Just one swipe away

It's 12:30pm in the afternoon. I'm on half-term break, lying carelessly on my stiff bed caressing my pillow in extreme boredom. Ugh. Then I let out a soft yawn, and moaned as I had 5 more assignments left to complete on college work. Ughhh. I know, boring, not beneficial, too easy anyway... The day rapidly whooshes by in a snippet. As I check the clock, it's already 18:00pm. Guess it was still winter according to me, as I was very aware of the clocks moving backwards during that season and, therefore, time going quickly. Woo-hoo! (Just joking, if you already know how much of a crappy whole day I've had to myself, you'd understand). I then curiously pick up my phone and shove my books aside for one moment and look up 'best dating apps of the year 2026' on my Google search. Little did I know, all of my attention was diverted for more than an hour as I left my studies aside until the last minute... I then found something interestingly generated by chatgpt: Badoo. Okay... What about it? Does it beat tinder or bumbles terrible ratings? You sure would bet that I hated most of those dating sites. But here's my input: Firstly, it's just a waste of time. Like seriously, what do you find so interesting about addictively scrolling through different guys' profiles superficially, then swiping when you feel like, 'nah, they're not hot enough' or 'Well, they still live with their mum and they're 30? No way' or 'he seems to not have enough meat on him, why?'. I know, complete bs, but here's the thing, I'd never seek deeper connections or genuine relationships with those apps anyway because of how much of a waste of money and time it is, which only appeals to guys, so I don't know why I'd be the one to complain. Not to mention the terrible reputation of catfishing traumas, romance scams, high levels of ghosting, finding shallow or uninteresting guys that have differing interests from me, or just a level of deceit in a person's character traits that reveal so many red flags to me all at once due to my 7th sense. This probably had to be my first experience of entering the real world, let alone using a dating app which I never imagined I'd get myself into, where I could actually communicate with anyone, but as creepy as it sounds, I felt more open and available to anybody, or perhaps vulnerable. But of course, I continue to ignore the warning signs and install several apps just hoping to find someone whom I could relate to hugely. And guess what? No luck. The first week went well, or at least, I thought, when I installed the app 'Yubo', which I heard from reviews that it is a highly recommended app specifically for 'making friends' online and globally. What a dream! So I first downloaded, then created my account, which took me over 15 minutes to set up due to its ridiculously long verification process to check if I was 18 years of age or not, putting my face into an oval which I found uncomfortable as I have a thin long facial appearance (LOL). Afterward, I basically put in all my personal details, including real photos of myself, my whereabouts and hobbies, because how on earth are you meant to find someone whom you want to connect with if they don't even know anything about you, or your true identity? Aside from that, my experience was okay, and I justify that it was 'okay' but not the greatest, as a bunch of random strangers, which were boys and men, kept flooding me with flirty text messages the moment I took a super dry selfie of myself in my living room on my couch, with no makeup or anything to look natural, in a bored position, with my hand lying underneath my chin. The comments were amazingly overwhelming, such as the cheesy pickup lines 'I bet me, and you would look great together as a couple', to 'You're so beautiful, it's not fair on other girls' to finally 'You look way finer than my girl'. I mean, dude, why are you casually just flirting with other women on the app, and actively cheating in your relationship? Talk about betrayal much! I then stop talking to those weirdos for a moment, until I find two amusing guys online already, chatting with me. I exchange snaps with the first guy, then I give out my number to the other, who lives in a foreign country. It had only been two days and I felt so invested in talking to the other guy whom I met on the app from a different country, because we had similar tastes but not everything in common, as the other guy only ever snapped me and I never actually got to know him, so within a few days of no response I decide to unfriend and block him for good. Then I continued talking to this other guy who I thought was mature with me, until he decided not to text me for more than 2 weeks due to his flirty messages in the beginning. Blocked. Deleted. Not forgotten about but moved forward. As much as I wanted to develop something more than a friendship with him, the harsh truth about it that I took from that experience, was to let go of those people that kept shutting me out if they were not interested in investing in the relationship. I then gave up trying to find that 'someone' after weeks of being flooded with flirty texts from complete strangers, until I eventually came across the app 'badoo' a month later. (End of ep 1)