Should You Delete Your Dating Apps?

Tinder is a claw crane and you will never win.

A lot of dating advice is bullshit (exception: my dating advice) but if there's one thing I can tell you that is sound and true and good, it's this: You should delete the dating apps on your phone. Unless you’re trying to rom-com montage-style hook up with near-strangers all the time, dating apps are a waste of your energies. If you’re looking to date anyone seriously enough to know if they have siblings, then listen up: Make all the little apps shake in fear and then delete them. Tinder. Bumble. Coffee Meets Bagel. Happn. Grindr. Definitely The League. Put them in the trash.

Dating apps are ruining your life—your dating life, at least.

Here are four reasons to break your dating app habit (click photo for full article):

You're wasting your leisure hours.

A lot of people on Tinder will say they’re there because they “don’t have time to meet people,” but Tinder isn’t meeting people. Tinder is 70 percent (a made-up stat) deciding if strangers are hot enough to risk getting murdered, 29 percent typing “hey,” and maybe 1 percent “meeting people.” Tinder is to meeting people as The Sims is to raising a family. But because we think there’s a chance we might get laid or loved, we’re willing to pay any price—even our precious free time. The time you spend on Tinder is time you could spend bettering yourself in case you ever do go out and meet a person. Once you delete Tinder, you’ll notice that you have tons of extra headspace to work through why you keep dating women who are just like your high school girlfriend, or to finally sign up for that kickboxing class. Either would get you closer to dating someone you actually like than Tinder will.

You're not having fun.

No one I know enjoys being on dating apps. It’s like dental surgery: Some people hate it, some people tolerate it, and you’re fucking nuts if you enjoy it. Even my hottest friends, who by all logic should be cleaning up on these apps, find online dating excruciating. And if it’s not working for hot people, then you know it’s not working for anyone. If anything else that didn’t pay you made you as miserable as Tinder does, you’d jump ship. Dating apps are about as enjoyable as punching yourself in the head every day, hoping that you'll meet your next partner that way, and about as effective.

The game is rigged.

If dating were a “numbers game”—if exposure to more people meant dating more people—then people would just go to the nearest concert venue, introduce themselves to as many people as they can, and magically end up with a date. But anyone who has swiped for six months without meeting one exciting person on Tinder will tell you that it is not, in fact, a numbers game. Tinder is a claw crane. Dating apps are ineffective by design: The app doesn’t want you to find love, because if you find love you stop using the app. Given how many people are using Tinder, and how often, we should all have found Tinder life partners by now. (We haven't.)

Nothing compares to an IRL crush.

All you’re doing on Tinder—all anyone is doing on Tinder—is waiting out the time until they find a real life person they actually care about dating. You can waste as much headspace as you want on the app, widen your search to 25 miles, up your age range to 72. It doesn’t matter, because the second that girl on your rec soccer team breaks up with her douchey boyfriend and the two of you start hanging out, you’re going to stop responding to these strangers you’ve been struggling to carry on conversations with. All you’ll have to show after four years of using Tinder is $239 in split appetizers with people who didn’t want to hear your theory on Inception and $9 million in Tinder Plus subscription fees, because you can’t figure out how to cancel it.

So, delete Tinder and sign up for the Mandarin lessons you’ve been meaning to take. Or smoke some weed, go to the botanical garden, and contemplate your relationship with your dad. Or simply buy some products to clean the grout in your filthy shower! Maybe you’ll meet a hottie doing one of those things, maybe you’ll just better yourself enough that in two years, when you do finally meet your dream girl in line at 7/11 while wearing your most disgusting basketball shorts, you’ll be a whole mature person who is ready to date her. Either way, stop swiping through 22-year-olds hoping a match will make you happy.