"To overcome something you have to understand what a perfect engine it is. That’s how you fight disease."
— Saw (2004)
I’ve learned to measure the hunger of my loneliness by how slowly time moves when I am waiting for someone to text me back. Now six years into being mostly single, the small animal of my loneliness is an expert in the calculus of being wanted. It derives how long it should be before someone messages back by accounting for the time of day, the day of the week, every detail they’ve given, and every possible thing I could have done wrong. Its mathematics cannot be bargained with. If it says I will hear from them in two hours, and those hours pass without word, it takes control of my body and begins a cycle of fixation and distraction. The moment my mind finds peace, my hand reflexively reaches for my phone.
On its hungriest days, I leave my phone on the other end of my apartment. My loneliness and my phone become like the two men, Adam and Dr. Lawrence Gordon, chained to opposite corners in the original Saw. In the movie, Dr. Gordon remarks that someone must want them to know exactly what time it is because the clock on the wall is new. Like each of Jigsaw’s games, this one includes a deadline.
"I’ve learned to measure the hunger of my loneliness by how slowly time moves when I am waiting for someone to text me back."
I set similar restrictions when using dating apps because they only appeal to me when I am at my loneliest. When the growling need is its deepest I re-download the same set of apps and swipe or tap or scroll. Too many nights with friends have been consumed by dating apps. From sneaking swipes before the drinks arrived to conversations blurred by the worry that some stranger will never message me back. Now, I allow myself no more than an hour a day. Two if someone’s cute and chatty. Notifications off so that both my attention and disappointment are intentional. This discipline, I’m convinced, will be rewarded.
Tinder®️ disagrees. According to a recently updated press release, restricting my use negatively impacts what they call my “match potential” (the probability that my profile will be presented to other users). Tinder®️ “prioritizes members who are active and active at the same time”. They want users to strike up conversations the moment they match. Theirs is a romance of immediacy. A digital approximation of flirting with a stranger in the middle of a party.
In the same press release, Tinder®️ explains that they don’t ask a lot of their members upfront so they rely on members using the app to learn about them. They account for things like what we write in our bios, how often our profile is liked and noped, and the characteristics of our photos—all in comparison to the members in our proximity.
Jigsaw, assumedly, performs a similar calculus when selecting his victims. Since his games force their players to face death in order to better value their lives, the selected individuals must have a demonstrated history of undervaluing their lives as well as the potential to change. In the case of Paul, a man whose game involved a maze of barbed wire, Jigsaw chastised him for performing an act of self-harm despite being “a perfectly healthy, sane, middle-class male”.
In order for my dating profile to be seen by potential matches, I first need to be understood by the algorithm. So I create a profile modelled on the language and kinds of images I’ve responded to from others. Yet I never know how to answer the question of what I’m “looking for”. In practice, it’s not a question of want but a question of time. One person can never dictate how long something lasts, only how much time they’re willing to dedicate and how deeply they’re willing to care.
Although it’s impossible to measure, I’ve experienced love as something oversized. Something I could never fill on my own. Over time I’ve learned to stuff everything available (time, money, attention) inside of it like balloons up a t-shirt that were destined to either slip free or deflate.
Every time a friend or acquaintance finds “success” on one of the apps I feel my hand reaching to re-download. Sometimes I give in, convinced that this time will be better. During those periods every match, every conversation, and every date feels like a reward for using the app. I need to believe the app wants to reward me in the same way Jigsaw believes a renewed sense of the value of their life is a reward for his potential victims.
"I need to believe the app wants to reward me in the same way Jigsaw believes a renewed sense of the value of their life is a reward for his potential victims."
In the case of Amanda, the only survivor we meet in Saw, it works. When interrogated by detectives she claims that escaping Jigsaw’s “reverse bear trap” saved her life by helping her get sober. In less violent ways I’ve known this impulse. Meeting someone that I could love makes me reevaluate the fullness of my life and while inside that feeling I would do almost anything to create it for someone else. This is the promise of dating apps like Tinder. If I use them they’ll bring me together with the people with the greatest potential for that feeling.
Yet, the more years I have spent on and off dating apps, the more each re-entry feels like waking up in the room from Saw. Everything feels abandoned but the clock is new. Every action has a deadline and someone is keeping track of how long it takes one of us to say hello, the minutes between our exchanges, and how many messages pass before one of us asks the other to meet.
But what if we fail? What if we don’t connect in any of the ways I’ve known two people to be wrong for each other? For Jigsaw failure means death, but Tinder’s press release never acknowledges if our potential can approach zero. All I know is that I’ve found myself in dating app purgatory where my success dwindles and with every unsuccessful swipe I become more convinced that I am the problem. In those moments, my loneliness at its hungriest, romantic disappointment as close to grief as it’s ever been, and I wonder if the only way to escape is to sacrifice some part of myself. Like Dr. Lawrence Gordon, am I willing to cut off my foot in exchange for freedom? On occasion and in smaller, less gruesome ways, I’ve denied parts of myself in order to leave the apps with a new romantic interest. Afterwards, I would struggle to escape the feeling that every action was being tracked, that every exchange had a deadline, and that every failure to meet my full romantic potential would be punished.
Maybe the obstacle is not my loneliness but the deadlines it inherits. Without his six o’clock time limit Dr. Gordon might have found a way to escape with his foot. Yet his deadline, like the immediacy of dating apps, was invented to breed desperation. Without the limits, I wonder if I could tame my loneliness gradually. Similar to the way you crate train a puppy. This ability to love and be loved in a way that is slow and deliberate is also a kind of potential.
"To overcome something you have to understand what a perfect engine it is. That’s how you fight disease."
— Saw (2004)
I’ve learned to measure the hunger of my loneliness by how slowly time moves when I am waiting for someone to text me back. Now six years into being mostly single, the small animal of my loneliness is an expert in the calculus of being wanted. It derives how long it should be before someone messages back by accounting for the time of day, the day of the week, every detail they’ve given, and every possible thing I could have done wrong. Its mathematics cannot be bargained with. If it says I will hear from them in two hours, and those hours pass without word, it takes control of my body and begins a cycle of fixation and distraction. The moment my mind finds peace, my hand reflexively reaches for my phone.
On its hungriest days, I leave my phone on the other end of my apartment. My loneliness and my phone become like the two men, Adam and Dr. Lawrence Gordon, chained to opposite corners in the original Saw. In the movie, Dr. Gordon remarks that someone must want them to know exactly what time it is because the clock on the wall is new. Like each of Jigsaw’s games, this one includes a deadline.
"I’ve learned to measure the hunger of my loneliness by how slowly time moves when I am waiting for someone to text me back."
I set similar restrictions when using dating apps because they only appeal to me when I am at my loneliest. When the growling need is its deepest I re-download the same set of apps and swipe or tap or scroll. Too many nights with friends have been consumed by dating apps. From sneaking swipes before the drinks arrived to conversations blurred by the worry that some stranger will never message me back. Now, I allow myself no more than an hour a day. Two if someone’s cute and chatty. Notifications off so that both my attention and disappointment are intentional. This discipline, I’m convinced, will be rewarded.
Tinder®️ disagrees. According to a recently updated press release, restricting my use negatively impacts what they call my “match potential” (the probability that my profile will be presented to other users). Tinder®️ “prioritizes members who are active and active at the same time”. They want users to strike up conversations the moment they match. Theirs is a romance of immediacy. A digital approximation of flirting with a stranger in the middle of a party.
In the same press release, Tinder®️ explains that they don’t ask a lot of their members upfront so they rely on members using the app to learn about them. They account for things like what we write in our bios, how often our profile is liked and noped, and the characteristics of our photos—all in comparison to the members in our proximity.
Jigsaw, assumedly, performs a similar calculus when selecting his victims. Since his games force their players to face death in order to better value their lives, the selected individuals must have a demonstrated history of undervaluing their lives as well as the potential to change. In the case of Paul, a man whose game involved a maze of barbed wire, Jigsaw chastised him for performing an act of self-harm despite being “a perfectly healthy, sane, middle-class male”.
In order for my dating profile to be seen by potential matches, I first need to be understood by the algorithm. So I create a profile modelled on the language and kinds of images I’ve responded to from others. Yet I never know how to answer the question of what I’m “looking for”. In practice, it’s not a question of want but a question of time. One person can never dictate how long something lasts, only how much time they’re willing to dedicate and how deeply they’re willing to care.
Although it’s impossible to measure, I’ve experienced love as something oversized. Something I could never fill on my own. Over time I’ve learned to stuff everything available (time, money, attention) inside of it like balloons up a t-shirt that were destined to either slip free or deflate.
Every time a friend or acquaintance finds “success” on one of the apps I feel my hand reaching to re-download. Sometimes I give in, convinced that this time will be better. During those periods every match, every conversation, and every date feels like a reward for using the app. I need to believe the app wants to reward me in the same way Jigsaw believes a renewed sense of the value of their life is a reward for his potential victims.
"I need to believe the app wants to reward me in the same way Jigsaw believes a renewed sense of the value of their life is a reward for his potential victims."
In the case of Amanda, the only survivor we meet in Saw, it works. When interrogated by detectives she claims that escaping Jigsaw’s “reverse bear trap” saved her life by helping her get sober. In less violent ways I’ve known this impulse. Meeting someone that I could love makes me reevaluate the fullness of my life and while inside that feeling I would do almost anything to create it for someone else. This is the promise of dating apps like Tinder. If I use them they’ll bring me together with the people with the greatest potential for that feeling.
Yet, the more years I have spent on and off dating apps, the more each re-entry feels like waking up in the room from Saw. Everything feels abandoned but the clock is new. Every action has a deadline and someone is keeping track of how long it takes one of us to say hello, the minutes between our exchanges, and how many messages pass before one of us asks the other to meet.
But what if we fail? What if we don’t connect in any of the ways I’ve known two people to be wrong for each other? For Jigsaw failure means death, but Tinder’s press release never acknowledges if our potential can approach zero. All I know is that I’ve found myself in dating app purgatory where my success dwindles and with every unsuccessful swipe I become more convinced that I am the problem. In those moments, my loneliness at its hungriest, romantic disappointment as close to grief as it’s ever been, and I wonder if the only way to escape is to sacrifice some part of myself. Like Dr. Lawrence Gordon, am I willing to cut off my foot in exchange for freedom? On occasion and in smaller, less gruesome ways, I’ve denied parts of myself in order to leave the apps with a new romantic interest. Afterwards, I would struggle to escape the feeling that every action was being tracked, that every exchange had a deadline, and that every failure to meet my full romantic potential would be punished.
Maybe the obstacle is not my loneliness but the deadlines it inherits. Without his six o’clock time limit Dr. Gordon might have found a way to escape with his foot. Yet his deadline, like the immediacy of dating apps, was invented to breed desperation. Without the limits, I wonder if I could tame my loneliness gradually. Similar to the way you crate train a puppy. This ability to love and be loved in a way that is slow and deliberate is also a kind of potential.