Swiping Through Smoke and Broken Foremans
Dear Uncle Bobby –
Dear Uncle Bobby, I’ve been trying online dating, but it just feels like one disappointment after another. Everyone’s either fake, flaky, or deeply unwell. Is it me, or is this whole thing just broken?
Romantically Wounded but Wi‑Fi Enabled
Oh sweetheart… it’s not you.
You’re just dumpster diving with a better interface.
Online dating, as it stands today, is not so much a quest for love as it is a digital flea market where everyone’s selling a heavily filtered version of themselves — and most of the merchandise is cracked, haunted, or straight-up stolen.
You swipe right on someone who says they’re “laid back” and “love adventure”? Translation: they drink boxed wine, live with a cat they refer to as “their roommate,” and once left the county to go to a Waffle House off the interstate. Their profile pic is from 2017. Their personality is from a meme they didn’t write.
And don’t even get me started on bios. “No drama”? That’s a guarantee they are the drama. “Sapiosexual”? Oh good, they’re condescending and unemployed. “Looking for something real”? Sir, you are holding a trout in every photo. Please sit down.
You want to talk pitfalls? Let’s start with the matches that ghost you mid-conversation. One minute you’re vibing over shared hatred for pineapple on pizza, next thing you know they’ve vanished like your self-esteem after a third rewatch of their Stories. Poof. Gone. No explanation. Just back into the algorithm, waiting to disappoint someone else.
And heaven help you if you actually go on a date. You’ll spend three hours making polite conversation with someone whose biggest ambition is “maybe starting a podcast,” only to split the check and wonder if love is even real or just something Netflix made up in the early 2000s.
But sure — let’s keep pretending it’s “easier than ever to connect.”
In reality, online dating is like dumpster diving with delusion goggles on. Every so often you think you’ve found something shiny… only to realize it’s just a broken George Foreman grill with trust issues.
So what do you do?
You either join the chaos and laugh through the smoke, or you start meeting people the old-fashioned way: in public, on purpose, without a profile pic that screams “here for a good time, not a stable future.”
Just remember: it’s not that everyone online is undateable… it’s just that the ones who aren’t are buried beneath 4,000 shirtless gym bros and people who list “vibes” as a personality trait.
Swipe cautiously.
And carry pepper spray.
– Uncle Bobby