[Vol. 5] Scorned Guys, the Silent Treatment and (more) Conscious Dating
Dust off your compasses: It's time to navigate the world of rejection on Grindr.
No one is everyone’s cup of tea.
Sure, there are certain teas that are more widely palatable, whether that be because of societal beauty standards or biologically encoded attractions to symmetry. But even the strongest of brews have their limits.
Dating apps make these limits extremely obvious.
There’s nowhere to hide in your profile on Tinder or even in your cleverly worded bio on Hinge – everyone can read your tea leaves, but not everyone will agree on its good fortune.
Thank god rejection on conventional dating apps like Tinder is usually pretty painless. You either swipe right and don’t match, or you left swipe and you never see the person again (hopefully). That’s it; bandaid ripped off clean and fast.
Things get a little hairier over on Grindr.
*And it’s not just because everyone’s got their chests out.
The world’s largest social networking app for queer people, Grindr is infamous for letting anyone and everyone into your inbox – so long as they’re not too far away. That means no matches, no left swipes, and, you guessed it, a breeding ground for rejection.
Yes, it’s true, when you put yourself out there, rejection is just a natural/necessary part of existing in the dating pool, but how do we … you know … do it? Especially on an app like Grindr, where you’re primarily dealing with men, how do you tell them, “Sorry, but I’m just not that into you,” without getting burned in the process? How do we reject someone/handle rejection while still being conscious and considerate?
In short, what the hell is proper Grindr etiquette?
Since that’s really an “each to their own” kind of question, and because I’m a strong believer in sharing is caring, let’s take a look at my own Grindr history, shall we?
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I’ve asked myself this question so many times – whether I’m on the side left waiting for an explanation, or the one wondering if I owe one.
Just like a quick swipe on any other dating app, I usually know within a few picture frames whether or not a guy that’s messaged me is someone I’m into.
If he is, then great, I respond. I like to think I text a good game, but there’s only so much you can do when you’re working with a “wyd?”
If not … well, this is when my Grindr history becomes a mixed bag.
When I was young(er), I used to respond to pretty much everyone, even if it wasn’t a match.
Unless the profile/message was completely bizarre (and, trust me, “bizarre” has no limits in the Grindr-sphere), I’d say something back. Whenever it so happened that I could tell the guy wasn’t my type, I would message him something blunt but courteous, like “Hey, sorry, you’re cute, just not my type”.
For a while, my “blunt but courteous” rejection method worked out great. I’d been ghosted and blocked before and I knew how painful that feeling was – especially after having sent a picture of myself – so I wasn’t trying to make anyone else feel the sting of that rejection (which, by the way, has been scientifically equated to physical pain).
What I didn’t realize was that I’d opened my inbox to hate mail.
It’s long been said that “hell hath no fury like a woman scorned”, but whoever came up with that line obviously wasn’t dating men.
All my fellow seasoned man-daters will know and recognize the flipped-switch guy. The flipped-switch guy is the man who couldn’t be more into you – he showers you with compliments, he asks you how you’re doing, and if you’re in a bar, you can bet he’s going to do everything in his power to buy you a drink.
That’s until you tell him that you’re not into him. Thanks, but no thanks, my man.
That’s when the flip switches. All of a sudden, this man is calling you all sorts of busted. ‘How was I even thinking about getting with you?’ he might ask himself (aloud), ‘You’re obviously not shit. Not to mention wayy too into yourself.’
At times, the hate got so real that I decided to block the man before his flipped-switch unhinged completely. Not to be too dramatic, but these are strangers on the internet after all, and you never know what might get into their heads.
After a couple of run-ins with flipped-switch guys, I decided to adopt a new method: passive rejection (AKA the silent treatment).
It felt uncomfortable at first – ignoring a guy’s messages even though I could clearly see them – but I quickly realized it beat the alternative by a long shot.
Although I mainly stuck to the silent treatment method, there were times where a guy’s messages would push me to reach out and let him know I wasn’t interested. He would say something like, “Just be honest with me and let me know what’s up”, and I would give in.
More than a few times, these “nice” guys turned out to be flipped-switch guys in “nice” guy clothing. Once I told them how I felt, they would either …
A) Tumble into insult/aggression territory
B) Try to convince me that I had it wrong; that I just had to give them a chance.
Although option B isn’t as bad as option A, it’s still not great.
At the heart of it, you’re still invalidating someone’s opinion, even after you’ve asked them to be honest.
Not only that, but why would you even want to date/hook up with someone that you had to convince to be with you? I’ve been ignored/rejected many times, and trust me, the last thing I’d want is to grab a drink with those people and try to make small talk.
The silent treatment is the go-to for most gay men on Grindr who aren’t interested. It’s either that or the even more aggressive, “block them ASAP” method.
For what it’s worth, it did really well for me for a long time. I didn’t get as much hate, I could coast along without having to think about confronting the guys I wasn’t interested in, and whenever I got ignored, I could easily reconcile it with, “Well, I do the same. They must just not be that into me.”
Recently, however, things got a little more complicated.
Here’s the long story short: I didn’t message a guy back and he didn’t like that. He happened to be a black man, and he suspected my not messaging him back had to do with his race. He tried to catfish me with a fake profile using a white fashion model’s photos, and then promptly called me a racist (adding in that if I was going to be a dick, I’d have to be “cuter” to warrant it – as if racism was totally cool so long as you’re a 10).
If you’re interested, I published the complete story in the Medium publication, An Injustice, here.
Needless to say, I felt a little sick to my stomach after the whole thing went down. The short interaction left the gears in my head turning for a long time.
Bios to the likes of “no fats, no fems, no Asians” have been around for as long as I’ve been on Grindr.
The product of clearly insecure, fit, white and “masculine” gay men.
Although it sounds ridiculous to say now, I always thought I was completely unassociated with that genre of gayness. ‘I would never write anything like that in my bio,’ I thought, and so I continued on scrolling through profiles, content with the idea that my good intentions were enough to separate me from that toxicity.
As I scrolled on, I chose not to think about how painful words like that were for the people that were marginalized by them (including myself) – people of color, people with body types that weren’t thin or muscular, and more fem (feminine) gays.
*the last of which, I think, hurts all gay men, as we’re forced into the ideology that the only way to be considered sexy is to suppress our femininity.
Having my rejection called out – albeit for the wrong reasons – forced me to question the silent treatment.
Although I can’t say I’m not angry at the guy who took my lack of responses as blind justification to berate a complete stranger with rude comments and baseless accusations, it did force me to question the silent treatment.
I thought about messaging everyone back like I had back in the day. But, then I realized how much of an emotional weight that would be, not to mention all the option B, “let’s discuss why you’re not into me” messages you’d have to deal with.
I trashed that idea real quick.
Instead, I decided just to focus on bringing more consciousness into my online dating life.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: There’s no way around rejection in dating – it’s just part of it. However, there must be a way to do it with some more humanity and consciousness.
In my effort to avoid the unprovoked wrath of scorned gays, I decided to go silent and, in return, put up with silence from other guys. But maybe in the process, I lost track of my role in the bigger picture of gay online dating.
Just because I don’t engage in “no fats, no fems, no Asians” culture doesn’t mean I’m not tied to it.
I’m a gay man (a white gay man) who actively uses gay dating apps – I can’t exist in the same space where such a toxic culture has been allowed to grow and not claim to have anything to do with it.
No, I don’t think we inherently owe anyone our words or our time (least of all to strangers on the internet), but we can all do to challenge biases more, whether conscious or subconscious; our own or the kind we see in others’ bios.
That means not actively putting someone or a whole community of people down just to make a “preference” clear.
That means being open-minded and questioning why it is that you might be rejecting someone in the first place.
That means calling out toxicity when you see it.
Most of all, that means putting kindness into action, not just talking about it. Whether you’re the one being rejected or the one doing the rejecting, leave the hate out of it – it has no place on Grindr.
And that was That’s Gay, Volume 5. See you in Volume 6, folks!
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