Photo by René Ranisch on Unsplash
Now that lockdowns are slowly eased all around the world, the sexually deprived amongst us don’t need to resort to creative solutions anymore, like Holland’s suggestion to find a quarantine sex buddy or attending professionally organised online orgies. Companies are going back to business and so is your dating life. Since months of isolation have taken a toll on our social skills, it’s going to be hard to predict what dating will be like between freshly recovered hermits. Practicing icebreakers on Tinder was easy when you had anything from three minutes to three months to edit and refine your lines. Now we have to respond in "real time". Wondering who we've all become as a product of quarantine, I’ve tried to predict the kinds of guys we’re likely to date when the human meat market is fully open again.
The Elon Musk Worshipper (“he’s here to save humanity, don’t you understand?”)
Oh, it’s been a wild ride seeing young lads on Twitter realise that the exact same men they worshipped like the prophets of some New Atheist cult actually turn out to be a bit nuts. But we shall never underestimate the power of a self-proclaimed genius who likes fast and technologically advanced vehicles while conveniently having a bit of money lying around. I have no doubt that downplaying a deadly virus or forcing his workers to risk their lives during a literal pandemic has broken his armour of delusional heroism. So be careful not to offend the guy who can’t shut up about his love for rockets and SpaceX after he watched Interstellar and The Martian, or you might never be able to stir the conversation into a different direction before he asks you how much you know about PayPal and Bitcoin.
The guy who pretends he’s a feminist but won't admit that OnlyFans got him through lockdown horniness
As you order an Old Fashioned, he goes for a Cosmopolitan despite the fact that he hates cranberry juice and thinks vodka is vile. He just really wants to prove that his toxic masculinity doesn't stop him from ordering the pinkest drink on the menu. He mutters something about female solidarity between each sip. While he's hoping this would be enough feminism for today, you trigger a nervous sweat by asking him for his feminist review of OnlyFans, the surprisingly less problematic app out of all the lockdown favourites. Unsure what will be more likely to get you to sleep with him, he’s torn apart between respecting sex work and ways for women to reclaim ownership over their bodies, and criticising the impact it has on women's objectification. In the meantime, he forgot that a direct debit to the five OnlyFans he subscribed to are going out today, and makes up an excuse to leave so he doesn’t have to ask you to pay for the next round of drinks.
That guy who found new purpose in lockdown by growing vegetables from his balcony (he's a keeper)
It started with tomatoes and ended with a colony of fruits and vegetables big enough to feed his entire family. Unfortunately, you can’t share objects with anyone over Zoom, he points out with a smirk, but that would probably just be another opportunity for privacy breaches and crime anyway. He spends most of his time talking about what happens when you over-water your plants and how much his love for giving back to mother Earth has increased during lockdown. Occasionally he takes off his Birkenstock's under the table to playfully rub your leg. He pretends it's the dog you guys could adopt if you were to become a couple. He offers to show you around the community garden he joined recently after your second date, but first, he would like to cook dinner for you, making passata out of his homegrown tomatoes.
The guy who went through the alt-right rabbit hole five years too late and thinks Milo Yiannopoulos & Co are still relevant
YouTube spirals were certainly a life saving distraction for many of us. But apparently it was even more important for young, white men in their 20s suffering from a father complex. Not knowing what you’ve gotten yourself into, you fail to realise that his acts of chivalry are a disguise for his desire to make you submit to him - and not in a good way, the sex is still shit. In reality, he's looking for someone to become his home cooker, cleaner, source of unconditional mother-like support, and child breeder. You know, just like your biological reality and evolution would want you to. You met this guy on Tinder during one of many lonely lockdown nights, and continued to talk to him out of sheer desperation even after he said “Wait - isn’t that something a feminist would say?” as if he’s accusing you of being a Satanist who eats her own children. To tease him a little, you ask him what he thinks of Milo and Ben Shapiro, and freeze in horror when he admits, ‘he hasn’t watched enough of them but thinks he likes them so far’. He’s 25 with a law degree and gets most of his opinions from Jordan Peterson videos. You leave before the lobster arrives at your table.
The guy who turned a new obsession into his personality and therefore lost the ability to talk about anything else
In an attempt not to confront our lockdown horror and subconscious thoughts emerging to the surface, many of us resorted to breadmaking, painting, yoga, and just embraced overall solitary hippie-ness. Some people might have taken it a little too far though, and one of them is your date. His bubble of protection during lockdown was to go over and beyond with his obsession to the point where it became his personality. Maybe he started reading the New Yorker and is now reciting lines from articles he didn’t really get, but was sure would impress you as long as they’re as confusing to you as to him. It’s a bit like learning foreign phrases by hard for a French exam, the difference being that he thinks he’s reciting them to himself instead of an examiner who sees right through his bullshit. Perhaps far worse is the craft beer fanatic who’s been ordering cans of Brewdog all lockdown long and now refuses to take you anywhere that sells regular lager. He orders you a beer called something like Intergalactic Mouse Trap and after one sip you realise you’re doomed as you think he might be onto something. Look what lockdown has done to us.