OK, so everyone’s heard of the male creep on Indian dating apps. Even the guys haha!
{Quick disclosure — part of the point of the Single Indian Man blog is to amuse, to entertain and perhaps even to evoke provocation. This blog might do a bit of all three — don’t be in a mad rush to jump the gun and start hating me. Just letting you know upfront}
In the 2020 Single in the City survey, 40% of people said they aren’t using dating apps because there are ‘too many married people and / or creeps on dating apps’. While this data doesn’t seem to be split by gender, I am assuming most of these responses came from women.
Most people assume that all creeps on dating apps are men. Here, I present to you 5 personas of women a man is likely to encounter on a dating app:
1. The ‘Time Waster’ Workaholic
- responds to messages about 3 days after you’ve sent them, often when you’re not expecting her to respond, frequently citing ‘work’ as the reason.
- gets overly agitated when you hint that her boss seems to be running her life for her, and that she doesn’t seem to have any control over how she spends her time
- works all the time. Every conversation tends to inevitably come back to how hard she works, and how demanding her clients are, and how her boss expects her to be ‘switched on’ 24 / 7. I don’t care! OK, that’s a lie, I do care, but I prefer to be told that if we grow to like each other, you will have time to spend with me! That’s a bigger turn on for me than your pay packet and your designation!
- tends to ask ridiculously pointed questions about the past — about which school you went to, your college, the prestigious firms that you’ve worked for and so on. Jeez, nothing can ever be as titillating as a conversation about your educational background with a woman you’ve never met (and probably never will)…
- will snoop about on LinkedIn, just to make sure that you are as legit as you make yourself out to be on the app. Will often ‘view profile’ multiple times before building up the nerve to send you a connection request. Once connection is established (of the Linkedin kind), will explore other platforms to snoop about on…
- Will continue to follow you on every platform she can get her hands on even after you have made it very clear you want to have nothing to do with her
2. The Out and Out Liar
So Ms Out and Out Liar usually tends to suffer from low self esteem, and uses artefacts of the past to overcome this overwhelmingly debilitating condition. Here are a few examples:
- the pictures on her profile are from an era long gone. When you actually meet her, you wonder if it is the same person (if, as a man, you haven’t had such an experience yet, you clearly haven’t worked the apps enough!)
- she espouses the benefits of good diet and exercise, and how particular she is about where she buys her groceries (always organic), and how her personal trainer puts her through a punishing regimen every week, and after climbing 2 flights of stairs to get to the bar you agreed to meet at, you find her totally breathless. And you wonder, ‘Is it me? Or is it the stairs?’
- will often lie to her parents / house mates about who she is with and what she is doing, if you happen to be with her when they call her up. Umm, hello, from what I can tell, you are a fully grown adult. Don’t tell me you can’t tell your folks you are meeting a man who you think you might vibe with!
- Will often use #wanderlust as a clutch to build a stimulating facade around an otherwise staid life. Has been to 5 countries (Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bhutan included) and 7 states in India, and will prominently display this in bio with a #wanderlust appendage
3. The One Line Specialist
Chatting with one of these be like:
- responds strictly in one liners
- no format or configuration of open ended questioning can ever get a response longer than one line. Trust me, you can try what you want, it ain’t gonna work!
- Talking with such a woman is as exciting as talking to a bot
- Even excitement is represented, at most, with an emoji or a ! 😑
- seems to want nothing more from life than ‘time pass’
- highly misrepresentative of the average intellectual capability of the general female population
4. The Influencer
The creepiest of the lot. Matching with one of these instagram wannabe influencers is the work of the devil:
- will share her IG handle with you before you’ve established whether she is worth chatting / meeting with in the first place
- Will respond like a ‘one line specialist’ initially but will open up about ‘possible collabs’ if you can goad her into talking about her line of ‘influence’. She might even tempt you into surrendering to a ‘DM me for more’…
- seems to get inordinate pleasure from posing in front of camera and then sharing photos from the same effing shoot for the rest of time
- has been so overly inundated with attention from all and sundry, that has become incapable of flirting with men. Also frequently mistakes innocuous statements for sexual innuendo
- is here purely for validation of self worth, at the expense of the hundreds of clueless, desperate men who are none the wiser and will willingly bow down to satisfy every request
- Is quite the stunner to look at, and as you chat with her, you can’t help but feel stunned at how shallow she really is, and how vanity seems to have a vice like grip on her
- Can come across as one who takes herself and her ‘influencer’ tag too seriously
5. The Ms. ‘I Play Hard To Get’
My favourite. Nabbing one of these requires nous, wit and resilience. Imbibes characteristics of Ms Influencer, the reputation conscious workaholic and the one line specialist in varying proportions, but represents the match with the highest probability of turning into a relationship (of any sort). Can be a great catch, if you can work your way to a few dates…
- Has been scarred by hundreds of bad interactions online and offline, and so is more cautious about entering into any kind of non-binding conversations with men than a VC is about putting good money after bad into Bangalore’s rapidly mushrooming hyper-local startup scene (so passe, and so 2015) {totally understandable, I should add}
- Humour is usually the only way to get her to loosen her strings and to get her to play (and trust me, play she can)
- Is usually open minded and a good conversationalist, if you can prove to her that you are worth it in the 7 lines she will give you to let your best self shine through
- is considered a ‘good catch’, and realises this, so can be brutal in her assessments of men. Doesn’t waste time in adding you to the rubbish heap of men who don’t match up to her expectations. One badly worded sentence, or an ill timed joke, and you’re done for — the number of men waiting patiently in the match queue is too large to warrant second chances
- Can come across as harbouring (dangerously) aggressive feminist views
- Will often ask probing questions in rapid succession to validate whether you can type decent English, have half a sense of humour and can stand those infamous tests women are known to subject their suitors to
- Is usually good looking and claims to sniff out ‘horny bastards’ from a mile away. So if you’re still chatting with her after you’ve cruised past her tests and haven’t made any glaring missteps, you’ve got a chance. Go for it!
There are more, but these are the ones that stand out in memory unfortunately.
Love,
SIMBA