Dating app screenshot culture is out of control

More and more people are being publicly shamed for things they’ve written during private exchanges on dating apps – from not-particularly-great attempts at flirting to suggesting an ice cream date, writes Eloise Hendy. And it speaks to the romantic panic of an entire generation

‘Why are people looking for validation by posting the personal details of someone who, at the very least, thought they were hot enough to want to flirt with?’ (iStock)

About 10 days ago, a man called Vance asked a woman on a date. The pair matched on an app and then exchanged numbers to arrange to meet up. “Hope you’ve had a good day,” Vance texted. “I’m excited for tomorrow. I can pick you up but if you’re not comfortable with that we can just meet there … I’m feeling like getting some ice cream in this hot weather”. Adding an emoji and a “lol” to his message, he sat back to wait for his date’s enthusiastic response. Because who in their right mind wouldn’t want to grab an ice cream in hot weather with someone they fancy? Vance must have thought he was displaying the holy trinity of first-date behaviour: considerate, casual, cute. Unfortunately, his date didn’t see it that way.

“Sorry if this may come off as rude but I don’t do ice cream dates,” the woman responded. “I’m a 26-year-old woman and a date like that seems like the absolute bare minimum to me. Meeting up would be a waste of both of our times [sic] since we probably don’t have the same vibe.” She signed off with a cutting “best wishes”.

At this point, you might be wondering how I know all this. I have never met Vance. I haven’t met his ice cream-averse date either. So how am I privy to this personal message exchange, which, while being fairly unhinged, is also ultimately quite banal? The answer, of course, is that someone posted a screenshot of the conversation on Twitter.

Perhaps it speaks to our dire timelines in the Elon Musk era, but recently Twitter has been awash with screenshots like this. Most are taken from Hinge, or occasionally another dating app and most follow a similar pattern: One person, usually a dude, makes an attempt to flirt, or suggests a date idea that the other person, usually a girl, takes as a terrible insult to their personhood. Or as proof that all men are crap at flirting. Or crap at conversations. Or crap at planning things. Or are probably creeps anyway. This is underlined by the accompanying caption, which usually goes something like, “the bar is ON THE FLOOR”, “I am so tired”, or “just let out the biggest sigh of my life”.

Essentially, they are scraps of bait, posted so the internet at large can act like one big girls group chat – jumping to offer sympathy to the original poster, and dunking on the “stupid boy” who dared to say something sub-par in the hopes of finding love or getting laid. Except of course, unlike a girls group chat – which is presumably made up of friends who have sworn to support you even when you’re saying or doing something deranged – the internet is a public forum of strangers under no obligation to agree that you’re right, or that dating is awful, men are trash, or going for ice cream is not just a waste of time but a massive red flag. So, why has this become a trend? Why are people looking for validation by posting the personal details of someone who, at the very least, thought they were hot enough to want to flirt with?

Like all dating app screenshots, the ice cream date exchange was clearly posted to prompt reactions, spark discourse, and, most importantly, elicit engagement. And it worked like a charm – the original post garnered over 60,000 likes, and set off a chain reaction of takes that lasted for at least three days. In fact, it caused so much discussion that the topic spilled over from Twitter timelines and onto the other main apps of gendered controversy content: Reddit and TikTok.

“She is allowed to not want to meet you,” one riled-up Reddit user posted. “She is allowed to think an ice cream date isn’t fun or interesting or worth her time. She is allowed free will and to be picky even if you disagree with her personal standards. Women are allowed to SAY NO and NOT give men a chance, and no amount of complaining on Reddit with other angry, lonely men is going to change that.”

Everyone seems so scared and panicked all the time – on guard for slights and harms in every interaction. This kind of hypervigilance isn’t healthy, and certainly doesn’t help people forge genuine connections. It simply sets everyone up to fail

Which, like, sure. Of course, anyone can turn down a date for any reason they choose. Of course women can decide they have to be wined and dined and treated like a princess before they deign to spend time with a guy. But let’s be real here. This isn’t feminism, nor is it an approach to dating that deserves to be cheered and celebrated by social media strangers. Is being offered an ice cream date really worthy of a Gone Girl-style speech about female agency and consent? Or, is this all actually deeply regressive, with an undercurrent of performative cruelty?

Much of the conversation that spread from this screenshot took the issue at face value. What is an appropriate date for a 26-year-old woman, people asked. What wouldn’t be “the bare minimum”? Are you on Vance’s side or not? Yet, all of these questions seem to implicitly validate the idea that every exchange with a potential date should be seen as a test – something to succeed or fail at. Whether you’d like to be asked for ice cream or whether you think it’s a waste of your time is by the by. The real discussion here should be about the way dating apps and social media now seem to work in tandem as a public shaming device. To my mind at least, the perceived “infractions” being offered up for the judgement of the internet are far less troubling than the urge to expose these interactions online, whether for clout or validation. Everyone is allowed to be picky and to say no to dates they don’t think will work out, but it doesn’t follow that everyone should then also be able to disparage those that fail to meet their restrictive standards, and to a potential audience of millions.

Of course, social media platforms rely on a warped understanding of privacy. Instead of friends, we have followers – all social relations are flattened. At the same time, personal experience is constantly mined for content; every thought can be recorded, revised and shared. So, perhaps it follows that now, rather than cancelling a date and messaging your mates about it, or simply ghosting and moving on to the next match, it feels “normal” to post a screenshot on Twitter or on Instagram stories. But, at its heart, this compulsion denies other people their full humanity, instead rendering them props and narrative devices in the story of your life – a life in which you’re always the “main character”.

The ‘ice cream date’ text exchange that went viral this month (Twitter)

This leap from private to public forums also seems rooted in a broader terror of communication. Everyone seems so scared and panicked all the time – on guard for slights and harms in every interaction. This kind of hypervigilance isn’t healthy, and certainly doesn’t help people forge genuine connections. It simply sets everyone up to fail. Likewise, it hijacks and undermines the true purpose of public exposure – to call out abusive behaviour. But the dating screenshots that keep going viral and that spin people off into endless discourse about respect and free will and “saying NO”, are not about abuse. At most, they are about annoyance or disappointment, but mainly they seem to be about the desire to be told “you’re right, they’re wrong, you’re good, they’re bad”. Instead of calling out real “offences”, they are about feeling in control.

There are finally signs that the tides of public opinion might be turning. Roughly a week before ice-cream-date-gate, another dating screenshot went viral on Twitter. A girl posted an interaction she had on Hinge, where, after a promisingly flirtatious start to a chat, a man she’d matched with asked: “So, how would you seduce me?”. This mildly cringy comment was, apparently, enough for his conversation partner to post the chat online, with the man’s Hinge profile picture clear for all to see. Clearly, what she was hoping for was the standard “you go girl” reaction. Yet, for once, the response was different.

“Posting a screenshot of a (totally mild) dating app interaction that includes the person’s name and face is one of the most casually cruel things people do on here,” one user posted in response. “Posting a dating app screenshot isn’t seen as embarrassing as it should be,” another declared. Maybe this is a sign that people are getting sick of performative condemnation.

Dating apps might have made people feel detached from their own and others’ humanity and bred a gamified dating culture in which every interaction is seen as a challenge to win or lose, but maybe this isn’t actually something we should be feeding. And maybe this is precisely why everyone feels frustrated with the dating scene in general. Rather than jumping to condemn random individuals for clout, then, perhaps everyone would have a better time if we all tried to give the people on the other side of the screen the benefit of the doubt. Either that or, as one Twitter user joked, “when someone tries to screenshot a dating app the phone should explode upwards into molten shrapnel”.