It’s actually more boring than it sounds. I didn’t get lewd and I didn’t piss off thin-skinned misogynists.

I’m back on dating apps; I figured it’d give me an edge in addition to doing things The Old Fashioned Way– and because some days, my introverted little heart just wants to stay in bed and browse the Internet. I’ve also decided to branch out beyond OKCupid, since I wasn’t getting much headway there.

Four other apps later, I finally got on Tinder. Why the heck not? All the cool kids are on it, right?

And for a while, I had a blast. I had five conversations going. I swiped left on too many couples. I thought I’d get creative and link to unicorns-r-us.com before they got their feelings hurt trying to match with me. I educated someone about the whole non-binary thing. I had a brilliantly-worded explanation on how exactly I practiced polyamory and what I was looking for.

Within hours I was Error 40303‘d: banned. At first, I couldn’t fathom as to why I was banned! I’m cute! I was polite! I was upfront with my polyamory! Did I annoy too many Unicorn Hunters by not being so easy? Were people so hooked on serial monogamy that I was mass reported for being a non-mono hussy? Did I not send enough peach emojis? Did my Safe For Work muffin joke really not go over well?

No, I just forgot that spam was not allowed and any “.com” addresses on your profile is considered as such!

OKCupid has utterly spoiled me. (I have not one, but three links explaining why a certain subset of non-monogamy grinds my gears. But that is a whole other post.)

I was fine for a few days, even though I put in a lot of work into my profile, and I left my five conversations forever orphaned. I’m too slow on moving the conversation to other platforms, so unless they recognize me elsewhere I’ll never know how they would’ve meshed with me.

Then FOMO hit me. FOMO is “Fear of Missing Out,” because of what I said earlier: all the cool kids are on Tinder! Who am I not hooking up with or having a coffee date with or bonding over Mario Kart with right now because I’m not on Tinder?! I swear, I was fine, until my friend came across Someone We Are Mutually Interested In who seems super fucking cool and they sent a Super Like and that’s it, I’ve had it, let me back in!

So, in short, I ban evaded. And I will tell you that I did my homework only after the fact– while I did manage to get back on, there were indicators that I was suffering a worse fate: The Shadowban. No one can see you or your likes. Messages mysteriously don’t send. You don’t get the shiny gold circle thing going on. And it’s likely you’re on borrowed time before you’re just banned again if you didn’t jump through all the hoops to make sure Tinder servers didn’t recognize you.

And that included obtaining a new phone.

That was when I looked up from my old budget phone after three hours of Googling ban workarounds and browsing a certain subreddit dedicated to having the best profiles and more ban workarounds and deep analysis of how it all works and “why am I getting ugly chicks?” and I thought

What the hell am I doing?

In my moment of clarity, I realized I was doing the meatspace equivalent to “trying too hard.” I was caring way too damn much about a dating app. Especially for an app I only used until very recently. I got caught up in the swiping game, spending hours on this issue when I could have been doing literally anything else.

Like going back to bed.

Or playing Minecraft.

I’m taking this experience as my cue to go chill out. I was fine without it before and gosh darn it, people like me! I’ll just run into them at my favorite bar. We are not going to mention the five other apps still on my phone.

I deleted my second account and uninstalled the app. There’s a whole moral here about unplugging and Swipe Culture but whatever, I was invited to the cookout anyway.

All the cool kids are also elsewhere.