part 1 part 2 part 3 part 4 part 5
Part six! This site’s previous longest series* was the (intermittently ongoing) ‘Greatest Songs Ever‘ collection, which has so far taken eighteen months to dribble to five entries, yet this trawl through my misery caused a dating app that I have since realised I really don’t want to be on is already on its sixth entry in less than ten days! Maybe I don’t actually like writing about music, and actually prefer instead cataloging my sad and emotionally draining attempts to date as a sober person. Sorry, as a non drinker of alcoholic drinks, I realise that ‘sober’ suggests a higher bar of not relying on recreational supplements that I unfortunately cannot meet.
(*Unless, of course, you count my albums of the year lists as an ongoing series, in which case there have been around 450 posts since 2007. 2007!! My girlfriend wasn’t even born when I started this shit! She’s probably not even heard of Les Savy Fav!!)
Dating if you drink is easy. You just go to a place where people drink, you’re entertaining enough drunk and she’s drunk enough to not know any better, you have sex that neither of you 100% remembers in the morning, then you stay together for ages because the buses back to Chorley are really unreliable and it seems like the option of least resistance just to stay together. There was no widely used social media back then, so basically as far as both of you were aware this really was as good as it could get- in the late 90s and early 00s your average young adult knew of the existence of maybe twenty four people, and one of those was Toby Anstis. And, come on, Toby Anstis? Never happening.
Hmmmm… Maybe I’m not thinking of ‘people who drink’, but rather ‘people with debilitating problems with drinking’…? And maybe all you were ever likely to be matched up with were people with similarly ruinous issues…?
But it was easy, is all I’m saying!!
Anyway, let’s take a look at the latest bout of options. Most of them will be British, so some sort of ruinous drinking problem is pretty much a given.
Quick reminder, this is the standard we’re looking for:
Does anyone else come close?
This woman seems fun…
Wow, OK, that was a hard right turn into seriousness there…
Call me old fashioned, but I was brought up to believe that if a love interest ever started a sentence with ‘If I had to use a Vine to describe myself…’ you should always make your excuses. What is this, 2015? Swipe left…
First of all, this woman commits my absolute most hated thing about Bumble, and from what I can gather it also extends to other dating apps- she uses the platform to advertise her fucking Instagram. This infuriates me, are you actually here to find a sweet talking gentlemen who will squeeze on your boobs a bit before cumming in his pants in the parking lot of a KFC drive through- as God intended– or are you just trying your best to get enough Instagram followers to get ‘BaddieWinkle famous’? Nobody cares about your Instagram. You are a failure as a person.
Oh, but what’s this?
OK, you soulless shill of empty Mark Zuckerburg capitalist land grabs, hit me with your best shot!!
Wow, she’s really confident in her own comic genius, though as of yet with very little evidence to back her claims up. Quick note as well: everyone’s Mum thinks they’re hilarious. My mum thinks I’m hilarious, and all I’ve done for the past 25 years is either quote from ‘Empire Records‘ or respond to every single things she says with ‘unexpected item in bagging area!!’. Mum’s are fucking stupid.
Hmmm. OK, that got what I believed is referred to in the business as ‘a wry smile’, but hilarious?? I don’t know, I can’t help but feel that Instagirl’s hubris rather lessened the impact. Swipe left.
(I’d caught her face in one of those screen grabs. She’s really good looking, I almost definitely swiped right in real life. I also now subscribe to her InstaGram. By the way, I may say ‘Swipe left’ or ‘Swipe right’ on these posts, but that might not equate to what I did in real life. You have to understand- I swipe right if they’ve got real nice tiddies)
I’ve already been through this! I probably shouldn’t do that! Swipe left.
See, Instagirl? That’s what I like to see- a bit of humility. Swipe right.
And, really, how different is ‘my mum says I’m cool’ from ‘my mum thinks I’m hilarious’. This could only be improved with the addition of ‘she’s right’ at the end. Swipe right.
Of course, alongside the big heads and the InstaShills, there are also the certifiably insane:
Shocked that I found three ‘The Greatest Showman’ obsessives in such a relatively short space of time? Nope. These are all from the same person. She really likes ‘The Greatest Showman’. No judging.
Swipe right.
What? Didn’t you hear? She’s fucking mental! I’m in there.
Nice, subtle economic distancing there. She lives in a bizarre world where every man has a house and a car and she doesn’t even make allowances for the lack of either, casually making it clear that there’s only a certain level of socioeconomic class that she’d even consider. Fuck off. Your car’s a world hating killing machine and your gross house smells of the waft of wet dogs chewing rotting fish that’s emanating from between your legs. Too much? Swipe left. Like, actually that time. I think. I can’t remember how nice her tiddies were.
I… don’t get it… Am I missing something, or has this woman just had really bad experiences with men in the past who weren’t entirely sure on where or when they were born? Were you one of the sad drunks I met in Wetherspoons in around 2001? Have you heard the new Strokes album? So many questions. Swipe right.
Honey, if you’re a pharmacist, it’s a lot more than dumb old paracetamols that I’m after. And how exactly does having 50% off at Nando’s make you a good isolation buddy?? Do they do delivery??
No dice!! Swipe left.
The Nando’s Teaser subtly mentions the giant, coughing elephant in the corner of the room complaining of the abnormally high temperature. It’s fair to say that this is a rather popular topic:
It’s important to be aware of red flags:
Now, this might not make sense to people who live outside Greater Manchester, and perhaps I’m relying on lazy and tired old stereotypes here, but someone from Oldham who admires the work of Tyson Fury is unlikely to be someone you take home to meet your parents. Because they’d kill them both with their bare hands. Like, punch both of their faces in so hard that they’d soon resemble pink blancmanges of blood and crushed skull. Over an argument over the 1994 FA Cup semi final. Like I say, possibly unfairly stereotyping here. But I’m likely not. Stay safe, yeah? Swipe left.
You sometimes encounter women who seem to have an almost dangerous level of sassiness:
She mentions her ‘sass’ on two separate occasions. Even though she claims she only offers ‘a bit’ of sass which the suitor is expected to handle, the amount of times it comes up suggests that, actually, her sassiness is rather a large part of her character. Can I handle that? What is ‘sass’ exactly?
Wow, what a typerope to walk. I don’t mind her being stylish and chic- I’m sure we all own ‘a sassy little hat’ and so can relate- but I view the other possibilities with a lot more trepidation. Lively? Spirited? Jaunty? They’re all just synonyms for ‘fat’, aren’t they? And rude and disrespectful?? I’m not interested in a one in three chance of an impudent date!! Swipe left.
Some people’s bio just made me… seriously… fucking… angry…
Ok… Ok… Deep breath… Count to ten… Punch wall… Scream into pillow… Two shots of Jameson… Half a Xanax… And respond…
First off: no, time really isn’t the greatest gift to a homeless person. Do you know what a homeless person has plenty of? Fucking time. They have all the fucking time in the world to lie in the cold Manchester streets and contemplate how they could possibly survive for another night. You chatted to him for two hours? About what? How absolutely awful it is to be homeless? Did you then go back to your house and pour yourself a nice glass of Chablis and discuss with your friends how horrid it must be to be homeless? Do you consider it an act of kindness that you’re fucking aware that people are homeless?
I work with people who are homeless. I work with people who actually volunteer their time to help homeless people find food, money and freaking accommodation. I know people who work at a charity connected to Manchester City Council that takes it upon itself to find housing for everyone who presents as homeless to the council. Y’know, technically the council’s legal responsibility but public services are so underfunded that a freaking charity has to step in. That charity is only able to function because an unbelievable amount of people choose to volunteer their time to assist them with the equally unbelievable amount of people presenting as homeless every day. If one of these volunteers decided to spend two hours chatting to one of these homeless people, we’d have to let them go. They wouldn’t be doing anything worthwhile and just be a fleshy vessel wasting valuable time. Y’know, because time is such a valuable gift. Jesus fucking Christ. Swipe right.
Yeah, I was going to swipe left, but she had really nice tiddies.
Anyway, the next person can’t be that bad, surely:
Nope. They’re much worse.
Tell me about it…
That woman clearly hated English Literature class.
Now, I know this has been all fun and games so far, I’m sure you’ve been delighted by my witty turn of phrase and wistful buffoonery. However, I would now like to shine a light on a serious issue with Manchester’s female population in 2020, one with importance that far outweighs my doomed search for some poor woman to jiggle my genitals over.
Are people getting enough sleep??
Grrrrrr! Fucking Capitalism, man! What are you doing to us?! Not only are you crushing out mental wellbeing as you exact on the world a mental health plague far more debilitating and destroying than the Coronavirus, but you’re also demanding your unwilling participants devote so much of their lifeforce to your endless and merciless churn that all people can even contemplate doing in their spare time is grabbing back some precious bit of rest that you continue to steal from them! I mean, seriously, Capitalism, how’s a man supposed to get himself any fanny in these circumstances?? You bequeath the ‘lucky’ few more work than they can possibly handle, then condemn the remainder to backbreaking and shameful poverty as you punish them for not getting the work that the other half can’t handle. This is some Greek tragedy shit. You know what, Capitalism? A great mind once said that ‘Time is the best gift’, and you really need to sort your shit out in that regard.
Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck, this has been depressing. Do we have any good ones?
Ha. Hey, Instagirl, you and your Mum may think you’re hilarious, but this woman is way funnier than you. And she’s not even that funny. Swipe right. Even though she’s 18. Don’t you judge me, you’ve seen the competition here.
Ha! OK, this woman’s actually funny! Wow, Instagirl, you are getting pwned here! Also, this woman is a far more appropriate age. Super swipe! Abdominal tear!
Funny and in her 30s! Be still my beating heart!
I mean, that’s all I want, really. I don’t want this epic romance encased in Gothic drama, I don’t want a partner to run across the Yorkshire Dales towards me in the pouring rain shouting her affection to me across her soaked bosom, I don’t want to talk about pet peeves and things I’m most grateful for, and I certainly don’t want to discuss at length how pleased you are that you haven’t contracted COVID-19 or how wonderful you are because you once talked to a poor person. Who are these people?? Is this really the norm?? Are my choices either sleepy women or Instagram shills? I just want a person to be there and to look at dogs with me. I just want validation from someone who honestly considers themselves a better person when they’re with me, someone who doesn’t realise how hilarious they are. Maybe they’re so hilarious I don’t even care how nice their tiddies are!! I’ve no idea with Bumble, of course. The majority of people don’t even bother writing an inadequate and spurious introduction to themselves, they just post a handful of pictures. Look at me. Look a my nice bum. Gaze at my pert tiddies. Now swipe right to signify that you want a relationship with me. Gig economy dating, you only get paid for the hours you work, you only get attention for how nice your pictures are. I might get to know you if you look worth it. Zero hours, no attention guaranteed, but make sure you turn up at 5:30am each morning to process all the disappointments as the lack of opportunities are announced.
Fuck, I really think this is breaking me.
And anyway, I’ll probably dump you when Hejjy becomes available.
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