#6 Sending a nude to a stranger is sometimes a great idea & #7 Dating apps are neither good nor bad.
Double whammy today because I slipped yesterday...
(This is part of the ‘35 Things I’ve Learnt Before Turning 35’ series)
#6 Sending a nude to a stranger is sometimes a great idea.
Once upon a time I was not mentally very well. It was the pandemic, I had gone through the most traumatising few months of my life, and I was feeling isolated and lonely and fragile.
So naturally I decided to download a sex-positive kink-positive dating app and scroll away my pain. As I was fresh meat on the app the likes and matches kept on coming. Soon my inbox was full of messages from people asking whether they “could send me a tasteful nude?” More often than not I replied sure, go ahead mate. In return, I set up my own photo shoot and flashed away. I carefully cut at least half of my face off to keep it ~anonymous and mysterious~, we all know the horror stories when your nudes end up in the wrong hands. But to be honest I wasn’t even think about that. This was the first time I had sent nudes to strangers, and it felt exciting, right amount of dirty and a bit risky. I’d never particularly liked my body, so it felt nice to receive compliments. This titillating exchange of body parts with strangers helped me with keeping my mind occupied with things other than the trauma I had just experienced. It was a way to distract myself, a form of escapism.
Like everything else, the excitement of course wore out. I looked at yet another photo of a penis taken with flash and felt nothing. The compliments started to feel hollow and annoying. But for those few weeks, exchanging nudes with strangers was fun and possibly even a little healing.
#7 Dating apps are neither good nor bad.
I’ve been sitting here on the couch today thinking about whether my attitude towards dating, and especially dating apps, is bad, and whether that is sending bad vibes in the universe.
The thing is, dating apps probably aren’t either good or bad. Yes they can feel exhausting, the endless scrolling is adding to your screen time and contributing to possible carpal tunnel, we are all disillusioned by the optics of endless choice and swiping people left and right based on their appearance feels judgemental,.
But also, it just is where we are at in terms of civilisation and technology. Would I prefer not to use screens for absolutely everything and cease to receive emails - yes, but is that possible - no. I just need to suck it up, like I probably just need to suck it up that I will be swiping for the foreseeable.
After all, apps are just another way to facilitate encounters. Yes it would be lovely to meet someone in real life, and sometimes this does happen, but I guess being on an app doesn’t need to be this big ideological choice or admission of defeat. I’ve definitely met some interesting people via apps who I know I wouldn’t have met in real life. So surely that must be a pretty great attribute of these things.
I’ve decided I’m going to try to feel more positive about this whole dating thing, including apps. Life will keep going on regardless. Who the hell cares. We are all fucked up, we all crave connection and intimacy, and nobody really knows where to find that. In order to feel like we’re taking matters into our own hands, apps feel like an option.