Dear Marina and Salina, 

I just downloaded Tinder as a guy, convinced I was pretty good-looking, only to get 12 likes and zero matches after a whole day. Meanwhile, my friend made a new account and hit 99+ likes in under an hour. I swear I’m not ugly — is Tinder just built different for men? Because it’s starting to feel less like a dating app and more like a brutal reminder of the gender imbalance online.

Regards,

A frustrated reader…

"The Horror on the Screen…’ : Jumpscares in Online Dating- A Pinch of SSE Salt

Part 1: image choices : the Quintessential Ingredient 

Dearest Reader, 

Your message comes to us as we walk along the Halloween decor decked streets of Drottninggatan in mid October. Lined with eerie blood spattered costumes and ghostly decorations, everyone is excited to get in the fun, scary spirit. With the spooky season rapidly upon us, however, it is hard to believe that the true horror of Halloween is largely a year round phenomenon: online dating and the absolute jump-scare that many women are subjected to across the globe when viewing men’s dating profiles. 

For many Tinder and the world of dating apps feels like a losing lottery of probability and lost opportunity. How one person can receive a miraculous 99+ likes and matches, whilst another gets 1, is often a mysterious work of algorithmic destiny. However, sometimes, the answer to the mystery is right in front of you.

While we are sure that you are a good looking man, not something Michael Jackson might refer to as ‘grisly ghoul from every tomb’, you may in fact be ‘the horror on the screen’ as Jackson also refers to in his hit single ‘Thriller’. 

Fortunately for you, we have seen many a dating profile and are war-bloodied veterans of the online dating scene. This makes us well and truly versed in the key mistakes men make in online dating profiles. 

Follow our killer advice to concoct the perfect love potion on dating apps and cast a spell of romance online…

Part 1: Image choices: the quintessential ingredient

We know what you are thinking. You are fed up with the superficial side of dating apps, the constant game of hot or not, smash or pass.  If one is chopped, one is chopped, dating app success is never on the cards, it is game over. Right? Wrong. 

Often absolute supermodels of men are fumbling hard on the dating apps. 

Terrible image choices are the most avoidable yet commonly committed crimes men make in online dating. Truly, no one is expecting you to be a world class photographer, just as no one is expecting you to post some of the most tragic images known to mankind since the sinking of the Titanic. It is like watching the blonde girl in a horror movie investigate that suspicious noise downstairs. Get out the house girl, lock the damn door of your bedroom, phone the police. 

This is an extensive subsection so take notes….

1. Exorcist-inspired angles: 

Taking a guess, likely over half of men’s dating profiles are infested with shots that make you question how such a horrific angle was even achieved. Below the chin, on the crust of the receding hairline, balanced above the ear. 

All the ladies are asking for is a nice, clear shot of your face, you in the wild, you doing anything normal. Please. 

2. Serial killer style expression: looking angry or depressed in every photo

In a quite ironic reversal of the infamous ‘give us a smile’ catcall, I would prompt men to take their own advice and give us a smile online. Just like how men ask for women who ‘don’t take themselves too seriously’, women are asking for men who have the capacity for joy, jubilance, and jest. Posing and making a face like you just murdered your entire family does not cut it. 

3. Chopped into pieces: the disembodied limb shot 

The gym pic is a global phenomenon of seismic proportions. Whilst not the most important image on a dating app, if you have a great body, heck, why not show it off. What nobody (if you pardon the pun which is also why the skeleton had no one to go to the dance with) wants, however, is a quite serial-killer basement inspired shot of a limb or a torso. What we see in these shots is actually you making a conscious decision to take such a peculiar shot of your arm from which we naturally acquire a strong dose of the fabled ‘ick’. 

4. Guessing game : the group picture

While I would love to thank you for providing one of the 21st century’s best games for girls on a night out at the pub (in a scenario where the Bechdel test has not been passed), this opening with a group picture technique is often not a favourable approach to dating app success.

If you are in fact the hot one, congratulations! You were playing with fire a little in that first pic but if we had the patience for a round of the ‘which one is it’ game and some great pics followed up, I’m sure you could salvage this into a match. Unfortunately, the majority of cases do not play out this way.

There is nothing more off-putting in the initial stages of online dating than having to metamorphose into Sherlock Holmes, putting on your sleuthing hat, and gruellingly clambering down a profile you are already suspicious of to work out ‘whodunnit’. 

While I am outrageously happy for you that you have cured the male loneliness epidemic in one dating profile, uniting men across the globe, if you are looking for a match, these pictures are not going to be the kicker. Even more so if you look like you and your friend’s life mission is terrorising the local neighbourhood with a serious alcohol addiction.

5. Mortuary lighting: picture of my date or my sleep paralysis demon?

Thomas Edison invented the light bulb for a reason. It is important that Thomas's invention was not in vain. 

Beyond Thomas, however, God or the Big Bang or whatever you believe in also allowed for the Earth to be showered in this glorious thing called the sun which provides this stunning thing called natural lighting. Use it. 

6. The invisible man: pictures of anything and everything except yourself 

The world of dating apps suggests scary things about the wider male population. Either some men simply do not possess faces, existing solely as headless torsos (or, even worse, they live life completely as a dog with a human mind) or, perhaps, they are missing a blindingly obvious component of online dating. 

I get it, you don’t want to be judged by your appearance. I’m afraid, however, that might just be what Tinder is. Try applying for the next series of ‘Love is Blind’, I wish you the best, but you are simply clogging up people’s feeds. You could be someone’s 80 year old retired grandpa who is still on the run from the Spanish authorities for trafficking 12,050 tons of marijuana across the border for all I know, and, on reflection, you probably are…..

7. Me and the one buried at the back of the garden: badly edited pictures with your ex

This summer, I viewed one of the best Hinge profiles I have ever seen. It was going so well with tasteful pictures of him engaging in his photography hobby, bit of skiing, nice face shot. Very sound. Or so I thought till I witnessed his final picture. He was looking gorgeous, smiling ahead in a beautiful sunset, a sparkling sea behind him, shirt billowing in the wind. All amazing except for the large turquoise—scribbled dot floating next to him connected to the body of a woman. 

This quite jarring sight was immediately off-putting. Why bother uploading a picture of you and your sister if she didn’t wish to be in the image in the first place? Well that is because it wasn’t his sister at all. It was his ex. I don’t know what level of idiocy would possess a man to put his ex on a dating profile, but most women are not going to stick around and find out.

Curating the perfect album collection to excel in the brutal world of online dating is not easy. While we have detailed what not to do it is important to remember what to do: use photos that make you shine, that feel like good, clear representations of your fun, hot, easygoing self. We are all academics here, we know the importance of peer reviewing work, it’s the same for dating app profiles. Run it past your friends, your sister, your grandma. Feedback, implement, adapt = marriage. Trust. 

I look forward to the results of your new found awareness of this key step. It goes without saying that good photos are the food of love to dating apps. However, they can only take you so far. As the classic saying goes, a  multi-part problem requires multi-part steps.

Read our next letter for advice on prompts, techniques for success and how to sustain a logical, human conversation to launch your love off the app and send it flying into the air. 

Many well wishes,

Marina and Salina xx

Bibliography: 

Jackson, M. (1983) Thriller [music video]. Directed by John Landis. USA: Epic Records.