My attraction is hardly based on looks. It comes up first because that information is the first available—sometimes on a dating app, how they look and their name is the only information available.

Likewise, construing the “hey” as being minimal effort ignores the preceding sentence, where I say that I first review their profile for anything that I can make a specific comment on. Maybe I’m lacking in creativity, but I personally need something to go on if I’m going to tailor my opening.

And the “still seeming natural” was while working questions in. If you don’t do it while you’re still on the app, women will find it harder to come up with something to say in response and just leave you on read. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen what a woman sees when she opens up her dating app—there’s gonna be literally a hundred other guys there. On average, women receive 97 likes a day to men’s 7 (and 50% of those likes go to the top 15% of men).

There is nothing soulless about my actual approach to a relationship. I felt a deep attachment to many of these woman. I still reach out to some of them just to inquire about their lives or see them platonically. Like I said, I actually became depressed for a time after having to end things with so many of them.

I’m playing within a system that reduces a person to 5 photos and 3 written prompts. I don’t know who I’m meeting until I’m on a date. The option is to meet more women or meet less. I choose to meet more to increase my odds of finding someone who I can really love. There’s no option for playing it in a way that isn’t “soulless.” Swiping left or right on entire human beings is soulless, and that’s the one thing every one of these apps has in common, and literally where the process begins.