NAME: Pippa

AGE: 22

LOCATION: New York, New York

SCHOOL: Columbia University

ABOUT ME: Writer.

That’s my online dating profile. It is everything that, according to dating applications, a computer algorithm needs to know to match me with the love of my life or, as is more likely, my love of the night. My mom eyes me warily, “What is a 22 year old doing with an online dating profile? I didn’t think you were that socially inept.”

Well mom, everybody’s doing it. Or, at least, it seems like everyone is. Tinder, Hinge, OkCupid, the list goes on. A suite of matchmaking services stashed in your phone binging, flashing, pushing notifications onto your home screen and proclaiming that this one, yes this one, truly is your perfect match.

NAME: Jon

So maybe that’s not his real name. His last name is a number spelled in Spanish, but everyone makes up names on these things. Shave off a few years here, add a promotion there, change your name so that it’s completely un-Googleable and boom, just like that you have an alternate identity that is you, it’s totally still you, but a better you.

My life is boring. His job is boring. We bond over shared boredom and a desire for warmer weather. He asks if we can chill. I think about it. I say that I have a cheese making kit my parents gave me for Christmas that I’ve been wanting to take a stab at, “Do you want to make mozzarella with me?”

I expected him to say no because making cheese on a first date is weird. He said yes.

The mozzarella turned into ricotta somewhere between the milk being too pasteurized and me being too spacey to actually follow the directions on the box, but he rolled with it. He laughed, touched my arm and made it feel silly, not like me screwing up a kit made for ages “10 and up.” I forgot that we met through an app one night when I didn’t want to do my work.

A few days later he took me to Coney Island. He pointed out graffiti tags on the buildings and bridges along the Subway route, sharing the hidden history behind the large, luridly colored, painted letters. This was his city, that was his tag, and I; I was seeing New York through someone else’s eyes.

I deleted the dating app in a public bathroom on the Coney Island boardwalk. I didn’t need it anymore. I still didn’t know Jon’s name, but I knew that the algorithm that I’d said was absurd had, so far at least, worked. We’d be the kind of online dating success story that finds its way onto billboards and the sides of buses.

Reclining in the grass under the shade of a big tree, I traced the tattoo on his arm, a sunflower, with my finger. The movement around each petal felt familiar, a slide right, a gentle curve up, and a swipe left, but this time there was skin beneath my finger rather than a screen. I had deleted all of the other dating apps on my phone in the days following Coney Island. I didn’t want to tempt myself. I wanted to give this a chance before diving back into the sea of options, but the swiping motion made my fingers itch for faces to flick through.

I missed sitting on the couch with a beer, watching an old episode of New Girl, and looking for love with the flick of a finger. Algorithms, designed by coders at desks in big offices, taking all of the guesswork and personal agency out of my Thursday night. The risk inherent in approaching a guy at a bar, the chance of rejection, gone. An algorithm doing all of the work. I’d just have to swipe.

There was nothing particularly wrong with Jon, but the algorithm had, I was sure, been updated since our matching. It would be more precise, more scientific, more likely to find the perfect specimen to place in my petri dish. Sure, Jon seemed great, but maybe he was only great when looked at in isolation. No good scientific test is done in isolation; I had to open up the pool.

I re-downloaded the apps that afternoon, all of them. A scientific process, I told myself. If I didn’t like anyone else, than I must really like Jon. If I liked someone, I couldn’t like Jon in the way I thought I did.

And then I saw his face. He had a strong jaw, slicked back hair, and wore a suit. He worked in finance, went to a good college, and liked good wine. I swiped. Match.

If I liked someone who was the opposite of Jon on every metric, Jon must be a fluke. A great guy, but it would never work. Eventually I’d get tired of his art and he’d be sick of my kitchen experiments. His large Indonesian family would overwhelm me and he’d not know what fork to use at dinner with my grandmother. Little fractures would inevitably form. Tiny divides an out-of-date algorithm couldn’t see, potentials for failure that this new version knew to look out for, would grow and expand until we wouldn’t be able to take it anymore.

So I cut my losses.

He still texts me occasionally. A few minutes after I like a picture on his Instagram, my phone bings, “Hey.” We have cute conversations dotted with smiley faces and compliments that I wish I’d let go somewhere. They always end the same. He asks when he’ll see me next, and I stop responding. It wouldn’t work out anyway. I am, I tell myself, doing both of us a favor.

.