Long Term Relationship, Open to Short

An essay from Harry on the problem with Dating Intentions...also we're back bab

we’re fuckin BACK babY!!!

We’ve got a banger essay from Harry about “Dating Intentions” and “Peak TV” (YKTV) but first…thank you to everyone who filled out our reader survey. We’re still compiling data for another week so if you haven’t filled it out. You can still do it here!!! If you fill it out and give us a contact you will be entered in a raffle to win $69 to spend at a bar of your choice!!!

For those who did fill it out, thank you! did we get a month of premium chat gbt so we could analyze the data…yes…heres a sneak peak of what we’re cooking up

Anyway, here’s an essay from Harry about how Hinge and Dating Intentions and Peak TV

It is my sense that one of the stipulations of the costal dating social contract is that the most normal (or least offensive) way to describe your “Dating Intentions” on Hinge is by obliquely selecting that you are looking for a “Long Term Relationship, Open To Short.”

Of the 7 possible options, (Life Partner (lol), LTR, LTROTS, STR, STROTL, Figuring out my dating goals, Prefer Not To Say) LTROTS seems to be the one where you can functionally skirt answering the question in any real way. It’s the dating version of doing a demure two-step at Make Out Room while your friends try to ‘get people to dance’. 

The ‘Dating Intentions’ section sits in the ancillary logistical zone on your profile.

When on Hinge, I try my best not to rule people out by the way they’ve populated their ALZ – things like the neighborhood, hometown, college, etc.. I do have a few, say…auburn flags that I look out for.

I rarely will try to match with someone taller than me (don’t like feeling like a baby), I don’t match with people who set their politics as ‘moderate’ (poli-sci dork behavior) and I don’t match with people who answer ‘yes’ for the little prescription pill icon (it’s an ugly and childish icon first of all and second of all what the hell). I feel at peace with these decisions.

“Dating Intentions”…is different.

Let me first start with those brave enough to break free of the 7 pre-set options and take Hinge up on its offer to ‘share more about yourself in your own words’. When you select the option to expound, it shows up as tiny italicized writing under your intention. I would estimate around 5% of women on hinge use this additional sentence feature. 

Last week, in a quasi-meditative swipefest waiting in line to board an Alaska Air flight to Portland something previously in the depths of my subconscious burst into my conscious mind. I really don’t like when girls use the little italicized extra answer. It is almost a dealbreaker. 

Let me first break down the 3 categories that I feel the least conflicted about when I reverse Double McTwist Darkslide them out of my matches. 

Poly people 

Typical addendums: “exploring ethical non-monog right now” “currently poly seeking casual hangs” “solo poly looking for fun in the city”

Poly people use this section. No aesthetic issue, just not for me. Though I can’t like it is still funny to me to see people writing ‘currently solo poly’. Like dog….same!!

People who really don’t want to date poly people 

Typical addendum: “DO NOT MATCH WITH ME IF YOU’RE POLY”

The only thing this signals, i fear, is that you are too online. The notion that bashing polyamory may work as some kind of aesthetic performance (which everything on dating apps are) just means you see a feeeewww to many internet freaks in your day to day for us to work out.

Jokesters

Typical Addendum: ‘let's hold hands on the beach together’  ‘looking for someone to smoke and watch the wire with’

This is a total misunderstanding of where a joke should be. It's like a dick joke at a wake. Even if it works, im pissed at you for making it.

Then there is a 4th category. Hinge Accelerationists (Hinge/acc for short)

Hinge/acc

A teacher of mine for a tv pilot writing class named Matt Starr¹ (no DBP relation) once remarked in a class that ‘people are getting really good at watching tv’

He’s right! As TV has evolved, and eventually exploded in the “peak tv” and “streaming eras” audiences got really good at watching a show. Game of Thrones, an unspeakably complex show with dragons and incest and 15 different subclasses of Weird Little Guys, becomes a smash hit. Shows like Atlanta dive into magical realism and are almost purposefully confusing. 

In 1999 the sopranos pilot may have needed to start with a Tony soprano voice-over, explaining who his family was, in 2024 The Game of Thrones spin-off House of The Dragon starts with a set of child actors who are only to get replaced by a second set of child actors the next episode. 

A similar thing has happened for dating apps. People are getting better at using them. In 2017, when I first used a dating app in earnest, the appeal collectively was that it was the bleeding edge of Normal Ways to Meet People. There was a pervasive sense of accepting chaos. It was a win if you looked like your profile let alone represented your values or interests in some coherent way. The expectation was that your preconceived notions about the person on the other end of Tinder 1.0 were, at the very least, not fully formed. 

The pendulum has kerranged back. You hear about people not looking like their profile as an occasional horror story. The apps have more info, but more importantly, we are better at using them. The average hinge user has an intricately dialed-in grip on the beats they should hit to attract the type of person they think they want. A Sopranos screenshot, a red scare reference, a surfing picture, together we could bike to Coney Island.  We even know the aesthetic ramifications of the lack of an answer; the too-beautiful-for-sincerity one word anti-answer registers instantly.  It is almost titrated like bubble tea at Boba Guys. One ironic answer for 25% sweetness, 2 ironic answers for 50%, etc. 

Many have written about the decline of the apps, citing that it's not you, it’s capitalism. Surely this is true. Though it is us too. We’re too good at it. 

In Television, the effect of this increased audience ‘watching skill’ is hard to pin down. In a way, it has made TV more fun. Some of the old rules need not apply anymore. On the other hand, shows not tethered to the goal of ultimately entertaining us on a Thursday evening have started to drift. Westworld happened. The Idol almost felt like a show vaguely annoyed that it would actually be watched. Again…the first season of House of the Dragon has two different time jumps. 

The Golden Age of TV is marked by its propulsiveness. It looked fucking fun to make. Like the overly calibrated era of TV we’re in now, Hinge too is lacking in any propulsive energy. 

All of this is the backdrop to the little italics under ‘Dating Intentions’. My heart sinks when I read ‘friendship first, then more’, ‘looking to take things slow’ or ‘if it clicks we see where it goes’ the entire thing seems like a semi-public attempt to wrap one's arms around what they want out of the experience of being in love. 

While I do believe digitally manifesting a subcategory of love in italics on hinge is a full tier above the other 7 possible options on the cringe continuum, the rest of us hiding behind the performed apathy of a pre-baked answer aren’t really spared. The entire question speaks to how good we’ve gotten at Hinge. Dating Intentions? Who has ‘dating intentions’??? You write poems about dating intentions or watch movies or wordlessly acknowledge them in bed with your girlfriend…you don't click a box!!! And yet I’ve slaved over my dating intentions. I’ve tested out “looking for short” when I was feeling “too mentally ill to be in love”. I’ve done figuring out my dating goals when that didn’t work because nobody, perhaps understandably, wants to go on a date with  a straight guy who’s ‘looking for short’. 

Even now I toil away with looking for long, open to short, an answer that gets more obfuscating and disingenuous the more I feel its true. Sure, i’m looking for a long term relationship… a long term relationship with the love of my life LMAO. 

I have no solution. The toothpaste is out of the tube. I am too good at Hinge. I think we all are.

Maybe I should make one of those italicized addendums…” Looking for the love of my life, ideally for forever…or if you aren’t the love of my life i’d like to have sex…ideally tonight”

1. Matt teaches an excellent “TV pilot workshop” that I highly recommend! Check it out here