Page 2 of Swiped
“So, I’m weird because I don’t like going to parties?” she’d asked, fully braced for a quick confirmation of what she’d been bullied into believing for her entire childhood.
“No, not at all,” he had said, with a gentle smile. “Most people feel some level of ambivalence around social events. They want to go to the party and see friends, but some part of them wants to stay home, too. It’s just a matter of which side wins on that particular day.” Then he’d held up a laminated card with a black-and-white drawing on it. “What do you see here?”
“A duck,” she’d said. “Does that mean I’m crazy? That I saw a duck?”
“Natalie, you’re not crazy.” He tapped the picture. “Yes, this is a duck and also, if you look at it a different way, it’s a rabbit.”
She’d squinted and sure enough, the beak became ears and the beady black eye flipped to peer over a small rodent nose. A rabbit head, as clear as day.
“See? It is two things at once,” he’d said, slipping the picture back inside a well-worn file folder. “Everyone has both introvert and extrovert inside of them, at all times, and so do you.” He’d rubbed his beard and smiled at her. “You very much prefer to be a duck, and that’s OK. But don’t forget that you also know how to be a lovely rabbit, too.”
Now, over fifteen years later, she wondered if she’d shifted animal metaphors and fully formed as an indoor cat. As much as she admired Sara’s endless flow of invitations to cool openings and events, she was genuinely happy staying in to work on her code, even if it would be nice to have a partner to share the time with. But although she’d had only a few “official” boyfriends in her life, each of those short relationships had died on the hill of how much of a struggle it was for Nat to venture outside of her own pursuits and plans and perfectly curated comfort zone. It was hard enough when there was a 600-page epic about smoking hot dragon riders that she wanted to finish. But her single-mindedness reached a new level when it was about staying in to finish some code for her very own app, and her dates fell behind. That was how Nat learned that the worst partabout being an introvert was that no one expected you to feel sad when they left you.
“I’m not some kind of lonely freak, you know,” Nat said, holding a long-forgotten black midi dress up to her body in the mirror. At five-foot-eight, Nat was tall enough to pull it off without heels, which was a data point firmly in the pro column.
“What are you talking about?” asked Sara, blinking her large brown eyes. “Did I say that?”
“It’s not like I need saving, or something.” Nat spoke from all the years of experience with the not-so-subtle hints and smiles of pity. Did other single people have to deal with the self-righteousness and semi-shaming about “putting yourself out there,” or was it just the homebodies like her? She tossed the dress on the bed and went back to her closet for another outfit. A solid decision needed a viable second option for comparison. “It’s why I created BeTwo’s algorithm, remember? To meet someone in a way that was actually comfortable for people like me?”
“Dude, I know. I was there, remember?”
Nat could hear the genuine confusion in Sara’s voice. She loved spending time with Sara . . . when they’d met in their college dorm as the undeclared student who couldn’t “focus for shit” when she was alone in the room and the Comp Sci programmer who pretty much never left it, their friendship had seemed written in the stars. It still felt that way to Nat. So why didn’t Sara understand that bringing a date would make Nat’s own singledom more obvious to everyone? It was humiliating enough to constantly hear people crack well-meaning, if unoriginal, jokes about being the creator of a dating app who didn’t have a boyfriend, but having a bestie who’d been single for maybe one week in her entire life didn’t help Nat’s ego.
Of course, this wasn’t Sara’s fault — she was gorgeous and witty and outgoing, and Nat thanked those lucky stars thather friend cared about her enough to try to be her personal ambassador to the world outside their apartment.
It was just that ever since she’d created BeTwo, social interactions tended to follow a very narrow route. After the questions about how to find the hottest people on the app, or the tipsy confessions from the non-singles about being “so curious”, Nat would get peppered with questions about her own love life, and then, inevitably, her lack thereof.
“Of course, I believe in love,” she would say, truthfully. “I started BeTwo to help people like me find a partner.” Which, again, was also the truth. After all, for every one Nat’s past relationships that died on the hill of her introversion, she sharpened her sword for the cause that there had to be other people like her out there — quietly alone and yearning for a way to be quiet and slightly less alone with someone else, but without having to subject themselves to clubs or bars or, God forbid, singles events. She did very much enjoy and very much miss sex, at the very least (hence the faerie books), and hookups were never really her style. But then Nat would smile wistfully and say the words that she’d workshopped with her Gen Z assistants. “But these days, my commitment to BeTwo is my most important relationship.”
And this, despite being a carefully worded smokescreen to push more questions away, was truer than her interrogators ever knew.
Because the real reason there was never going to be an enticing enough dog birthday party, or cute enough outfit in her closet, was that Nat had her own favorite evening activity that was always ready at her fingertips, always asked only the right questions, and always made her feel in control of her romantic prospects.
Even if Sara had told her many times that she thought it was weird. “Except, it’s not like you actuallygoon BeTwo dates, though, is it?” she asked.
Nat spun out of her closet. “Yes, I do!”
“Speed-dating your user base from the couch doesn’t really count . . .” Sara hesitated. “Or seem all that healthy, to be honest?”
Nat winced. There it was — the pity and the advice. Anger flared in Nat’s chest as she snatched the Aragorn shirt up off the floor. She wasn’t going to the party. But she knew that, and had known that the whole time on some level. The show of an attempt was partly because Nat still liked being invited, but mostly because she didn’t want to wound Sara’s feelings. But somehow it ended up that Nat was the one feeling prickles of hurt in her chest. “But you going on, like, ten different dates a week is perfectly fine?” she snapped.
Now it was Sara who winced, and Nat instantly regretted her words. That was the trouble with old friends — they knew all too well how to hurt each other, even if they didn’t really mean to. “I’m sorry—”
But Sara shook her head and held up a hand. “It’s fine.” She stood from Nat’s bed and shrugged. “I tried. Have a good night.”
“Wait!” Nat dug around in the makeup bag on her dresser. “Wear this one — it’ll look amazing on you.” She held out a plum-colored and expensive lipstick she’d bought for a work event — the best she could do for a peace offering at the moment.
Sara was gracious enough to accept it with a little twinkle in her dark eyes. “You know I love the goth shit.” She slipped the lipstick into her pocket. “And good luck with your . . .searchtonight.”
* * *
Nat tugged her shirt over her hips and smoothed the wrinkles in Aragorn’s smoldering, screen-printed face as she settled into the couch. She pulled her laptop close, took a fortifying sip of wine, and stretched her neck like an athlete getting ready for the big match. Then she refreshed the BeTwo user base data.
As the creator of the app, the codebase was her personal playground, and she could see behind the curtain any time she wanted. Yes, she did the routine maintenance like fixing bugs and monitoring how new features were being used — the kinds of heads-down coding work that people probably assumed was most of her job. But it was funny how it seemed like users forgot that apps were just things made by a person, not willed into existence by some kind of digital deity. So, every single part of an app was built by human design and therefore open to human scrutiny. For Nat, that meant the chance to vet her eligible male users for herself, all without having to create a profile or swipe or send messages.
Code sequences flashed on her screen for a few seconds and her data report blinked out its sum: twenty-seven. That was the day’s number of new users who met her minimum pre-set compatibility factors: being straight, male, single, and active on the app for at least two months so she had some usage data to pull from. She also made sure to only include men with pictures in their profiles. She’d been running a dating app for a few years now, and still didn’t understand why some people never bothered with pictures. Even the most basic assurances that someone was a real human tended to go a long way — and while she would begrudgingly admit that her AI-detecting code wasn’t perfect yet by any means, she would also happily add that it was probably the best one in the dating app market at the moment. Nat tucked a wayward strand of curls behind her ear and startedher dive into the twenty-seven prospects algorithmically lined up for the role of the love of her life.
Nat opened the first profile in her report, a thirty-three-year-old named Mike who pouted at the reflection of his tanned abs. Shirtless selfiesandin a mirror? Those were two immediate no’s, but she willed herself not to disqualify him right away. Then she caught a glimpse of an aggressive right-wing political meme that had somehow snuck past her filters and into his photo grid, and gasped out loud in the quiet of her living room. She knew for a fact that BeTwo had the highest standards for banned content of all the rival apps, because she took special pride in keeping her corner of the internet spic and span and sleaze-free, even if took constant vigilance. And yet here was Mike’s meme disturbing her peace and parading around her app — these heinous things mutated faster than ooze-covered turtles. She chewed her lip in concentration as she zeroed in on the offending metadata and zipped up the BeTwo filters once again. Her racing heart slowed, and she toggled back to Mike’s profile and his spray-tan torso. Now she felt vindicated that she wasn’t being judgmental when instinct had told her to nix Mike as her prospective suitor just for his muscle-mirror selfie. She flagged the account and deleted the meme from her app forever; she was just seeing patterns in her data.
