lot in common. We should get together for drinks if you’re free this week.
Read: This is a bold, no-bullshit ask out. He seems super confident and doesn’t really like online small talk. This guy could be a douche, but he could also just want to get to know you in person. This is your strongest option. Accept the date and hope it doesn’t suck.

The great thing about a guy’s opener is that it says a lot about him with a little information. As a general rule, look for guys who seem like they’re no-bullshit and who want to take the conversation off-line fairly quickly.

Too many questions.
Read: This guy has asked you every question he can think of. Except the one you want to hear, which is
do you want to get a drink this week?
This type of messager is super frustrating, and at some point you have to stop answering. He’ll get the hint and write again asking you out. If he doesn’t get the message and instead sends a follow-up to his previous question you should just block him. There is literally nothing more annoying than a dude who tries to make small talk for upwards of three days before asking you out. No, I don’t give a shit how your week is going. I don’t even know you. I don’t even ask my friends this and I like, actually sort of care about their lives.