Sounds Like A Cult - The Cult of Dating Apps

Episode Date: July 12, 2022

A flirty little topic for another installment of Cult Girl Summer: five weeks of bonus episodes where Isa and Amanda are airing unfiltered cult conversations, behind the scenes tidbits, much-requested Part 2s, and more. This week, Emma Gray and Claire Fallon, co-hosts of the bachelor recap podcast Love to See It, are joining for a truly *cathartic* conversation about a group that reels in its members with the promise of love and human connection, only to deceive them and make it next to impossible to leave. The cult of dating apps, of course!

Hi listeners! Before we get into the episode, we want to take a moment to address the June 24, 2022 Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. This decision stripped away the right to have a safe and legal abortion. Everyone should have the freedom to decide what's best for themselves and their families, including when it comes to ending a pregnancy. This decision has dire consequences for individual health and safety, and could have harsh repercussions for other landmark decisions. Restricting access to comprehensive reproductive care, including abortion, threatens the health and independence of all Americans. Learn more by visiting podvoices.help. If you're able to support others, please consider donating to abortion funds,

like abortionfunds.org. We encourage you to speak up, take care, and spread the word. The views expressed in this episode, as with all episodes of Sounds Like a Cult, are solely host opinions and quoted allegations. The content here should not be taken as indisputable. This podcast is for entertainment purposes only. This is Sounds Like a Cult, a show about the modern day cult we all follow. I'm Amanda Montell, author of the book Cultish the Language of Fanaticism. And I'm Issa Medina, a comedian. Every week on our show, we discuss a different zeitgeisty group that puts the cult in culture,

from theater kids to hardcore vegans, to try and answer the big question. This group sounds like a cult, but is it really? To join our cult and see culty memes and BTS pics, follow us on Instagram at SoundsLikeACultPod. I'm on Instagram at Amanda underscore Montell. And I'm on Instagram post-and-reals at Issa Medina, I-S-A-A-M-E-D-I-N-A-A. And feel free to check us out on YouTube, where you can watch our show with your eyes, or hit us up on Patreon at patreon.com slash sounds like a cult, where our episodes are available ad free.

Well, well, well, if it isn't another installment of Cult Girl Summer, five weeks of bonus episodes, where we share off the cuff cult convo's Q&As, footage from the cutting room floor and much requested part twos. If you're new here, Cult Girl Summer is an installment of like our regular episodes, but it's a lot more laid back, a little less edited. But we were going to take a little four week break this summer, so we can do research and amp up for season three. But we decided we didn't want to disappear. No, we wanted to give you guys some some much deserved summer content.

So we decided to do these little bonus episodes to keep it going. Today, since it's the summertime, the flirtyest season of the year. The sorry, that was not a flirty. Like a singer, like a jazz club. We did it because these are bonus episodes. We are not doing video. Yeah. So we are recording these in my home because I have central AC.

Yes, ma'am, and we do look bad and I've never felt better. Anyway, it's summer. It's hot. And for that reason, we decided to do a bonus episode on the cult of dating apps. Yes. Oh, dating. There are so many reason dating apps are culty. Oh, my God. We didn't even get to all of the reasons, which is why these intros are so important.

On the surface, I'd say that dating apps are like cults because they suck you in with the promise of love and acceptance only to deceive slash bait and switch the fuck out of you in order to keep you in the cult. And the conversation we had with our guests today. Stay tuned for that felt not only illuminating, but cathartic as well. Oh, this is a cult that we have both been in. How many dating apps have you used? I have Tinder.

I've only this is going to sound so annoying, but I've only ever used Tinder in Paris when I did an internship there. And it was to meet people. And I met like one of my best friends that summer, who I'm still very close with on Tinder. Yeah. I didn't know that. I know. And he was a chance.

He's French, but like lived in the UK. So like he's very chill. Did you totally okay? Just being friends. No, we never hooked up. That's beautiful. But to answer your question, I've used Tinder, hinge and riot. Yeah, sorry, sound effect vomit.

But none of them have worked. Have yielded positive results. Like literally not even like positive hookup results like nothing. Yeah. Well, those who've listened to the toxic relationships episode of this show will know that I was in a very long, mostly sexless relationship for a lot of my formative years. I'm fine. But I shot out of that like a cannon into the world of dating apps.

I was single as an adult for the first time at the age of 25. And I just consumed that world voraciously. And so I was on, oh, never Tinder, but a bumble hinge field. We'll talk more about that in the interview today. But I never signed up for the ones that you have to pay for or the ones that force you to apply because that felt a little too culty. But I had lots of great experiences. I mean, I had lots of heartache and uncanny experiences on dating apps.

But overall, I would say net positive experience for me. Yeah. Well, I will say I feel like they've gotten cold here. I feel like because of the pandemic, like it created the shift in dating where like now it's almost cold here because regular dating is less acceptable. Yeah. Like the creation of people's bubbles, like social bubbles for like COVID safety purposes. Your pod.

Yeah. Your pod, like it's created this divide amongst like talking to strangers at bars. It's almost made our whole society clickier because you're afraid of catching not only a physical disease, but now some kind of social disease. Yeah. And so the only way that you're like, it's socially acceptable to interact with another social cult or another social pod is by joining the cult of dating. By vetting them on the internet first.

Yeah. Yeah. That is so true. I definitely think that dating apps have gotten cold here since I was using them in 2018 dating apps have become such the default approach to finding your match that I was at a party the other day and a friend and I were talking to someone who had just moved to LA and was interested in starting to date and he was like, but I don't want to be on dating apps. And my friend's reaction was like, what?

Why? Why? Because to us, it's like so unimaginable that you would want to be on the outside of this cult. Yeah. It's like, why? What's wrong with you? Like, why don't you want to be on dating apps? Like, what is your defect and how do we fix it?

I get thinking that it's weird from like an opportunity perspective. Like he's closing himself off to so many opportunities, but that's not how we should think of people. People aren't opportunities. I agree. I totally empathize with him not wanting to go on dating apps in terms of like if he's been on them before and they felt like a chore or they felt like a homework assignment. I was just thinking earlier because this is a cult podcast.

So it's like thinking of dating apps as a cult. I was thinking like, what is the opportunity cost? Like, what's the loss? Like, what are you losing by joining the cult? Because it's easy to sign up and like you engage with it as much as you want or as little as you want. But I think it's like the opportunity cost is emotional strain for sure. And also effort, like emotional effort into like planning, thinking about it or thinking

like, why didn't this person respond to me? As they say, and now I finally understand the saying, dating apps are living rent free in her brain. Oh, absolutely. And that's just talking about the psychological costs. We didn't get to talk about this in the interview with our guests, but there are really bad worst case scenarios from the cult of dating apps, including getting catfished, getting scammed out of money.

Like, you could put yourself in physical peril by not having that in person ability to judge someone. You know, we need those intuitions or intuitions are there to judge people socially. That's so true. And I feel like with a lot of negative worst case scenarios, when it comes to companies or like establishment, you have a hierarchy or you have like a formal outlet to go to when something goes wrong, there's no HR for dating apps. There really is no HR for dating apps.

And also, like, if you think about it, there's also like no tech help. Have you ever gotten like a customer service number or email from hinge? You can't even like find it on their website. Totally. There is this mysterious godlike presence of dating app algorithms and higher ups. We just put so much trust into these applications to help us find the loves of our lives or someone it would be fun and safe to have sex with. And yet they could be putting us in harm's way and we wouldn't even know it.

Yeah, exactly. But we're going to talk about all of this and more with our two guests today. We're very excited to share with you this honestly unfiltered conversation for Cult Girl Summer with our guests, Claire and Emma, they're the hosts of a really fun dating reality show slash bachelor recap podcast called Love to See It. They're also writers. We can't wait to share with you what we talked about with them. Could you guys introduce yourself for our listeners?

I'm Emma Gray and I'm a writer and podcaster focusing on the intersection of gender and culture and politics and have a podcast with Claire here about the bachelor called Love to See It and a newsletter called Rich Text. And I was a single woman in New York City for 10 years, so pretty much straight through. So I've had some experience on a variety of dating apps over the years. I'm Claire Fallon and I co-host Love to See It with Emma. And I also co-host the Rich Text podcast that we do on Substack. And I met my husband in 2012 at a party.

So I missed the dating app era completely. So I mostly have experienced it through observing its effects on my friends. And I wasn't OK Cupid. That absolutely counts. That's the OG online dating app. Exactly. We have a cult of dating apps insider and an outsider here. Couldn't be more perfect.

Yeah. When we say the cult of dating apps, what immediately comes to mind for you? And how do you interpret that? I think I think about the time suck that these apps can take from us. Like the way that dating has been so gamified to make us feel like there is an endless accessibility of potential partners when really it's like a lot of tech platforms kind of sucking our data and time away from us and also maybe hopefully helping a lot of us meet people. The more I think about it, the more it feels like the secondary mission.

Yeah. I think that like related to that is the fact that the goal of an app is to have a large user base. And if you meet someone and you leave, you're no longer part of that large user base. And so there is a strong motivation for apps to design themselves, not in the best way to find you a partner, but in the best way for you to never leave the app, never want to leave the app. It's so weird going on a first date from a dating app. You're immediately aware that this person has a thousand other options and that like

they're all sitting at home and that like they could have scheduled a date right after you or they could have scheduled a date for tomorrow. It's this like competition, but at the same time, it should be romantic and authentic. Those two things are like antithetical to each other. Well, that's a best case scenario because I feel like I use dating apps in a non-traditional way. I was like really trying to meet people in person. I got on dating apps really late. It was 2018 when I first got on them.

I feel like everyone I knew and all of my friends were using it just like Instagram. They were not motivated to take their experiences offline. It was almost like the equivalent of you don't use Duolingo to learn how to speak a foreign language. It's just a language themed iPhone game. Hinge and Bumble and Tinder are not there to help you find a partner. It's just a dating themed iPhone game. Yeah, it's like a happy accident if you actually do meet someone. Like I had actually met my current boyfriend years before we got together,

but we reconnected via hinge and I'm like so grateful for that kind of like bringing someone who might be on the periphery of your social circle back into your life. But the amount of time that I spent over the years swiping or like Amanda, as you said like actually actively trying to get people to just meet me off the app. But the amount of labor that that would take and then like half the time I would just end up in some like odd what did you do this week very basic conversation with a straight dude who I'm like you need to get more friends like I'm good on that front. I've only ever gone on like three hinge dates in LA and like one of them turned into like a thing

because the person that I went on a date with knew my friend from high school in college. They were really good friends and so I was like okay like this is a connection probably wouldn't have been a second date I would have gone on originally but I was like gonna give this person another shot because we have a mutual friend and it turned into a thing. But then when it ended they were like oh like I'd love to be friends and I was like immediately no. I'm sorry I'm not looking for friends. I have had first dates that went like so mediocre but I just could hold a conversation with the guy and they were like let's be friends.

I'm like no you're confused. My most successful dating app experiences were on I'm really revealing a lot about myself and also like dad close your ears if you're listening but we're on the app field formerly known as Thrender which is like a kink dating app. Oh la la. I have some good friends who are very very involved so. Yeah great well. Sponsor us. Sponsor us honestly our listeners get it. Because field is a kink app and the kink community is famously good at consent and forthrightness and honesty nobody was cagey about what their intentions were and so if your

intention was to look for a strong romantic connection you were going to say that but if your intention was to have like a kinky group sex experience you were going to say that and I ended up meeting one of my dearest dearest friends on the app but she's a bisexual woman and that's mainly the type of friend I want. So for Claire seeing friends on dating apps and for Emma being on dating apps yourself what do you think is the cultiest thing about dating apps as in in a good way and culty in a bad way? What's interesting about dating apps is that it definitely feeds off of something that can also feed into a cult which is like the desire for human connection and a

sense of meaning and being seen you know like as the person you are but it completely subverts that by instead like offering you a bunch of fragmented faux versions of that kind of relationship and it's hard for me to like see a ton of positive in the experience because everyone I know just seems so miserable having to deal with it but you go on in search of that kind of like genuine soul sustaining connection and instead you are abused and manipulated and abandoned over and over again and so I guess in a way that is the cult experience as well. Yeah I think the cultiness of it kind of lies in the fact that you like have to buy into the ostensible mission of these apps and kind of like keep going back to the source

for more and more and more even if you have a bad experience because it kind of feels like these apps have a monopoly on the way that we date now. Which is so frustrating because we should literally be able to just go to a bar and meet people but it's like now everyone has changed the way that they interact right and it's like you can't go up to a stranger at a bar and be like can I buy you a drink they're gonna be like what the fuck is wrong with you Frico? Well have you heard of the phrase puritans like a play on the word puritans? I have heard that yeah it's a new slang phrase that describes the sort of mode or attitude towards social interaction that Gen Z tends to have where they're almost like so skittish about

in-person romantic interaction like the second you try to pick someone up it's seen at the very least says in a front and so by that nature like they almost become more puritanical because they're just not sexually liberated in the in scare quotes in the way that like Gen X or even millennials where there's like this return to tradition meaning like ooh is that what makes me a Gen Z because I haven't had sex in a while kind of I actually do think of you and I think of that mode of interaction yeah well and since COVID we're even more isolated well I think there is something especially for like straight cis women where you know we've had this kind of collective greater understanding about all the ways in which dating and romance can actually feel like a trap or like

a way in which you're making yourself vulnerable to emotional and physical harm yeah and so I think it's like having these structures that mitigate that can feel protective and at the same time too much self-protection is actually antithetical to being able to form a romantic connection that's me Amanda is literally tapping my shoulder and pointing at me because she's like that's you that's you I'm a millennial I'm in my mid 30s like I was such a puritine actually the reason that I did very little app dating even before I met my husband was partly because it felt really overwhelming it was like a spigot of male attention that you could either turn on or off and I would turn it on and it would be like a gosh and then it was like messages

and they were like let's meet up in person and then I'd have to go on like five dates in a week and it was terrifying I mean it wasn't like I was like pulling the cream of the okcupid crap but like there are guys out there who want to meet up with a 23 year old girl in New York and I would just be so exhausted by the end of the week I would turn off okcupid for like six months yeah whereas like when I occasionally would like meet a guy who's interested in me at a party which here's my non-humble brag moment almost never happened it would be a very much more natural feeling interaction that I actually felt in certain ways more in control of and that's not to say that like the history of men you know interacting with women in person to try to get

their attention is always a beautiful in control experience for women but there is a way in which moving it all onto apps has just created this concentrated fire hose spigot of that male attention something that I think is culty is like the fact like what you just said which is like when you turn it on it's like a flow and it has to be on for multiple people at the same time because I've tried going on dating apps where I'm like okay I just want to meet like one person and go on one date this week and I go on the date and I like bomb the date because I'm really nervous and I'm acting weird and I haven't been dating and like dating is like the muscle so you don't know how to like it's almost like going on stage with stand up like you have to do it all the time

so that you can be your authentic self and not come off as this like awkward first date weirdo and so when you are going on dates you should be going on multiple dates so that you don't feel really invested in one date so that you don't come off as this person that's like I want to date you and be my like you have to take the pressure off the nature of that is kind of dehumanizing right it's like you do gamify it and this kind of leads to another question and I wonder what your opinions are in terms of like the chicken or the egg do we feel like dating apps are causing people to treat others less human like just characters in the Sims or do we think that dating apps just create a space for people who would already be dehumanizing others to become more visible because I think it's

a little bit of both I found that I really liked the game of dating apps I liked strengthening that muscle of like oh these are the first date questions that they are going to get them every time it depends on the type of person that you are because like I'm bisexual pansexual like I have to really connect with someone like emotionally to be like attracted to them and so it's like really hard for me to like gamify it because I'm like I have to connect with you and also I'm like serum monogamous who like doesn't date so like in my mind I'm like if I like one person I'm turning people away for a crush you know what I mean I relate to you just like don't know how people do it I'm an extrovert and a sociopath so that's how I do think what you were saying

before Amanda is true it's like it's happening on both ends this kind of setup gives permission and it almost necessitates anyone on a dating app to separate themselves from the humanity of the people they're talking to at least until you meet up like I feel like I used to say all the time well like these people aren't real until we take it off the app because it's too painful to try to like emotionally invest in five mediocre conversations and what you were saying Issa like there's so much that goes into being attracted to a person or connecting to a person that's kind of intangible and in order to like sort through that spigot that Claire was talking about you have to set some amount of parameters and the things that are available

to you are like race religion education like all of these kind of superficial markers that like can easily veer into reifying some really fucked up societal structures and it almost necessitates that because if you say like I'm open to everyone suddenly you're sorting through an absolutely exhausting number of people and like no human is set up to be able to receive the attentions of you know 100 people a day like that's just not that's not human I was just remembering how I used to use the okay cupid compatibility percentage rating and that was that asked you questions so reliable yeah I don't use dating apps that much but my friends always tell me like you need to swipe on them more so that the algorithm gets to know you so that it can feed

you people that you like and I was swiping with a friend next to me and I was like oh this person's kind of cute but like not cute enough and they were like still swipe right because it'll get you closer to the kind of person that you like that's so insane because I'm like literally using this real human there's a person on the other side of this profile and I'm using them as a data point to get closer to the person that I want to find okay and here's the fucked up thing though I have read that much like what you were saying Claire it is not in the apps favor they are not incentivized to actually want to feed you your perfect match so they'll collect all those data points which to your point are fucking people and then they will still serve you someone who's like just off

they're not going to serve you the perfect person you guys said earlier they want a lot of people on the app so they're not incentivized to give you your one and only and my thing is it's like okay if tiktok can recommend like the right pillow for me a minute after I talk about needing to sleep better like hinge could match me with my one true love they just don't want to they don't want to it's a really effective advertising yeah it's like nonprofits like they should be made to be deleted but all of a sudden they turn into businesses and people like don't want to fix issues yeah because they've employed a bunch of people right I mean it's a for-profit endeavor that relies on sort of exacerbating people's insecurities and desires for connection and like I guess that is

kind of where the cultiness lies is that it's like taking this very human beautiful desire and like commodifying it and twisting it I was listening to a podcast about fellowship of friends oh Jennings Brown our buddy I was listening to his new podcast and in one episode one of the ex-members talks about how when they were in the fellowship of friends they were in a constant high because they were constantly getting hits of what they experienced as transcendent about the cult about you know the beautiful it's a cult that is really focused on like fine art and so there was always Shakespeare being performed and beautiful china serving delicious dinners while the sunset and they were like yeah I was just in a high for like 25 years and I think that the way that these apps

have been so carefully designed is to give you that constant high of like I'm on the precipice of finding my true love I'm on the precipice of finding the best hookup I've ever had like yeah because they created this game that is so easy and frictionless and the net the right person is just around the corner the actuality of like getting off the apps and having a relationship is so much it's a lot more labor right it's not like being on heroin the whole time like it's also like the stakes are so high when you date someone and meet them in person and it starts getting serious like little by little you have those conversations naturally because you don't have this application that you have to like delete or turn off whereas like if you meet someone on hinge it's either people

who want to like fuck or it's people who want to get married the danger of an app though is that first of all it doesn't look like a cult you're not you're not going to be on guard in any way so you're never going to think that you're in a cult but second of all the the app is able to like optimize that love bombing it's happening in little little spurts every single time you swipe and i think it's actually encouraging uh people especially men who you match with to literally love bomb you because they're not even treating you like a person they're treating you like a character in the sims a more intense version of that is like the apps that you pay into like unfortunately i am on rya i hate it's stupid i've like never gone i've gone on like one date

with someone we weren't rock climbing never saw him again do you guys know who like tom mich is okay he's a british musician and he popped up on my page and i was like holy shit it's tom mich and i was like so excited i was like oh my god maybe i made it to like the next tier of rya because like they literally tear you so that you either get to match with famous people or you don't and it like depends on the followers you have or whether you're verified on instagram or like who follows you like it literally like takes because it's linked to your instagram so it takes all of that into account but i didn't make it to the next year they just threw me tom mich obviously i swiped right we didn't match and then they kept giving me like all these random people

that is so culty too when the algorithm gives you a little nugget this is something even more culty when i tried to um so it's like 30 bucks a year or something and i wanted to just like put it on pause because i was like this is stupid i've never matched with anyone i don't want to pay 30 dollars or it might be 30 dollars a month i don't know i really need to look into that you're like am i just bleeding money to rya maybe that's culty too it gets cult here when i went to go pause my subscription this notification popped up and it was like are you sure you want to unsubscribe if you unsubscribe you might be put to the back of the queue and have to reapply i was like it was a miracle i was accepted to begin with exit costs exit costs yeah exactly are are you in

the exit costs are you gonna get back in and i'm like i don't want to like communicate it from rya at such a young age it's yes but that's how they got me because i was young and stupid i heard pete davidson was on it and i was like oh my god i have to be on that's how all called up for my friend and so like that's what got me she showed me on her phone she was like oh my god look it's pete davidson and so i was like holy shit i need to be on that okay so let's analyze this we've got the celebrity endorsement just like Scientology pete davidson is to rya as tom cruises to Scientology they're recruiting young vulnerable people who just want to connect the exit costs are sky high they're basically telling you that if you leave you'll never find love and then let's talk about

that hierarchy all cults have hierarchies all cults have a leadership in the parallel of the cult of dating apps who do you think is the leader and how do you interpret the hierarchical structure i guess i think of the algorithm as the leader yeah it bears the divine wisdom and then the like the next tier like all of the tech executives that are kind of invisible and so the leader is the invisible hand of the algorithm but then there are all of these power brokers that don't have to really be like so fully visible associated with the cultie brand i'm definitely thinking of the top users like the people who who get the most likes on tinder or whatever app that's like if you're in the top tier but also i feel like that it's tiered by app like rya would kind of be a top tier whereas

i feel like tinder is almost like well anyone is on there like the league is no longer exclusive it's full of douchebags or like whatever like there are these reputations that these varying apps have and so it's like well what is the cache of this particular app say about you if you are like a frequent user of it and it's all just like a way to gauge your own desirability and like what you can pull something that would be like insanely culty to me and i wonder if this happens is like if those executives are like the people who work at the dating app like tech companies i wonder if they can like figure out a way to match themselves with whoever they want you know what i mean i bet they could pull a string or two i am envisioning those people like the rich white dudes in squid game

just like observing all observing all of these poor people like fight for their lives to try to find something better and they're like exploiting like real concerns in order to sell you on the app i think of like bumble which i'm not saying like didn't start with some good intention but like you know okay men can't message first or whatever because there's so much like terrible spammy creepy messaging happening but then what it actually turned into in my experience is just like women doing all of the work doing all the labor all the emotional labor and like just getting like ghosted over and over and over again and being like this isn't actually better this isn't actually protecting me from anything and i'm just like spending so much fucking time trying to reach out

to people who clearly aren't interested in me yeah especially like i will say gay women ghost just as much from experience so that's the equality we create so that's what we're fighting for but with the men it's like i get mad because like then if i'm doing the labor it's like all of a sudden these patriarchal standards of right the woman i'm the assistant i'm following up you're the manager like here's my number text me and then like you text them and then like they never reply or you have to follow up i'm just getting you're like the secretary of the dating dynamic literally you are which is traditionally this female role it's like that emotional labor that i've heard people talk about it on tiktok it's like when you ask your husband to go grocery shopping

he should know what to buy but a lot of the time it's like you ask them to go grocery shopping you have to give them a list and you have to tell them what to get and like it's like you are still doing all of the emotional labor like when are men going to think for them right but it's like this app it can exploit that real desire and that like inequality in order to hook you get you to be a frequent user and maybe get you to like pay for some extra privileges and all of a sudden you're like in this ecosystem and you just thought you were going to be some like casual adherent i think that like this is something that i've been thinking of since the beginning of this conversation the way that these apps like allow men to use the desire that women have for emotional

connection to like siphon their attention yeah and sometimes their sexual like attention but but often just their time and attention away from them and leave them with nothing but i think that like you were saying before amanda that's also something that these apps encourage and enable everyone to do because it's part of remaining in the flow state of dating is to go on these dates and if you're not feeling it just never respond to that person again i was like emotionally tormented by doing that when i was on the apps but it is like the way that it works and so we and so we have all left people confused by simply ghosting them on these apps and and i think that there's that that's part of the issue with these apps is there's just simply no real world

accountability and so of course we're all encouraged to treat people as disposable i think the most embarrassing thing is like having a dating app profile that just floats out there in the world and then what i'm at a bar and what if someone recognized me for my fucking profile and they're like oh no like left on me that's so embarrassing it's one more reason to be out in public and be like are you famous did we go to high school together are you an influencer or do i know you from a dating app that it's just like it's it's very oh yeah i have fully seen people on the subway and been like why do i know that person and then like two stops in i'm like oh i saw them across four different dating apps over the course of three years like let me send

you the same person on different dating apps yes speaking of treating people as disposable i do think that because swiping through a dating app is not unlike shopping on amazon that encourages us to treat people as disposable and i also think you know speaking to the point of these apps not wanting you to find your perfect match or encouraging you to like try to find your perfect match via like what looks good on paper which doesn't actually work because you don't have any in-person cues or intuition the actual things that lead to love my boyfriend and i would have never met on hinge because i had it in my mind that my age restrictions should be too too narrow to accommodate someone who is younger and like we're madly in love and have a whole life together

but we were both on hinge and would never have found each other on there right it's so so limiting and it is like literally in the design of the app to force you to make those really superficial calls but what it's telling you is that it's actually expanding your options and it's like how much is that actually true like yes more numbers of people are passing by us but i mean i feel like my situation is so odd because i'm like grateful that i matched with my boyfriend on hinge but i think the reason i went into that date was such a like positive energy and so much excitement is because i had seen him in real life and we did have these real world's connections already claire earlier you were saying how guys do this thing where like they take advantage of

that women want an emotional connection and then emma you were saying how like it's like happened mostly on these bumble apps where like women have to take the lead it's almost like women getting taken advantage especially in like cis hetero relationships but that's also true and you could you could see it in i don't know if you guys heard but the west elm calub story like you could see them like these like west elm calubs who like create this profile that is so emotional and they say exactly what you want to hear and they have a dog and they like do all these things that like connect with you on an emotional level and then they love bomb you but they're still just trying to get laid but they do it in this way that's emotional manipulation i kind of feel

like i was a female west elm calub i was a west elm cala yeah i mean i i think that that's part of the shopping on amazon analogy that we've been discussing is like that can also be done on the producer end like you can say i'm gonna turn myself into the best product and then i can get at what i'm looking for out of this experience for some people it may come very naturally to present themselves in a way that other people might signal that they are emotionally available but that doesn't mean that they are are looking for that as much as they are marketing themselves really well yes and that that app really enables that because what are the consequences really outside of potentially a viral tiktok denouncing you at some point down the line which i have to

admit i thought that was pretty over the top yeah i agree i think the punishment there perhaps did not uh fit the crime but but it speaks to the the anger that people feel about a pattern that's obviously much bigger than this like one dude who was moderately kind of shitty to a couple people i think that like this is the problem with bumble and with like every dating app that has claimed to like make dating just so much better for women or whoever is that like you can't fix the problem structurally like wherever there are women there are gender hierarchies and now yes women can act like men but men can also act like men with fewer consequences there's no social network in place to like enact any sort of whisper network or social shunning and

again that's not to romanticize and say that that worked super well in the past but at least it was possible and i think whenever you try to build that into an app it just falls prey to the fact that people actually don't know each other they aren't in a community together and so it's hard to actually do it in a way that is tethered to reality right there's there's no mechanism for accountability these apps created a problem we're not connecting in person we're treating each other as disposable so the solution is not then going to be found on an app the exact place that created the problem you know what i mean i also think it's so funny that when these online dating platforms first came out like match.com and things like that they were like

for older people and we as like younger people were like ew no like i would never go on match.com and then they turned it into an app and then we were like this is so cool oh my god i remember the weekend tinder came out and it was like fuck yeah we're doing it or like maybe when it came to i don't know when it came to new york city and i was the first aware of it and it was just like so fun and such a high for those first like sexual playgrounds exactly those first two days and then it was like oh god i'm so tired well actually the early days of online dating bring up a good point because do you remember how heteronormative and homophobic e harmony was like you weren't allowed to be gay on e harmony super christian super christian and i think in a subtler

way dating app algorithms are probably still homophobic still racist like is that why i never match with women maybe no i do i do i do be matching um okay so we were talking a little bit about west elm calib before which was a story that made me sad because it was a lot of people's first exposure to the term love bombing that term has been used since the 70s to describe specifically cult manipulation tactics the process of systematically showering someone with love and attention to later trade for control i think now a lot of people think love bombing is just when someone is a little too nice and that is not what it is uh yeah the mainstreaming of like therapeutic language and it's like these terms kind of start to lose their meaning when you're just like anyone

that made me feel affirmed and then disappointed me was love bombing me and it's like that's not quite true but i will say love bombing i think of in the context of an abusive relationship it can happen in relationships absolutely that doesn't mean that every time a guy is like you're so cool i really want to make you a spotify playlist maybe we can hang out again next week that maybe is not love bombing by any definition i'm right yeah i mean it's the same way that someone just like fibbing or blame shifting in a moment is not gaslighting and the thing is is like if we are attributing all of these like kind gestures to love bombing then i feel like it holds some people back from doing something really kind or like being really authentic because they're

scared to love bomb because they're scared to let that person down if in the future they're feeling and that's how you get pure teens exactly it goes back to that same thing where it's like people are more acutely aware of the danger that you might open yourself up to in an intimate relationship and therefore kind of almost over correct for that but i think what all of that like over usage of therapy language is getting at is that we're all feeling a lot of strong feelings and we don't find that our current language like lying or whatever is enough to describe the gravity of those feelings and language can be really empowering when it names an experience that went previously unnamed we want to play a little language based game with you

so we're all familiar with dating app originated terms like ghosting which i guess for those who somehow don't know what ghosting is it's when someone just like drops off the face of the planet when they had been communicating with you like someone dying and turning into a ghost out of nowhere mailmanning is when they show up at your house out of the blue that what is that mailmanning oh i've never heard of that one there's like this whole list of like ghosting types there's caspering which is like when they like ghost you but then they come back out of the blue and they're like really nice and friendly like this thing happened like they're past where the friendly go so it makes sense people are so creative so we're gonna read you a list of

more obscure dating app slang and you're gonna have to guess what it means oh god all three of you can play the first term is dumping what is dumping something with the z no idea yeah you guys go yes oh i'm gonna guess dumping over zoom oh that's so good i was thinking something like around like to do with humping but i don't think i was thinking like some sort of like zoom humping yeah that's where our heads are at okay claire was correct it is to be dumped over zoom oh wow wow you're good you really have like just uh your finger on the pulse of the youth you know what i'm a former writer about language and books so it's really shining through okay what is flea bagging oh flea bagging is it like dating your priest oh hi hi i was gonna say breaking the fourth

wall a lot while you're dating but that doesn't make any sense oh that would be so funny you like go on a date and you like talk to nobody dating someone who's like completely unavailable to you emma is correct it's continually dating people who are all wrong for you oh i've been flea bagging for years but i love the idea of being on a date and like cutting to camera and being like i could tell his dick was small i was kind of flea bagging i can get behind yes okay what is dtr down to relationship dtr wait dtr define the relationship define the relationship yeah oh wait i knew that why did i i was just thinking i have a fucked up right i was thinking down to fuck but then i replaced it with relationship dtr is defining the relationship you are correct what is fwb

friends with friends with benefits correct here's here's a fun one from my field days uh what is mmw mw mmw wm what what mmw wm wm the clue is it doesn't matter what order i just said those letters in man woman woman man man woman being a man man yeah and what would that mean if you saw it in someone's profile uh or do you want to have a tensum yeah or g and the order of m and w's signifies like who you would want to be touching in the orgy so if you don't want to touch other men you would always have a w in between the m's oh sorry yeah yeah do you guys have any that like we could guess yeah like your favorite dating acronym what are your favorite dating slang terms i like bread crumbing oh that's a good one oh it's like when they leave you like little crumbs

like by messages and texts yeah but but they spread it out through months and then you like never actually meet up right yeah they're just kind of keeping you on the hook with the little bread crumbs and you'll notice that none of the dating app originating slang terms signify something good oh i made up on a term the other day oh what is it but damn but damn yeah is that like a bidet no it's like when you use a bidet and it feels so good you're like but damn no it's an accurate bbdam yeah okay let's try i think it is booty backup i don't know wait a man does a but damn oh oh bisexual bisexual bisexual boning uh um bisexual dating uh man bisexual but dating a man bisexual but damn honestly listeners if you are hearing this please spread the word yeah

about you about what i'm into it sounds sexy when you say it out loud i like it well you know the slang is a grassroots movement so it starts now yeah thank you so much for coming on this bonus episode of sounds like a cult if people want to keep up with you and your work and your thoughts about dating in pop culture where can they do that they can find our podcast love to see it wherever you get podcasts and our newsletter which is both written and audio rich text at clarenema.substack.com and we're on instagram at claren emma pod and then i'm on instagram and twitter and tiktok at emma lady bros yes and my handle is at clare e felon and we are recapping the bachelor on love to see it so definitely a lot of dating thoughts so isa out of the three

cult categories live your life watch your back or get the fuck out what do you think about the cult of dating apps okay as much as i've talked shit about them they're fun to complain about they are so fun to complain about had such extensive experiences with them that it's hard not to just want to pop off yeah and even though they check off so many culty things like in group out group hidden hierarchies yeah like opportunity costs lies false promises all of those things they check off but they kind of check them off in a low stakes way so i think dating apps are a love of your life i think it's a watch your back really despite the fact that dating apps have caused really egregious catfishing and scamming incidents i think the average dating

app experience is a watch your back i know people who have found the loves of their lives on these apps i know that it's possible but i think you just need to go into the experience of being on a dating app knowing that there is a lot going on behind the curtain that is quite cultish and for that reason you need to look over your back and watch it the reason i think it's a love of your life is because a lot of the dangers of it in my opinion apply to regular dating and it's like those kinds of things that like i don't know especially as a woman in this society you have to kind of like you shouldn't have to but when you go on dates you should be going in public like you should be doing all these things that like apply to all kinds of dates but that's a blind date

at which is a whole category of like even if i meet someone at a bar i know what they look like in terms it's not going to be a visual catfish but it's like they could be lying to me about like who they are they could be pretending that they know my friends but in my opinion dating apps are encouraging people by their very nature to present a dishonest version of themselves you're packaging yourself you're marketing yourself you could be catfishing someone and not even really know that's what you're doing you know why i think it's a live your life because i am watching my back with it you know what i mean well so then it is watch your back yeah but i've just been watching my back with it like i have the apps but i am not like on them all the time you're like i'm

very hesitant i think you're watching your back so naturally that you feel like you're just living your life but you're actually watching your back yeah exactly interesting so everyone else should be like me watch their back never have sex watch your back so intensely that you just never get laid i don't know it's hard out there i will say that well if folks are interested in hearing dark culty dating app stories we might do a part two so comment on instagram if that's something you're interested in hearing about um but that is our show it is thanks so much for listening we'll be back with a new cult girl summer next week but in the meantime stay culty but not too culty sounds like a cult is created hosted and produced by amanda montell and isa medina

kate elizabeth is our editor our podcast studio is all things comedy and our theme music is by kasey colby thank you to our intern slash production assistant noemi griffin subscribe to sounds like a cult wherever you get your podcasts so you never miss an episode and if you like our show feel free to give us a rating and review on spotify or apple podcasts and check us out on patreon at patreon.com slash sounds like a cult