A London dating diary entry on the increasingly strange world of app profiles that reveal everything except an actual personality
There is a specific kind of despair that sets in around your four hundredth swipe of the evening, somewhere between a man holding a fish he clearly did not catch and a man whose only photo is a blurry group shot where you genuinely cannot tell which one he is. Last Tuesday I matched with someone whose entire profile, all six photos, was his feet. Different trainers, different angles, one artfully positioned next to what I assume was a very expensive coffee. Not one photo of his actual face. I do not know this man’s face. I know his footwear collection intimately.
The Bio Told Me Nothing Either
His bio, in its entirety, read “trainers say more than words ever could.” I sat with that for a long time. I am still sitting with it now, several days later, writing about it instead of doing literally anything more productive with my Tuesday evening. What does that even mean. Do the trainers know something I don’t. Are the trainers the relationship. I have so many questions and a profile with zero facial evidence to help me answer any of them.
I Matched Anyway, Obviously
Naturally I matched with him, because I am exactly the sort of person who needs to see where a bit like this goes, purely in the interest of research for this very blog, and absolutely not because I am, on some level, professionally curious about a man who has built an entire personal brand around footwear. We are three messages in. He has sent me two more photos of trainers I did not ask for. I have sent him a photo of my own extremely unremarkable trainers, purely to see what happens. Nothing has happened. I fear the trainers are simply the whole personality.
A Broader Pattern I Am Noticing
This is not, I should say, an isolated incident. London dating apps in general seem to be trending toward a kind of profile minimalism where an entire personality gets replaced by a single, very specific hobby photographed from every conceivable angle. I have seen a man whose six photos were all the same houseplant at different stages of growth. I have seen a woman whose profile was exclusively photos of loaves of bread she had baked, no captions, just bread, six times. I respect the commitment to a bit. I do not know what any of these people actually look like, sound like, or believe in, but I know an alarming amount about their bread.
What I Am Actually Looking For, In Case Anyone’s Reading
For what it’s worth, my own profile contains one photo of my actual face, one photo at a friend’s wedding to prove I have friends, and a bio that says I enjoy long walks and complaining about the Northern line, which feels, in this current climate of trainer-only branding, practically old-fashioned in its commitment to basic human legibility. Perhaps that’s my problem. Perhaps I need a gimmick. Perhaps I should photograph my own kettle from six angles and see who bites.
The Feet Man, an Update
He has now sent a fourth photo of trainers. I asked, gently, what his face looked like. He sent a photo of a trainer with a little face drawn on it in marker. I do not know what to do with that information. I am choosing to find it charming, mostly because the alternative is admitting I have spent an entire evening emotionally invested in a man’s shoe collection, and I am simply not prepared to sit with that particular truth on a Tuesday. Further London dating diary entries continue at bohiney.com, with additional London lifestyle coverage available at prat.uk.
SOURCE: https://prat.UK/