For TikToker Nicole (@nicole0.king), dating apps have not led to love. Instead, they have turned into a full-blown cautionary tale.
She is so over the whole dating app scene after meeting a string of bizarre men who made her uncomfortable. It begs the question: how can people seem relatively normal online but be so different in person?
One of her more recent dates was promising at first. She went on a date with a guy she matched with on a dating app. He was super nice and respectable, but he just wasn’t funny at all.
At dinner, he kept cracking jokes about Hitler, something that she found inappropriate and confusing, especially for a first date. What might have been an attempt at edgy humor came across as uncomfortable and off-putting.
There was another detail about him that she just couldn’t ignore. Throughout the meal, he was squeezing what appeared to be an infected hair or blemish on his arm.
Nicole said she even saw something come out of it, which only added to her growing sense of unease. Of course, that date did not lead to a second one.
That date was bad, but it wasn’t even her worst experience. Her first-ever date from a dating app came after she broke up with her ex-boyfriend, who was very lustful. He took pictures of women’s underwear without their consent.
After that relationship ended, she tried to give dating another chance and went out with a guy who was perfect on paper. He seemed like a total upgrade.
He asked her questions about herself to get to know her better, and they had the same type of humor. For a moment, it felt like things might finally be going right.
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But then, the tone shifted. He started becoming increasingly touchy-feely and wanted her to take off her cardigan. She had no interest in doing so and left him right away.
“He told me we needed to be comfortable with each other, and I was like, I’m comfortable with myself…if you’re so comfortable with yourself, why are you trying to take off my shirt?” said Nicole.
Looking back, she couldn’t help but compare those experiences to a moment she witnessed outside her own dating life. They were much different from the guy who was outside at the time, pumping air into his girlfriend’s tires after filling up her car with gas.
Now that’s what a true gentleman should be. That contrast stuck with her.
She was simply searching for basic decency, but it has been surprisingly hard to find. Overall, the combination of poor boundaries, bad humor, and terrible behavior has made Nicole rethink whether dating apps are worth the energy and the effort.
By Emily Chan
Emily Chan is a writer who covers lifestyle and news content. She graduated from Michigan State University with a degree in... More about Emily Chan
