10 Reasons To Ditch Dating Apps Right Now

I spent hours on Tinder and I’ll I got was this lousy obsessive fixation on what the fuck was wrong with me coupled with an impending sense of eternal spinsterhood. Just pass me some cats, please.

Do you feel good about yourself? Not a problem, dating apps can put a stop to that. Think you have plenty to offer the opposite sex? Nothing like a dating app to remind you that you have absolutely nothing going on that an adult human male will be interested in.

So comfortable in your own skin that you feel like you maybe want to find someone to share your life with? Get yourself on a dating app if you want to remind yourself that it’s much better to live your life all alone until the sweet release of death.

But seriously though, Tinder, Happn, Plenty of Fish, Match…it doesn’t matter which one (but, let’s be honest, if you’re on one, you’re probably on all four, right?) you use, admit it, you’re not having much luck with any of them, are you? So why are you still going through the motions?

Still unconvinced you should ditch the dating apps? Here are 10 brilliant reasons why…

It’s the same old people

I’m going to hazard a guess that if you’re on one app, you’re on them all, so you’ve probably noticed that it’s the same crowd of dudes on every single one. And when you meet someone who you delete all your apps for and it ~*BiG SuRpRiSe*~ does not work out, you’ll be straight back on them and, again, you’ll be greeted by the same old faces. Well, guess what, no one has improved – everyone is still single. So you run out of faces to swipe through, but you’re bored on the train so you do the (not even slightly) logical thing of broadening your search. Is a long distance relationship ever a good idea? No. Is scraping the local barrel a good idea? No. Move on.

You don’t have to pretend you’re sexy

Do you know how physically and mentally draining it is trying to pretend you’re the bright, breezy, charming super-smart, super-funny sex machine you need to be to dazzle dudes?

Maybe you’re trying to be funny all the time. Maybe you’re holding back from ordering two desserts just for yourself on your first date (but really, you do need two, because if someone put a gun to your head and asked you if you’d rather eat a brownie or a waffle, you’d just tell them to pull the trigger because that shit is impossible).

Maybe you’re so sick of answering the same questions again and again and now your usual cute, funny line about what you do for a living has been replaced by three words and an emoji. It’s exhausting. But do you know what’s even worse? Shaving your legs time and time again for dates that are just not worth it.

Being single is not only OK, But It’s also awesome

Too many people need an ‘other half’ to feel whole, often not giving a damn who fills their metaphorical (and – I’m sorry – literal) hole. Just someone, anyone will do, right? 

Well, I’m here to tell you that it’s OK to be single. Single is fun. Single means hanging out with your friends without pining for someone or holding back on nights out because you can’t flirt.

Most importantly, single means never having to shave your legs. Can you tell I begrudge every Tinder date I shaved my legs for? It also means that you don’t have to report for duty at any of his dull work dos.

You’ll never have to sit through boring football matches. You don’t have to worry about getting drunk and doing stupid stuff up in the club because you answer to no one, sister. Oh-oh-ohh.

Most dudes just wanna touch your butt

You might be using these apps to find your Prince Charming, but, best-case scenario, you’ll only end up kissing frogs. Worst case scenario, you’re going to get banged by a frog with some weird disease because he’s been ploughing his way through so many Tinderellas recently.

Men manipulating women into sleeping with them and then never contacting them again is a tale as old as time, and most are used to doing it ad-lib. Give a horny guy a keyboard and time to carefully consider what he says to you, and things suddenly get a whole lot easier. And by things, I mean you.

Yes, OK, I’m sure there are some genuine guys on there – like maybe four, five… six even – but there are a billion who just want to sleep with you and the only way to find out is to do the deed and see if they text you again. With those odds, I’d advise against it.

Everyone is bored of hearing you moan about men

Let me put this simply: if he isn’t texting you back, he isn’t interested. Not convinced? Look, you met via a dating app, which is essentially texting, which means he is fully capable of doing so.

But by all means, send him that ninth unanswered message, see where it gets you. I promise you though, you friends will run out of patience when it comes to your complaining if you keep getting back in the ring for another round. 

If you keep banging your toe on the same piece of furniture, you move it to a better place or you stay away from it – you don’t keep breaking your toe every day before running to your doctor to moan about how your toe keeps breaking.

(FYI, in the interest of being crystal clear: The toe is your heart, the offending piece of furniture is dating app dudes and banging is banging.)

There are plenty of men around you IRL

The hot dude who serves you in Starbucks, your bestie’s brother, the new guy at work, the stranger staring at you on the train… There are people all around you in the real world and you don’t need an app to meet them.

This also skips the awkward-fest that is the first date with a person you’ve never met, because you just don’t know what you’re in for. Maybe he looks nothing like his photos, maybe he smells, maybe he’s a fucking sociopath but you didn’t pick up on this because he’s an absolute stranger.

It also skips on the indescribable horror that is turning up to meet a dude who decides that without an Insta-filter, your nose is a bit too big and therefore he will never text you again. People you meet in real life see your unfiltered nose and still think you’re awesome enough to ask out.

It’s not a very romantic story

When people ask you how you met your significant other, it’s always nice to have a glittering story that makes everyone jealous, right? If you have something romantic or even funny, and people start grilling your at parties, you get to be all cute and tell the tale, and that’s awesome.

So way down the line (assuming app folk are actually capable of commitment) when your groom is delivering his speech at your wedding in front of all your family and friends, and it’s something along the lines of: “we both found each other’s face agreeable enough to swipe right before going on a few awkward dates, being weird bang-buddies for a while, and then realising we couldn’t face going through it all again to find someone better… so here we are.” Cheers!

Think of your phone

If you won’t ditch the apps for yourself, then ditch them for your poor little phone. A decent session on Tinder will not just wipe out your battery life, but your data allowance will take a massive hit too.

And what about when your phone gets full and that pesky ‘Storage almost full’ message pops up – isn’t it better to delete your dating apps than it is those 26 selfies you took, because you know that if you keep looking at the seemingly identical snaps, at least one of them has to seem usable at some point.

Another great way to free up some space is to delete all those Whatsapp threads with people who made it off Tinder but not quite into your real world – you’d be surprised how much space those unsolicited dick pics are taking up, even if the content is small, the file can still be big.

You could legit get strangled

I am going to say one thing and one thing only in the defence of dating apps, so make the most of it: online dating is great for guys and girls who struggle with their confidence. If you find it difficult to strike up a conversation with the opposite sex, then it’s great that you can use your phone to ease into it. However, this is a feature that also extends to psychopaths, who can use apps to their advantage, masking their true psycho ways.

Yeah, maybe he seems charming when he’s typing short messages to you, but when you meet up with him and he tries to bang you in the disabled toilets, don’t say I didn’t warn you, because I did warn you because it’s happened more than once. Incidentally, no, I don’t know why men are insisting on the disabled toilets specifically, I imagine something is going on in the sex world that people need lots of extra space for.

Regrettably, my personality is the only 100% effective contraceptive out there, so if you do learn the secrets of disabled lav banging, send your answers on a postcard to the usual address.

It’s a worthless form of validation

On the one hand, having 528 matches on Tinder might make you think you’re super-hot, but it doesn’t really mean anything. Maybe you’re just rocking the angles. Maybe people are mostly power-swiping and saying yes to everyone. Maybe they swiped right on you by mistake and you’re there, letting it go to your head, thinking you’re hot shit.

This can extend into real life, where you’ll have success on a date and rather than want a second, you’ll want a whole bunch of first dates with other people just to get that feeling again. This just makes you a bit of dick, but if apps are having the opposite effect on you, this can be massively detrimental to your mental health.

The horrible words of one guy (because you’re not “body perfect” because you didn’t sleep with him, because you’re not willing to do as you’re told at the risk of no longer being yourself) can leave you wondering whether there is something actually wrong with you.

So don’t let the opinions of these boys shape your opinion of yourself either way – better still, just delete the apps.