So… Is Dating Supposed to Feel Like This?

By: Megan Waddington

The app designed to be deleted is really designed to be redownloaded again and again. Dating app fatigue is high, and people yearn for more, yet somehow always come back out of intrigue, out of boredom.

Why has Hinge become, in the words of my friends, a full-time job or online shopping? Has Hinge just become admin for many people? Maybe there’s no real fun in it anymore, a mindless scroll that has now been incorporated within the morning’s checks of Instagram, messages, emails and now Hinge. 

I was warned of this when I downloaded Hinge for the first time last July, with friends saying it’s only fun at first. I was sitting surrounded by my friends at university, with one of my friends talking about his grinder, which is a whole other world, but suddenly I thought, I’m 22 years old and never tried a dating app. I was overwhelmed at first but with my friends helping me set up a page it became a game where I would train my much in need out of practice flirting. All I can say is the first date pre-drink Buzz ball was the cure to having a best first date. Although my Hinge experiences have been pretty good, I still can’t ignore the case studies around me from friends’ experiences. 

The other day, I noticed that this online burnout is all around, my friend was talking to his flatmate about a date they described it as a potential ‘contestant’. The word contestant lingered, although it was meant as a joke, it was the sad reality of how we view people, not as people but in fact detaching person and profile. The language used is a coping mechanism for the choice overload and the sheer abundance of options. As one of my friends only the other day, “honestly, I’m stressed how many guys I’ve agreed to go out with, I need a PA”. This abundance results in what if there’s more out there, which has become many people's fallback into redownloading- is the app designed to be deleted or really redownloaded when in doubt? 

My friends and I are also guilty of this framing of potential ‘contestants’. As we all sit in my living room casting hinge on the big screen, a glass of wine in hand, we become judges of a reality show, almost hiring candidates, in that moment it was the evening entertainment.

A contestant. Not a man. Not a potential love interest. A contestant. There are rounds. There are eliminations. There is always someone “slightly better on paper” waiting in the wings. 

After spending a few months on Hinge, I have seen certain archetypes and have been certain archetypes, and if you’re dating in 2026, chances are you’ve lived in at least one of them. 

The nonchalant plague. 

We’ve all dealt with him at least once: the one who shows up just enough to stay relevant. You match, you have a few genuinely good dates, and for a moment it feels easy until you realise you’re slowly becoming the casualty of the casual dater. He’s emotionally detached, low effort, permanently “go with the flow,” but somehow always present enough to keep you wondering. He doesn’t disappear; he lingers. Just close enough to drain your time, your optimism, and your clarity, while giving nothing concrete in return.

The Yearner 

This person almost always ends up dating someone nonchalant a quiet tragedy of the modern age. They reread texts twice, analysing tone like it’s a forensic exercise, then pretends she doesn’t care and laughs it off in group chats. They imagine the second-date outfit while publicly committing to emotional detachment. After three hours of silent phone-staring whilst on delivered, they reply, “Haha yeah sounds good, no worries” as if they hadn’t just lived all the worst-case scenarios in the meantime.

Algorithm man 

He’s attractive in a familiar way because you’ve already seen and dated this exact profile multiple times already. He always has the same line in his profile something about liking “yappers,” “slightly chaotic girls,” or women with “no sense of direction,” as if personality were a cute malfunction. He is not so much a profile but a compilation of the greatest hits everyone decided was desirable that year. 

The Fifth Date Phantom 

From experience this one can hurt the most as its everything you think you want 4 to 5 amazing dates, you have kept to your third date rule so now after 5 dates have some intimacy. You’ve been in each other orbit constantly messaging arraigning dates each week, but a month hits and you’re the one being dumped over a bagel on what you thought was another great date. Nothing happened just the inevitability of someone saying the line “I’m not ready for anything serious”. 

Hope hangover 

You delete the app, you feel free then you redownload it just to check. Suddenly you’re back where you started-slightly more disappointed, hotter and significantly more tired. Burnout doesn’t kill the hope of a date or finding someone it just makes the hope hungover. 

Maybe the issue isn’t that romance has vanished, but that we’ve asked an app to carry something it was never designed to hold. Love was never meant to be efficient, optimised, or endlessly comparable. It resists metrics. It ignores timing. It arrives slowly, often inconveniently, and usually when the scroll has lost its appeal. Love exists in unplanned conversations or long glances waiting patiently for us to look up from the scroll.