Cyborg Speed Dating Goes Wrong

 Humans are cyborgs now. We wear tech around our wrists, over or in our ears, and carry tech around in our hands. Our cellphones are small computers with a lot of power. This, as you know dear reader, allows us access to most of the known world. There was a time when I had a plethora of pocket friends who were very dear to me and whom I never met in the flesh. So it makes sense that we cyborgs are going to use our tech to look for other connections like partners, lovers, and even casual hook-ups. Our human need to connect and network have led to social media apps and dating apps. Dating apps specifically are a unique cultural artifact. These are platforms that make you pay to meet people. Sure, they claim to be free platforms but they are only effective if you break through that paywall with your handy-dandy credit card. 

Before these apps we had personal ads in the paper. Some of my readers may have heard this song before, wherein a man is bored with his lover and finds a personal ad that speaks to him so he replies. When he goes to meet this alluring stranger he finds out it was his lover. Fun fact, I met my husband through an online personal ad in a local city paper back in 2004. Back then it was free to post online, call that person, or email them. As you saw in the paragraph above and you will see again below, in this day and age, everything is behind a paywall. You can start your an account, but you won’t be able to interact with anyone.

There are many dating apps out there, but I want to talk about the Feeld app. A dating app for alternative relationships. What is an alternative relationship? Open marriages, ethical non-monogamy (ENM) [which is something my husband and I participate in], swingers, playmates and play scenarios; the Feeld app also caters to kink community. It’s an app that claims to be free with “in-app purchases.” But if you want to see the people who want to connect with you, you have to pay for “Majestic status.” If you don’t want to pay for that status, you just have to see if you end up also liking that person on your own. By hiding your connections behind a paywall, you don’t actually get to form connections. My husband and I make enough money to pay for this fancy feature, which makes it easier to see your connections and talk to people. However, it doesn’t offer safety.

Feeld was meant to be a safe space and a place to connect, but it didn’t stay that way. Now, there are couples known as “unicorn hunters” who are looking for a woman to fulfill a marital fantasy of a three-some. Any woman on the app who is bi-curious, bisexual, queer, or lesbian is subject to these hunters. In all cases when I have had a “couple” express an interest in me, it is the man who reaches out. In most of those situations, I find his partner has listed herself as straight. More prevalent in my inbox, however, are men who are just seeking rough sex under the guise of BDSM and “dom/sub,” but don’t actually know the lifestyle. Men who aren’t in the BDSM lifestyle will say they are “doms” when in reality they just want to be rough with women. I had a man tell me he wanted to choke me and physically overwhelm me and there wouldn’t be anything I could do about it. There was no mention of safe words. There was no discussion about what the scenario would be like. He expected me to just go to him that night and find out what would happen. It won’t surprise the readers that I did not want to meet that man. The experience has made me realize that I no longer want to be a part of the Cyborg Speed Dating Circuit that I am currently in. Should you want to try your hand in this race, I strongly urge you to research the different dating platforms out there. Better yet, maybe go out and start meeting new friends the old fashioned way like a coffee shop or a bar.