The Secret Hinge Template
plus letters to the editor and matchmaking honorable mentions
HK: Wow ok we made it…valentines day is over. I spent mine with Friend Of The Psy-Op, Haley eating wings at Meckelburgs. Lemme tell you, that place is empty on February 14th.
RS: that sounds nice actually. let’s just say the only valentine i got was from Waymo……………….
HK: that key chain is yonic btw…but so concludes operation Hang Out and Maybe Kiss. Thank you all for coming with us as we brought hot singles back, saved dating in new york, got me fully installed on Raya (NOT). But seriously, the newsletter grew a lot this month, and i had a blast making it with ya randa…though I am ready to go back to once a week lol.
RS: wdym i Love waking up and immediately writing a newsletter 3 times a week and then going to my job about newsletters right after
HK: Well here were some of our posts this month, and all the hot singles we featured:
RS: our post on taste and dating got the most comments… these were my personal favorites from Ludwig Yeetgenstein who writes his namesake
and Christina Loff of :
HK: Yea we also got some great DMs, including this from fellow stack’d up thought leader
RS: and if you’re just here for the extremely-succesful-for-me hinge template we alluded to in a post a few weeks ago, here it is…
The Hinge Template™
HK: Let me just say that I tried this out on my profile and got zero (0) matches. Something to look into…
Good Hang Hall of Fame
RS: this week, we posted the Good Hang Guide to Setting Your Friends Up where we introduced the Good Hang Hall of Fame. we got a few early submissions! unfortunately past setups DO NOT count but we wanted to honorably mention a few of our subscribers:
Letters (and dms) to the editor
here are a selection of some great emails we got. It’s always nice seeing people engage with the stuff we write.
Alex:
Hi Randa and Harry,
Not a response to this week’s hang but I just want to vent that I want more New York based content. And would pay for that! I loved hot singles even when dating because it felt so specific to places I’d been and people I knew but now I have to read about how much people love telegraph hill or some random SF cave or whatever.
I’m kidding it’s still fun and you guys are cool but please come back to NYC.
Ritam (of
fame)harry is right in that the leftovers is the perfect piece of media; randa is right in that having complex thoughts on the value of criticism or your relationship to art is a fun intellectual game but not really the basis of a long term compatibility around building a shared life with someone, depending on whether or not that’s something you want.
I think this is an interesting convo but it bleeds into bigger convos also about the shittiness of coastal gatekeepy online elite snob culture and how it closes the people who engage in it off from actual happiness or mental rewards that don’t come from social validation of taste… but also the people in it (maybe me included??) decry the value of happiness as overrated anyway.
whatever, I will read someone writing “happiness is the most important thing” and agree, and then i’ll read someone being like “actually happiness is meaningless in the face of true intellectual and artistic depth” and then I’ll also be like oh. right. yes. and so my opinion is just sort of meaningless, flimsy trash anyway.
Hadley:
Hi Harry and Randa,
This conversation couldn't have reached me at a better time.
I'm currently sitting around participating in a cyclical ritual of performing unearned anger and sadness. Experienced by roommates through my constant switching between listening to Moon Song by Phoebe Bridgers and It's All Coming Back to Me Now by Celine Dion, in an effort to make sense of my most recent romantic failure. I also ask that neither of these are incorporated into my taste profile at this time.
Just over 500 days ago I met a male friend of a friend on a summer group trip in Maine. It was the perfect setting to fall in love. Warm August nights, a little boat, tons of beer, and endless time to talk with nowhere to be.
After being instantly drawn into his round glasses and stupid t-shirt, the instantaneous limerence only was further cemented by each reference he made. It was uncanny. My friends shot me piercing looks across the room when he talked about; how he was The Beast in Beauty in the Beast in high school (aligning with a nickname my friends have given me), how his college band covered my favorite 2000s brit pop songs, Nathan Fielder, an embarrassing but honest affection for Twilight, and even how we share a friendship tattoo in the exact same spot. It was my truest, deepest dream come true. I wrote a list of these things we discussed just to keep track. To check back in a couple months later to see if I had made it all up.
I've long discussed with my peers how my deepest desire in a relationship is someone who enjoys analyzing content the way I do. I have been long searching for a victim to voyeuristically show my favorite youtube videos to. One who won't get frustrated and ask "WHY ARE YOU WATCHING MY REACTION. WHY DO YOU NEED TO SHOW ME THIS IF YOU'VE SEEN IT 100 TIMES". I seek in a relationship someone enamored enough with me to not only succumb to, but celebrate my obsessive personality.
I believed my meeting of This Guy to be a fated occurrence. Something only the stars could've brought me. Something that must turn into that dreamy Something I've been long awaiting. Unfortunately reality hit while we were alone watching The Rehearsal alone together at 2am on a summer night in Maine. He admitted to both having a girlfriend and living in a different city than I did.
It wasn't enough to cool my obsession. It was far too perfect! It had to turn into something real...long game... long game.
So we stayed friends, casually in touch for the following year. I thought it all had been worth it when I received the news that he had both broken up with his girlfriend and was making the move to the neighborhood where every single girl's dating dreams go to die- Bushwick. I thought my story would be different.
We hung out and we still had everything in common. I thought it was all too perfect. How could he not fall deeply, madly in love with a young woman who participated in a pre-coital duet to You Oughta Know. I even had some sort of love induced talent attack where I was able to play it from memory on his keyboard!!
Just last weekend, at a dive bar we both revere, he rejected me. Brutally and unapologetically.
He told me he was "figuring out who he is" to which I replied "So am I?" still standing firm in my belief that we have everything in common. He went on to tell me about dating. How he went on a first date with a girl who he thinks will "break his heart", even asking me "is it okay that we're talking about this?"
Chloe Grace Moretz's iconic quote from 500 days of summer pulsed through my brain. A thought I had pushed down through my last 500 manic, obsessive days.
"Just because she likes the same bizzaro crap you do, doesn't mean she's your soulmate."
I knew in that moment his ability to be cruel to some chick who did nothing wrong but like him.. albeit far too much... Far outweighed our common interests.
My desire to be with someone who enjoys the same stupid shit as I do isn't as important as being with someone kind. I wouldn't have been oh so cruel to a strange 45 year old man I met at a bar. I would at least lie and say I have a boyfriend or am disinterested in men as a whole gender.
So, I truly hope I learned my lesson this time. Liking Ethel Cain doesn't make a guy thoughtful. Holding an appreciation for hopeless romantic teen girl content doesn't mean one knows how to properly break a former teen girl's heart.
My worldview is shattered, but I can't help but understand the ending of 500 days of summer to be proof of the cycle. Did Tom really change by the time he met Autumn? Or was he just doomed to another 500 days of hellish torture?
I guess we'll have to find out.
So I say, don't tell me anything about anyone anymore. I don't want to create a love story based on lyrics or outfits or even shared enjoyment of fucking pasta. I just want to know that someone is nice and can make me laugh I guess. I'll post my critical analysis of tv shows to reddit instead.
Always with great, deep, true love,
Hadley
HK: Alright that’s everything! We’ll be back next Friday with our regular scheduled theil funded Davos Bank New World Order great reset post about hanging out and chilling
RS: see ya then!