Swiping right goes very wrong as Andrew Tate’s army fakes a left turn

Two types of notifications fill me with the same cold dread: news alerts with headlines about the steep rise in conservative values and policies, and those from Bumble, begging me to return to its platform and resume swiping into the ether.

Recently, I’ve begun to worry that there is no separating the two.

On my social feed, in those corners of the internet I save for bad moods and rage-bait, and through the lived experience of me and my single friends, there’s increasing anecdata about right-leaning men hiding their politics until after their profile has been swiped, a connection has been made and a bedpost has been notched. It’s simple enough: Struggling to find love? Just lie!

Credit: Robin Cowcher

Look, bringing a more appealing version of yourself to a first date is hardly breaking news. We all fill our profiles with flattering photos. We all pretend that we love hiking and cooking and arty cinema, and lie about having hobbies beyond looking at our phones and waiting for the next episode of Severance. If our truest selves gave all our first impressions, the human race would become extinct. But that’s not quite what this is.

Pretending to love camping is one thing. Lying about who you voted for to get into someone’s pants is another.

Maybe these reports shouldn’t be so surprising. It’s been said that increasing numbers of men are skewing right, while women are travelling further left. Those couples with diametrically opposite views happily coexisting are relics of a long, long bygone era. It’s a suggestion I can’t shrug off: in times like these, in a city like Melbourne, members of the Young Liberals and Elon Musk fan clubs probably aren’t getting all that many matches.

How interesting that their response then isn’t to introspect, to reconsider their beliefs or seek out partners who align with them — but to just pretend. Drop “conservative” from their Hinge profile and replace it with “liberal”, like colouring your roots or slipping on a disguise.

To what end? To get laid? Or is it bigger: to play sleeper agent, slink into someone’s life, meet their friends, make plans, then one day pull the rug out from under them. Surprise! I had a completely different value system all along! Do you love me still?

It’s sinister. It’s Gileadean. It’s exhausting. Isn’t dating hard enough already?

Some things – like playing golf, or loving Christopher Nolan films, or living on the wrong side of the Yarra – can be overlooked for true love. Others – like whether you believe in my right to bodily autonomy and that my friends have a right to exist and love who they love – are non-negotiables. When you throw a filter over your politics to win someone over, it’s not a clever marketing trick; it’s fraud. With that at risk, is it any wonder so many women choose the bear?

No doubt there are plenty of examples of this problem inverted: women who trick men, cautionary tales about prophylactic-tampering and claims that lipstick and padded bras are false advertising. I can only report on my experience as a straightish woman dating men. I can only refer to dates and short relationships with good-on-paper guys who turned out to believe bisexuality is a myth and that “Andrew Tate is a really strong male role model, actually”.

Whenever I write about dating in this masthead, the response from a certain subset of readers can be swift and acidic. People who wouldn’t want to date someone like me get very upset that I wouldn’t want to date someone like them. Silly or serious, opinion or observation: no matter what tone I take, the response is the same. Come Sunday morning, there will be bile in the comments section, slabs of misspelled vitriol in my DMs, and if this fortnight’s piece is particularly prickly, one or two veiled threats sent, somehow, to my personal email address.

It used to get under my skin. In light of this trend, though, some part of me is almost … grateful for it. At least these men make themselves known. At least they’ve dropped the mask, if only through a screen. At least they aren’t waiting for me to emotionally bond with their cat before they let their contempt for my kind seep in like carbon monoxide, turning the air toxic and suffocating us both.

Another notification from Bumble. Genevieve, we miss you, it says. Please come back. We’ve changed. I clear it from my screen. I’ll believe it when I see it.

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