You wake up from a nap and check your phone before your eyes are properly open. A notification marked ‘6m ago’. You go from despondent to elated, as though the last weeks have been nothing but happy. Face ID catches up and you go cold. It isn’t them.
It wasn’t until my first ethics lecture that I realised I wasn’t crazy for letting my vinyl-collecting Hinge-match dictate my cortisol levels. From the back of the lecture theatre, my anxiety turned to indignation when Kant’s second Categorical Imperative flashed on the screen: treat people not merely as means to an end, but as ends in themselves. The podcasts were wrong. It wasn’t my “anxious attachment” flaring up. I was responding to a deep issue within the dating scene. I was being used.
We’re all somewhat guilty of this. We stalk people’s social media and size them up based on
height and facial symmetry. We scroll Hinge like we’re clothes shopping, prioritising what benefits us in the short term. We can’t commit. But then, why would we? In a time where everything is cheap and disposable, why should our relationships be any different?
The delayed replies, the sudden nocturnal messages, the refusal to label anything. As I left the lecture theatre, I realised that I was the product, and my attention the glossy finish. But what is a product if not something inanimate? Being on the losing end of a situationship doesn’t just stress us out, it forces us to give up our humanity, to exist as pawns in someone else’s life until we’re inevitably tossed to one side like last month’s TikTok trend. I got the bus back to my flat that day and had a long think about deleting Hinge.
19, male, straight, drinks occasionally. 21 male, bisexual, wants kids. Why do we do this? Is the pursuit of connection really worth compromising our individuality? We label ourselves, sort ourselves into categories like items in a shop, advertise our best traits. But in doing so, we forget to show the world that we’re human. Our laughter, the way our eyes crease when we smile, are all things that dating apps seems to miss. Instead, we open our lives to being seen the way we present ourselves: a name, an age, a dating preference. That’s all we are. It’s no wonder our dates replace us so quickly.
And I can’t help but despair at the capitalist undertone of it all. We’re all accessories, and all we’re good for is enhancing or decreasing our partner’s status like a freshly polished car. We view our relationships through our peers’ eyes, valuing their opinions over our own and failing to see the real person pleading in front of of us.
I’m not saying we should quit dating, or that we’re doomed to die alone. This is only a pledge to please, please, take a leaf from old Kant’s book and treat people as ends in themselves. He knows a thing or two about morality.
