Greg, a mid-20 year old stuck in a dating rut (Keir's Version)

The interviewer asks Melissa whether a guy's looks or personality is more important. She tellingly hesitates before saying, "I think it's definitely personality. Looks fade once you get old, right? What's inside is forever." The hypocrisy is too much. I close YouTube, revealing the home screen of my phone.

The first three apps on the page are Tinder, Bumble, and Hinge- dating apps where personality doesn't matter. The girl on the other side of the screen will spend a microsecond reviewing my photograph. She will either swipe left or right based on my appearance. I'm confident that if I were to track down the women who rejected me based on my appearance and ask them whether they value looks or personality more, they'll all give the same answer as Melissa. Women are hypocrites.

My fingers hover over Tinder as I contemplate whether I want to log on or delete the app altogether. If I delete Tinder, I'll also have to quit Bumble and Hinge, and.... the Ultimate Dating App? The fourth app on my home page is supposed to be YouTube, followed by Instagram and Facebook. I don't recall downloading a fourth dating application.

I click on it. I'm unsure if it's because I hope it'll jog my memory of when I downloaded the app, or because I'm hoping my luck on the Ultimate Dating App will be better than on Tinder, Bumble, and Hinge. I can swipe on a hundred women on those apps and only get three matches. Of those three, maybe one will actually respond to my messages. Hopefully, the ratios will be better on this app.

The Ultimate Dating App boots up and opens to my profile - I use the same bio and set of photos for all my dating apps. I must have set up my account previously, but somehow forgotten about the app. Odd.

I click on the app.

All the major dating apps have a free version that gives you a limited number of free swipes everyday. After you exhaust your allotment, you can either wait for your swipes to refill- which takes a day- or you can buy their premium version and get unlimited swipes. I hadn't logged in today, meaning I have my full allotment available.

I am going to delete all my dating apps, but it would be a waste to do so before I use up my swipes. Consequently, I decide on a routine. I would complete my run on the Ultimate Dating App. If I matched with someone, great. If I didn't, I'd delete the app before repeating the process with Tinder, Bumble, and Hinge.

For the first three minutes, I only swipe right on the hottest girls on the app. Women who use beach photos as their first picture, showing off their toned midriffs and thighs in string bikinis. I don't get any matches so I lower my standards and start swiping right on women who use gym pics as their introductory photo. Several wear sports bras and shorts that are several sizes too small. The rest wear t-shirts that show off an absurd amount of cleavage and yoga pants that dig into their ass cracks. Neither group leave anything to imagination.

After five minutes of getting zero matches with the Beach Babe and Gym Crush types, I wonder why I'm wasting my time. I am going to delete my dating apps unless I match someone and that person messages me back once I reach out to them. Women with supermodel bodies typically don't match with me, and even if they did, I doubt they'd be in a rush to chat with someone that is a six at best.

I start swiping right on women who I think might be eager to secure a romantic partner. Women with plain faces and slightly rotund figures; fives and sixes on the beauty scale. Girls whose looks wouldn't cause me to vomit, but also women who I- and most other men- would be unenthusiastic about dating.

My lower standards do the trick. My first match on the Ultimate Dating App is Jewel, a Caucasian girl with delusional self-confidence. In all her profile photos, Jewel strikes provocative poses while dressed in lingerie. Unfortunately, she's chubby. Rather than making her look sexy, the first photo draws attention to Jewel's flabby stomach and unimpressive breasts while the second highlights her sagging ass.

I don't find her particularly attractive, but on the binary scale of whether I would or wouldn't fuck her, I come down- barely- on the side of I would. So I tap on the screen, trying to hurry the congratulatory banner along so I can message her, only to pause. On most dating apps, after I match with a girl, the app will congratulate me with a banner saying something like 'You matched with Jewel!' That didn't happen with the Ultimate Dating App. Instead, the app says I captured Jewel.

If it ended there, I would have assumed the developers are saying I captured Jewel's heart- corny and untrue, but acceptable. The message doesn't end there however. The banner clarifies Jewel is now mine to do with as I please.

Before I can reread the prompt, the banner disappears, leaving me to wonder whether I had imagined the pop-up. If I hadn't, was it possible this wasn't a dating app at all? I might have stumbled across a perverted Pokemon-style game where you capture girls instead of monsters. Alternatively, this might be a specialty dating app dedicated to BDSM enthusiasts.

I open the chat window to ask Jewel. She also uses the Ultimate Dating App. Hopefully, she'll be able to clarify.