Tripping and Falling Straight Into Your DMs

If you’re lucky, you may recall my – dare I say – avant-garde Study in Thirst (to be featured in the New York Times any day now, I’m sure). Quick refresher: I dove vajayjay-first into a sea of desperation and Wienerschnitzels by more or less downloading every dating app known to fuckboy. All of my bios included my Instagram handle in order to assess which randos would be desperado enough to DM me. And these unsavory, smart phone-using cretins delivered like goddamn Domino’s. Let me tell you about it.

First of all, for all you grandparents out there who aren’t well-versed in the lingo of ‘DMs’: it’s an acronym for “direct messages” and is the method of interacting with specific users on Instagram. It should be noted a thousand times over/preached at next Sunday’s sermon that this is THE thirstiest, most frat bro-esque means of contact and was probably invented by a guy named Chad.

There are some salient, unspoken truisms regarding the art of DMing:

1. “I want to talk to this girl,” you say. Splendid. Then reach out to her via text or Facebook message or Snapchat chat or skywriting; literally ANY mode of communication will be superior and not scream “Stage 5 Clinger” quite as vehemently. You’re more likely to get laid with a Farmville request.
2. “But I don’t have the means to do skywriting!” you profess, which is hardly a valid excuse but I digress. “Also, I don’t have her number and I’m not friends with her on any other social media.” Well then, Sherlock, take that as a clue you shouldn’t be contacting her. Be less gross, dude.

In the handful of months I spent accumulating intel on Tinder, Hinge, and Bumble, over 80 DMs popped up like herpes (not that I would know) into my inbox. No, not a typo. Eighty. That doesn’t account for all of the creepers who followed me on Instagram, ‘liked’ enough photos in a row to make me wildly uncomfortable, and littered my pictures with verbal garbage such as…

Note: my Instagram tagline is “goal: to be the next Tina Fey,” which is why a few of these buffoons mentioned her.

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

Exhibit C:

But in the private back room that were my DMs, that’s when these gentlemen (I use the term loosely) got bold and, for lack of a better word, sketch AF. Let’s take a gander, shall we?

Bachelor #1:

Bachelor #2:

Bachelor #3:

Bachelor #4:

Bachelor #5:

Bachelor #6:

Bachelor #7:

My reaction to all of this:

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To this day, I continuously receive an onslaught of DMs (I’m talking multiple times a week, God help me) which always struck me as odd… until my friend, Steve, texted me a screenshot of my Bumble profile.

On that note, I still haven’t remembered to deactivate my accounts and probs never will. So look forward to stumbling upon yours truly on every certified dating app, douchebags of LA!

In conclusion: fight the urge in your Chubbies coaxing you to slide that DM. Literally every other form of contact is less traumatizing and if you’re SOLELY connected through Instagram it insinuates that: 1) There’s a 99% chance you’ve never actually met aforementioned girl. Therefore, 2) you should not be reaching out to her. It’s creepy. There will never be a time when this isn’t creepy. And 3) you’ll NEVER receive a positive response. Why? Because not knowing her heavily implies you’re incapable of scoring a date, even with a straight-up buffet of dating apps at your sexually frustrated disposal, and thus must resort to hitting up randoms online*. Never a good look. Don’t even try to justify it, buddy – no stranger is that amazing, and even if they are, this ain’t Criminal Minds and you won’t deduce this via The Gram. (Trust me, judging by my Insta I probably seem like a nice person.)

*On a related note, you probably also wear turtlenecks.

So men, do my gender a solid and stick to approaching your local trap queen the ol’ fashion way: after 3 Budlights, once you’ve finally mustered up the liquid courage, at your local decrepit dive bar, by hashing out some uninspired pickup line to the effect of, “Do I know you from somewhere?” when it’s obvious to everyone in the immediate vicinity that you do not in fact know her, have never known her, don’t even particularly care to get to know her, and simply think she’s hot. You’ll be okay, I promise.