Blood Pressure Blog

There’s a common general misconception that only women can be basic. Though this can be thought of as generally true because of the rise of Insta-thots, clout-goggles, and Charles De Amelia, being basic is an equal opportunity provider. The “basic bro” is a fairly new term thrown around since the start of the 21^stcentury, and these individuals are generally identified by how they look and dress. However, they can be further scrutinized by their mindset and psychological motives, generally surviving on three main thoughts that occur in their caveman brains – food, sport, and finding a mate. The topics of food and sport are generally unchanged over the past 20 years, however the dating game has changed drastically and moved quickly to the internet with the advent of dating smartphone apps. Since 1995 when Match.com was founded, dating apps have spread like wildfire, allowing those with different motives, genders, interests, geographical locations to quickly meet up and engage in scouting for various purposes.

Dating apps exist in all shapes, sizes, and take on lifelike personalities of their own. Firstly, let’s start with the original dating app, Tinder. Tinder is like that hot girl you meet at a party, 4 hours later you’re in the bathroom of a shitty Taco Bell yakking cause you drank too much, and 6 hours later you wake up in a bed that’s not yours next to a person you don’t know. Tinder has a tendency for escalating hook-up culture, and is pretty much the wild west of dating, where you can play fast and loose with the rules and have a decent chance to catch a deadly disease.

Bumble was the next new dating app on the block, and right away one could tell this app was built to chase clout, sprouting three separate wings, Bumble for dating, business, and finding friends. Bumble is the Instagram influencer, Tik-Tok trap star, and DogeCoin pump and dumper all wrapped into a boiling hot mess. Similarly, the app has an OCD-like obsession to be different from other dating apps, by allowing women to message first on the app instead of the typical winner takes all gender-based fight to the death free-for-all. However, Bumble took this mission statement one step further and turned an OCD-like obsession into Billy on the Street levels of meaningless schizophrenic screaming, by running a scorched Earth marketing campaign to flood Instagram stories around the world with “Bumble Influencers”, hiring everyone from superstar athletes like Serena Williams all the way down to D-List Sorority stars to further the great message of female empowerment.  

The land of dating apps is generally a non-wholesome place with mostly a sort of eat or be eaten, breakneck approach to it. However certain pockets of refuge DO exist. When third dating app giant Hinge came to the scene, it took a different approach of the wholesome watered-down American Girl Doll pseudo-conservative approach to dating. Hinge markets itself as an app that you will never “redownload”, and takes an old-school approach to online dating. I’ve personally heard the most success stories from this app, and is meant for the slightly serious dating crowd (of course not for me, but that’s a story for another day).

This summary barely scratches the surface of dating apps, as literally thousands of shitty variants exist. Ethnic-group-specific dating apps such as Dil Mil are like the crazy Indian girl you meet that makes you pay for ABSOLUTELY everything. Farmer’s Only covers people in rural communities with millions washed up country music singers and John Deere enthusiasts. Interest-group specific dating apps such as Hot Sauce Passions are meant for people who engage in meaningless debates on whether or not Taco Bell Fire Sauce or Hot Sauce is better while they have trouble pooping as a collective.

The world of dating apps is a muddy and confusing place, however each app functions behind the same principles, relying on eye catching clickbait to fool others into thinking you have even a shred of personality. Swiping is the essential skill of dating apps. This goes without saying – swipe right for a like, swipe left for a pass, and swipe up to give your credit card info into an app hacked together by 5 virgins sitting in a basement. This may be all well and good, but swiping can turn into a quickly addicting sensation. Therefore, each person needs to have a limit on how much swiping they perform on a regular basis, as reports indicate that swiping too much can cause hand cramps or friction burns from continuous swiping, literally putting people on injured reserve of top 10 dumbest injuries.

The first thing you want when starting with dating apps is to make is a dating profile. This is what every other person on the app sees to then immediately judge you in two seconds whether you’re eye-catching or just an asshole like the world’s worst executioner. Putting things in your bio setting you apart is the best idea, for example, 2x Finger Injury Survivor, or Record Holder for most number of Stingrays pet at the Georgia Aquarium. Creating a dating profile is kinda like creating shell companies, they’re slightly related to you, but if people actually found out the truth they’d probably burn you at the stake. Several people run wild with their profile photos. For example, want a six pack? Photoshop it! Want bigger boobs? Photoshop it! Want a mad sharp beard? Hack some Instagram filters together!

On the other hand, taking new pictures for your profile a precise science specific to gender. Guys for one can get away with a lot of poor picture choices. Some of the best examples include, shirtless on the beach, with your sister, hiking in nature. Girls on the other hand have it a lot harder. Since guys use their lizard brains to judge a girl in at most 3 seconds, choosing pictures with this in mind will save a lot of heartache. For example, girls always seems to take pictures from the side with one knee bent. As a dude, I don’t really know why everyone does this (but this is an actual thing I researched it). But on this blog, I don’t make the rules, I just observe them. 

So now you’ve spent your lonely life swiping away, and you’ve made some matches. Time to break out some major corny pickup lines. Finding relatable first-lines is always an excellent idea. For example, if he/she is a medical student, you can say “Hi I might not be a doctor but I think you’re deficient in Vitamin ME”. If you like terrible romantic poetry, you could open with “Roses are Red, I have a first date proposition, holy shit I just got attacked by the Spanish Inquisition”. Complementing them is also a great idea, for example, “Hi you’re so nice that you deserve a J.D. Power and Associates Award for Customer Service”. Sending a meme is also an effective way of opening a conversation because pretty much all people originate from the blood-sucking hive mind that is the internet. 

Dating apps are like the world’s worst video game – build up experience before you face the final boss, in which you either get horribly railed or hit a home run. In the words of survivalist Bear Grylls, the game is to“improvise, adapt, overcome”. Like most things in life, dating requires patience, but is also depends several intangible factors such as money, money, money, personality, and overall dateability metric (but that’s a story for another blog). Dating requires time, and the more time you put in, the more you’ll reap the rewards. 

BLOG UPDATE 7/13: Thanks to everyone who has been reading and keeping up with the blog. The blog just hit 500+ hits and 450+ viewers in a single day! To commemorate this, the blog now has a new Instagram page.

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