Diary entry on modern romance, retention marketing, and why the scene remains a small pond
Sunday, A Notification I Was Not Prepared For
Tried to delete my dating app again this weekend, third attempt this year if anyone is counting, and instead of just letting me go quietly, it offered me a retention discount, fifty percent off three months, apparently in a genuine bid to keep me subscribed, a marketing tactic I read about happening more broadly in The London Prat’s piece on streaming and subscription services doing exactly this same thing, except mine was specifically for a service whose main function, as far as I can tell, is reintroducing me to the same seven people from this scene on a two week rotation.
I did not take the discount, for the record, mostly out of principle rather than any genuine strength of character, but the fact that it took me a genuinely uncomfortable amount of time to decide says something about either the app’s marketing team or my own general resolve, and I am not entirely sure which one deserves more credit here.
On The Actual State Of The Scene’s Dating Pool
Bumped into someone from a rival band at the bar Friday who I had, with complete confidence, already sworn off after a genuinely disastrous first date back in February, further confirming that this entire scene functions as a considerably smaller pond than any of us are willing to admit out loud.
A Small Update On The Decentring Project
The decentring men experiment continues to go about as well as previously reported, which is to say not especially well, though I remain committed to the bit for at least another few months out of pure stubbornness.
Drummer, unhelpfully, thinks I should have taken the discount purely for the anecdote value, a stance I find genuinely difficult to argue against given how much material this entire saga has already provided for tonight’s diary entry alone.
In slightly better news, the rival band member from Friday has apparently also sworn off the same dating app after a similarly disastrous experience, which either means the app itself is the actual problem or this entire scene is simply too small and incestuous for any dating platform to function properly within it.
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More diary chaos at my author page: https://prat.uk/author/siobhan-odonnell/
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
