Your dating profile – or the bio on whichever app your fingers are getting busy with – is your storefront. Sure, a picture tells a thousand words, but as anyone who’s spent more than a minute in the company of a world-famous boyband can tell you, hot looks are no guarantee of a great brain or a good time.
Given that most people are only a swipe away from dating oblivion, you’d think that guys (and girls, of course, if that’s your thing) out there might try a little harder to attract your attention. Sadly, most people are saying nothing but a different version of the same 20 or so things. Most of them as meaningless as a blow job in a train station in 1973.
Here, I decode a few.
“Might be time for some strings attached.”
Here I am on a sex app, a bit of tech that was created by somebody who wanted to make it easier for people to have sex with perfect strangers, using it to look for sex.
Thing is, I don’t want people to think I’m only here for the sex, oh no. I’m a sensitive soul, you see – I have a lot of thoughts, most of them quite deep and meaningful. I’m not just a piece of meat. So I’m looking for a boyfriend – some ‘strings’, if you like – who can take me away from all these endless cock pics and headless torsos and “what u into”.
But of course, rather than say that and put everybody off, I’ll only say that I ‘might’ be looking. That way, I’m still available for an anonymous boning should it come my way. Step this way, Prince Charming.
“Looking for a reason to delete this app.”
I, too, am looking for true love, without which I couldn’t possibly press and hold my finger on the icon of this dating app, then press the little ‘x’ that appears in the corner of the icon, deleting it for ever. Yes, I can definitely only do that once I have collected a slew of marriage proposals, not before.
And when people ask us the story of how we fell in love, I can look at the ground, then at you, then at them and, with a tear in my eye, tell them: “He helped me delete Grindr, and from then, I was hooked”.
“Tall, dark and handsome to the front of the queue.”
War-torn Afghanistan has got nothing on the devastation caused by the hordes queuing for my affections. There are catfights, broken hearts and bloodshed at every stage of this miles-long line, each suitor more beautiful and statuesque than the last.
And when you get to the very front, where I sit like Caesar on a throne made not of marble but made from bathroom selfies and protein shakes, there are the tallest, darkest and most handsome of them all.
They are each on their knees, praying to their god (that would be me), hoping they’ll be the one selected by me to have uninspiring, brief and regrettable sex in a box room that could really do with vacuuming.
“I don’t bite… unless you want me to.”
Spoiler: the sex probably isn’t going to be that good and I will mistake saying the word “fuck” a lot during the act as ‘kinky’. Then I’ll bite you.
“I like going out and staying in.”
Sometimes I even do both on the same day! Get on this rollercoaster if you dare!
“I love to laugh.”
That’s not to say I do laugh, or indeed will laugh. The chances of me making you laugh are also pretty slim. Usually when I manage a chortle, it’s at something inappropriate like a child falling over, or you, in three months’ time, telling me that this isn’t really working out.
“I can’t think what to write here. I’m not that good at talking about myself.”
My life is very boring. I get up, I go to work, I come home. Sometimes I’ll go for a drink after work with colleagues. But usually I go straight home. There is TV, takeaways, masturbation, Grindr.
Oh, and I also head up an international crime syndicate, have a meth lab in my kitchen and have killed a man – but my life’s too uninteresting to talk about really and I never know what to write on these things.
“I like to stay in with a DVD and a bottle of wine.”
I can’t ever take you out to any bar or pub or club because I have slept with absolutely everyone there/have been rejected by absolutely everyone there.
I’ve had all my fun and been an amazing, exciting, vibrant, sociable person already – before I met you – and now it is time for me to settle for the boring inevitability of a relationship before I am too old and ugly to snare anyone.
And we’ll be staying in a lot, talking about what to watch next on Netflix. I am 25.
“I’m very discrete.”
I’m married and do not own a dictionary.
“Whatever happened to all the cool guys on here? Am I really the only one looking for more than just a bunk-up with a faceless body, a spiritual connection with someone where you identify not just on a sexual level, but an emotional one too. I guess I’m being unrealistic looking for something deeper on here, but it would be nice to find out. If that’s not what you’re after, keep on moving.”
Pump me raw, stranger.
More like this:
10 toxic things you really shouldn’t say on your dating profile
10 terrible opening lines for a dating profile
Thanks to everyone on Twitter who suggested their favourite dating bio clichés.
Image: Chazwags on Flickr
