Tinder nightmares

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So I downloaded tinder, mostly out of boredom and to meet new friends. I even wrote in my bio that I was looking for friends (I'm not looking for anything serious at the moment, maybe someone to have fun with but not ready for a serious relationship at all right now). I tried dating apps/sites before and never had any luck with them. I used tinder for a grand total of 2 weeks, and deleted it yesterday. Apologies in advance if this post seems scathing, but I really need to vent.

In my experience of using tinder, there are three types of blokes who use it: entitled alpha douches, incels, and desperate lunatics (the latter two are no less entitled than the alpha douches, but they play the sensitive card and try to get women to feel sorry for them). So I matched with a handful of guys who I thought looked cute in their pictures; all of them turned out to be not so great.

So with a couple of them, the conversations were going well, until I revealed my (admittedly very specific) sense of humour, then they disappeared. I'm not bothered about this; I'm quite confident about my humour, and if someone doesn't appreciate my humour it's their loss lol. One of them started the conversation with interrogating me and asking me very personal questions about my mental health, what medication I take, what I do, my goals in life etc to make sure I'm a "decent girl", it seemed like some sort of a wife interview... barf.

Another one asked if I wanted to chat on WhatsApp after exchanging a handful of messages; I thought ok, why not. After a couple of days of chatting, he asked if I wanted to speak on the phone. I said no, I'm only comfortable speaking on the phone with close friends and my Aunt. He then decided to send me a 25 minute long voice note telling me all about his issues and his tragic life and childhood trauma, it was all very 'woe is me'. I was baffled why he felt the need to tell me all that so early on in the conversation, before I even met him in person. I mean even my autistic ass knows not to overshare until I get to know someone better. Maybe he was testing me to see if I would feel sorry for him? I replied politely saying "thank you for sharing, I'm going to bed now." The next day I went for lunch with a friend, and he sent me like 3 messages including some video of himself. I blocked him. It's amazing how he thought he was entitled to my emotional labour after a couple of days of chatting.

Now, the next one seemed like a decent guy at first, but he turned out to be the biggest lunatic of them all. He seemed polite, intelligent, has a good job and a PhD, quite handsome. We got on well and had quite good conversations and a lot in common. After about 3-4 days of chatting, he told me that he likes me and finds me interesting and he would like to meet up in real life. I agreed, but told him that I'd like to get to know him as a friend first before anything may or may not happen, which he agreed was reasonable.

Anyway, after a week or so of chatting, he started being more and more weird and full-on... he started suggesting activities we should do together, and started saying things like "I lost all hope before I met you" and kept acting like we've already met. I pointed out that we haven't actually met yet; he got all defensive and started making sarcastic jokes and snarky remarks. He also started telling me how he doesn't talk to his friends and family like he does to me, and how special I am etc, which made me feel quite uncomfortable. I said something like "well let's see how we get on in real life" and he replied saying "are you pressurising me??? I thought that was my job!" which is just weird.

He asked me about my childhood, which wasn't great; I gave a summarised version of my childhood trauma, without going into too much detail. He replied saying "how awful! I'm at work now, I had to go outside because you made me cry" like wtf? The other day he told me that he had a nightmare about how the app disappeared from his phone and he lost touch with me, which made him panic, so he gave me his number. The messages he was sending me started getting more intense, and made me more and more uncomfortable. He then said something like "I only attract mad girls" (which to me is a big red flag) and started implying that he wants a relationship with me. I decided to be honest with him and told him that I'm not ready for a relationship, and I would have to know someone really well as a friend to even consider one, after which he got super butthurt and started going on about how he's this poor, sensitive, naive, sentimental, hopeless romantic and how girls these days only want sex, and sent me a soppy poem.

After all this, I decided that I am too uncomfortable to meet up with him, he sounds like too much hard work and too possessive. I've been with possessive men before and it was horrific. So I decided to cancel our 'date'. I sent him a polite, kind message pretty much saying that I don't think it's a good idea for us to meet, that I think we are looking for different things, that he seems like a very sensitive person and I can be quite cold, and I don't want to hurt him, and that I wish him the best of luck in the future. I anticipated him to guilt trip me, so I quickly deleted the app after sending that message. Now I worry that the message didn't go through, and that he would think I just ghosted him. He lives in my city so I worry about bumping into him on the street and him being mean to me...

I mean... am I overreacting? Is this how NT dating works? To be honest, this whole experience has made me feel better about myself - I may be riddled with mental health issues, but these guys make me look sane lol. But it's also made me even more cynical.

What has been other people's experience with tinder or other dating apps/sites?

I saw this post after seeing your other post at the soviet movies thread and i just had to comment!

I never use these apps but one of my friends (Nt and very emotionally intelligent) does and she has told me a few horror stories about them. They're almost always as weird as you said. Some of them confess their love after talking for 2 days, some of them are basically looking for a sex partner, sometimes looking for a threesome with their girlfriend.

One of them asked my friend her netflix id since his Credit card expired but he also introduced himself as a doctor who works at Dubai.. He works at Dubai as a doctor and got his Credit card expired, sounds realistic.

Another guy told my friend about a cryptocurrency system and tried to get her into that. He also got mad when she refused and swore at her.

Mind you, we live in a crazily sexist middle eastern country but these guys weren't even from this country. If we tried to chat to turkish guys i don't even know what would happen.. It's too scary to even think about lol.

Oh Jesus, that sounds like a nightmare!

I've heard similar stories from friends about getting unsolicited dick pics, and how guys turn if they get rejected and start insulting them. Like, wtf? Why are they so entitled?!

I've also heard stories about guys lying about their height, or using old, more flattering photos, which look nothing like them. What are they thinking - that they will win over the girl with their amazingly charming personality?!

I do have a couple of friends who met their long-term partners on tinder/Okcupid/POF though so I guess it does work sometimes... you just have to go through a lot of crap before finding someone decent. I don't really have the patience or the emotional energy for that. I prefer meeting people organically anyway.

Yeah i also know people who got into good relationships and even got married via those apps. I guess it's just pure luck to meet a normal person. I am definitely not someone who can understand people's character and i am easily deceived so i stay away from those apps.

The behaviors you described are also scarily familiar, also emotional manipulation guilt tripping, outright insulting.. I can talk forever about this subject since i have been a victim of those as well. It has come to the point that i am not looking for a relationship at all since i got massive anxiety associated with even flirting.

I'm sorry to hear you've been through it as well I have too, which is why I am super wary of it. Men seem to feel that they are entitled to women's emotional labour - after all, they feel like they have to act like 'stiff upper lip' manly men with friends, colleagues etc and expect their female partners/lovers to be their therapist, mummy, emotional punchbag etc.

When I was younger and more naive, I would fall for it, because I felt sorry for those guys. My relationships would always be a pattern - they would put me on a pedestal and idealise/romanticise the version of me they made up in their head. The problems start after a couple of months, when they realise that I have different opinions than them, and refuse to mould myself into what they want, or just simply don't fit their template of an 'ideal woman', by that point I would let my guard down and get attached and they would start treating me more and more like s**t. This idealisation/devaluation nonsense is a sign of emotional immaturity. A mature man will accept the fact that women are sentient beings with their own personalities, and have actual respect for us. Sadly, they are in short supply. Society doesn't hold men accountable for their actions or behaviour, because 'boys will be boys' (whereas if a woman shows signs of mental illness, she is a psychopath, obviously) so it seems like the majority of men are man-children.

Men always put me on a pedestal as well, partly because acting has become second nature to me. But it is not because i am trying to deceive people it is just a survival strategy to blend in to society. I do it with everyone apart from my family.

It's only been a few years that i decided to stop acting for people's sake.

Yeah I do that too, heavy masking with everyone except people close to me. I do it out of fear mostly. I appear quite reserved and introverted too so they think I'll be a good doormat... uh no.

I hope that we both meet a decent guy one day, we both deserve one!

Thank you so much, i wish the same to you.

I can't imagine expecting more from this thing.

I've been saying this a million times:
If the service is free, people are the product.

Haha that's funny. I honestly just downloaded the app out of boredom.

It seems unfair to me that women are the products though. One of my best friends is polyamorous and bi, she got tinder and first set it to both men and women, but with the men side it was such a sausage/ego fest that she set it to women only. She seems to not have these experiences with women.

Everyone who signed up is the product. Same on FB, Twitter, Instagram, Bumble etc.

Marketing schemes are another thing entirely.

*edit* This may be a bit seemingly cold & detached but it's the whole truth anyway. I've been in the tech industry for almost a decade & I've been watching from the outside as these trends started messing with our heads. I just wouldn't date online for any number of reasons.

Last edited by cberg on 19 May 2021, 11:41 am, edited 1 time in total.

Heh yeah I get your point. I deactivated FB because it was annoying me too much. I don't see the point of having hundreds of 'friends' on there whom I don't see irl or even talk to online, and it annoys me that everyone and their grandma has a fake persona on there that is nothing like their real life personality! I also felt like I couldn't be myself on FB, without some keyboard warriors getting triggered by my jokes/opinions.

I made the conscious choice years ago to build meaningful content with technology instead of more drivel for the data miners. It's been going decently well I must say, except for the fact that it's a very unpopular choice; not too many people even care to learn about what I'm up to since there's a difference between public-facing technology & stuff that's just made for engineers.

I'm not sure how it's unoffensive to so many people that less than 1% are raking in cash collecting information on our daily lives without ever giving a cent back to the people whose information put them on the top.

As soon as these business models are exposed truthfully the jig is up.

To another point, I guess I'll bump your thread since there are many better conversations to be had on here usually.

WP is the asocial network.

Omg.... this gets better!

So the lunatic obsessive dude actually found me on Facebook, and sent me a message going on how I disappeared on him, how he's been feeling "very bad" for days and didn't know what to do about it. I replied stating again why I don't wish to communicate with him and blocked him. Hopefully he will leave me alone now. I'm somewhat disturbed that he actually stalked me on Facebook just to guilt trip me... after talking to me for a week!!

After this I'm put off trying any kind of dating apps lol

I’m so glad you’re off Tinder. There are far healthier ways of meeting and getting to know people than “online”. I wouldn’t join a dating site under any circumstances. There are plenty of vulnerable people falling prey to dangerous users of those sites every day.