Recently I’ve been having an epiphany. I’m young, hot, and single in the city, and I’m going to act accordingly. Call me Carrie Bradshaw, if Carrie Bradshaw was a broke University student in London instead of a big-time writer in New York, and instead of smoking Marlboro Lights, she smokes Amber Leaf rollies.

If you have ever lived in London, especially in recent times, you will know the dating game is no joke. For those of you who aren’t aware, let me educate you. People (mainly men, especially the ‘finance bros’) in London think they’re the shit. They come to the city and realise the world is their oyster, so why would they ever settle down? This means when it comes to dating it’s practically impossible to find someone looking for anything serious, and after speaking with my friends I’ve realised it’s not just a me-thing, no one is immune to the London dating curse. Expect a lot of, ‘you’re a really great girl, but I’m not in the headspace right not for anything serious’, which is code for, ‘you were a decent shag, but I feel like I can hold out for someone better’. And that’s if you’re lucky, the rest of the time you just get ghosted with no explanation. 

And then, as if this wasn’t bad enough, along came Hinge. 

We’re currently in, as I like to call it, a ‘Hinge epidemic’. Long gone are the days of bumping into a stranger in a coffee shop or library and bonding over your shared love of Russian literature (I’m not sure if that was ever even a thing but I like to pretend it was). Nowadays, people would rather scroll through an app for hours playing a game of hot or not instead of simply approaching someone in real life, meaning we’re subjected to profile after profile of; ‘my typical Sunday: scary’, ‘together we could: watch The Office’, and my personal favourite, ‘what I order for the table: tequila’. Like come on people, what happened to originality? Oh, and all the half decent prospects are stuck in rose prison. Can someone on Hinge’s team please let them know that sending a rose is actually weird?

I would really love to say that I have taken the moral high ground against that godforsaken app and I no longer use it, but that unfortunately would be lying. One night a few weeks ago, my flatmates and I got drunk, and having previously deleted it in a state of despair after viewing my ‘most compatible’ and coming to the conclusion that even a dating app has it out for me, I decided then and there was the perfect time to get back on my dating grind, and so I redownloaded the cursed app for probably the 50th time.  

I wasn’t really sure what to expect. Since moving to London, my love life was practically non-existent. After being played by a man who was almost the same height as me (I’m only 5’7) and couldn’t dress to save his life for almost the entirety of my first year of university I had sworn off dating for the foreseeable. But, like I said, I was having an epiphany, and I’ve also grown a lot since those days (thank God, or to be more accurate, my friends who told me to get a grip), and less than 24 hours after redownloading, I received a text asking if I was free for a date that night. 

One thing you should know about me is that I am not a last-minute person, especially when it comes to dates. I must have at minimum three days’ notice, giving me enough time to consider cancelling at least twice only to be talked out of it each time by my flatmates who at this point are tired of my shit and probably wish I’d just become and Nun and take a vow of celibacy like I keep promising. But this felt different, probably because I was existing purely on Sertraline and those Ramen noodles I get from the cash and carry opposite my flat. I decided to live on the wild side for once after a pep talk and a lot of convincing from the same flatmates who are probably listing my room on Spare Room as I type, and so I downed a glass of wine and agreed to the date. 

The date was ok. A lot of wine was drunk and he was a lovely guy, but definitely not my dream man. But it didn’t matter. I realised I could just go on dates and have a good time with no strings attached (and most importantly, play these London men at their own game- if you can’t beat them and all that) and so that’s what I’ve been doing. If anything, I think I’ve been more of a Samantha than a Carrie recently, but I see no issue, and I don’t think I’ll be giving it up any time soon. And yes, I still think Hinge is a cesspit that should be wiped from existence, but it doesn’t seem to be going anywhere just yet, so we all may as well make the most of it.