In the last few years, I was vehement OLD wasn’t as bad as everyone was making it out to be. Yes, it is full of LVM who aren’t looking for lasting relationships, but hey I’ve been asked on a few high effort dates. I’ve met some pretty normal men. I haven’t been put in a compromising situation yet.

All of these things kept me going because I needed something to really break me to consider getting off OLD. That was until the pandemic. I didn’t have any experiences that were insanely dehumanizing, but this past year, scrotes went full mask off. Suddenly, Covid never happened and any time I would start a conversation, they would be telling me about how they were out drinking with buddies or partying.

I would still get nice date offers but if I requested a video chat beforehand, ghosted. Phone call? Ghosted. The cycle would just keep repeating itself. Eventually, I saw my boundaries start eroding. With every bad experience, I began praising the bare minimum. I also began to question the precautions I was taking. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to go eat out on a date with a stranger? What’s the likelihood I’ll give my parents the virus? It’s just one date.

These thoughts scared me but because the men on OLD were so terrible, I was wondering if I was the problem. Luckily, I never succumbed, and deleted all the apps and profiles all together. Now that I’ve been off for a few months, I have some foresight:

• The more you swipe, the more your standards lower. Suddenly, that tall average guy with an okay job and education is Prince Charming.

• Any instance of effort causes you to gush because you expect such low effort from men.

• No matter how resilient you are, you start to think you’re the problem and second guess yourself when lvm/nvm treat you like an option.

• You start excusing red/yellow flags because you’ve experienced much worse from men online so your expectations are low.

• Any date prospect excites you because you’ve been beaten down by these lvm/nvm scrote’s low effort date offers.

All of these things are behaviors I noticed in my self the longer I stayed on OLD. These sites do a great job of keeping our standards at the bare minimum because of the amount of garbage we have to sift through. I remember one day I was swiping on tinder for 30 minutes and didn’t swipe right once. Because of the exhaustion, I started swiping on men I would never consider but because I had been so desensitized to these shit profiles, I started feeling gross and sad and began giving some of them a chance. 🤢

Luckily, when I would get a message from them I would come to my senses. Now that I’m off OLD I feel like I can breathe. I also feel like I know who I am again. I’m not making excuses for some guy I would never give a chance if we met irl. I’m not hoping for a date just because this guy can hold a conversation. The thought makes me sick. Honestly for any of you still hoping you’ll find a HVM on OLD I’ll pray for you. I’ve been on and off these sites for 3 years and I can tell you I have never met a single HVM.