I deactivated my OkCupid account a few days ago, and am already thinking about how to create the conditions to make both friends and potential partners offline. This is an almost 180 degree turn from how I’ve approached socialising and dating in the last six years, so I thought you might like to know how I got here.
The waning of my enthusiasm for the online dating experience started a year or two ago, with an article that revealed that it was not in the companies’ interests to matchmake successfully. Rather, the longer you were a customer on their service, the more money they could make off you, should you stop browsing long enough to click on their advertising.
The article went on: The impression that there was ‘always someone better’ around the corner, especially on sites like OkC that almost never run out of potential profiles for you to consume, can make you pass by matches with whom you are compatible, because they don’t correspond to some pre-conceived concept of perfection.
The seeds of doubt were set.
Along came Jon Birger, who spoke and wrote of the significantly longer period of time relationships begun in real life lasted, as opposed to online ones.
Crucially, he articulated the intangible aspects of compatibility which were impossible to tell from text alone, like how you respond physically to a person, whether their level of dynamism is a good energetic match, and if you enter a natural flow of conversation.
The final blow came when I realised that while my three relationships since 2015 had all lasted a year or two, my longest relationship by far was with OkCupid itself - here I was in 2021, still believing it was serving me. I had become that gullible repeat customer.
And so, I quit!
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