Online Dating: The Beguiling Shadow that It Is

Greetings, young gentleman,

Have you ever opened a dating app, swiped through a dozen faces, and felt strangely empty afterward—like you were shopping for connection but ended up with nothing real? You're not alone. In a world where our profiles are polished, our photos are filtered, and our words are carefully crafted, it's easy to feel like we're performing more than living. French philosopher Jean Baudrillard once warned about this very thing. He said that in modern life, the copy often replaces the original—that we start confusing a simulation for the real thing. Online dating is one of the clearest examples of this. We’re promised love, or at least intimacy, but often left with a curated illusion. This essay is a guide for young men who are trying to stay sincere, grounded, and self-aware in a digital world that rewards surface over substance.

I think philosophy can prepare a gentleman for discernment into the ways of this world, this postmodern society, and the deceptive lies wrought with false promises of fulfillment. Philosophy has helped me to dispel the darkness of human existence and to gain clarity of that which Is. To this endeavor, let us now consider the traps and snares of online dating – and why you might think twice before trusting it.

The First Instance: Liking an Online Dating Profile

You found an attractive woman, have you? Jean Baudrillard said we often confuse what's real with polished versions of it—like a filtered photo that becomes more 'real' to us than the person it depicts. Hyperreality is when fake experiences feel more real than real life. Think Instagram stories, dating bios, or curated photos—these aren’t just tools; they replace real connection. That said, she is still attractive and your desire is high so you swipe right or click match (heart) icon.

She likes or matches you back, yay! Or, is it?

Now, you encounter the long dark night of ambiguity and intermitted texting followed with vague, contrived, and oft passive language. You are scratching you head, saying “But wait...why does this feel off?”

The Second Instance: Performance Over Substance (or, Being)

Online dating isn't just about meeting people—it’s about creating a version of yourself that others will want to meet. Ask yourself: does this feel false for you?

From the moment you choose a profile photo, write a bio, or select a witty prompt response, you're engaged in what Baudrillard would called – simulation —presenting a polished image that may resemble you, but is not you in the fullest sense.

More than lying itself, it is curating. And this curation has consequences.

The more we fine-tune our profiles to get swipes, the more we play into what the system rewards: attention, aesthetics, and immediate attraction. The result is what Baudrillard called hyperreality—where the copy becomes more real, more desirable, than reality itself. In this system, you're not a man with depth, flaws, and history. You're a consumer—and a product. You swipe to shop, and you're swiped on like you're for sale. Dating enters the commodification of attention. A game with rules of value and condemnation.

When the conversation starts between you and your match, it feels transactional, guarded with “breadcrumbs”, with two avatars navigating their uncertainties and insecurities adorned in curated masks and protective silence. You both are performing. Are you talking? Or, is it managing impressions – afraid to sound too eager, too slow, or too much? Ask yourself: is it fear consciousness at the inception of this match?

The actions that followed are not built for mutual understanding, but for curated control.

Vulnerability, which used to be the gateway to intimacy, now feels like a liability in this Game of (im)Postures. Ask yourself: Are you posing?

But simulation does not remain at the level of image. It invades the moral imagination—and this incurs a deeper loss.

The Third Instance: Performance, it Has a Human Cost (even a spiritual cost)

Indecision is its own decision. Silence does speak.

In the Game of (im)Postures, the statistical numbers are in the woman’s favor. Performing will inevitably lead to loss for even the highest performing man.

In Baudrillard’s terms, we inhabit a world of simulations so pervasive that the real—raw, unscripted, vulnerable human interaction—becomes harder to recognize, and even harder to trust. Consider this: online dating apps rarely reward sincerity. In fact, they often punish it. A genuine message may be ignored in favor of clever banter. A real smile may be outperformed by a strategically angled photo with perfect lighting. Depth becomes invisible in a world where appearance is currency. When users are reduced to thumbnails in a feed, there is no room for nuance, silence, uncertainty—only decisiveness, instant gratification, and split-second judgments.

This isn’t just about technology—it’s about what it’s doing to our souls.

For the sincere dater, he knows sincerity requires risk. He is willing to risk much without pretense. Yet, in this hyperreal space of online dating, that kind of openness becomes a liability. So we adapt: we posture, we package, we protect. We develop an online self—a curated mask—that gets more engagement than our actual self ever could. Over time, the mask doesn’t just hide us; it replaces us. We choose an identity over our own spiritual inheritance of essence, and the arduous work to know it.

We become lost and sucked in being “alpha” or being [insert whatever fashionable idol of the day]. Dating becomes reified into an intended outcome or conquest! It is not about connection, but validation, performance, or escape. We prefer the comfort of distraction, attention, and the codependence of others for our own egoic gratification and preservation.

Ask yourself: does this feel a bit dark to you?

The cost of performance does not stop here, it continues.

Your authentic presence (as the Greeks called Aletheia) – which is the ability to affirm truth over falsehood, affirm compassion, uphold justice and righteousness in the face of slander – becomes compromised. Consider this: perusing dozens of profiles, apps, chat windows, notifications, swiping here to there…how is your energy and attention not scattered, split and torn asunder? Moreover, why did you not protect your energy and emotional well-being better?

The answer is performance.

Performance has cost your ability to decide and affirm what is Good. Online dating platforms encourage non-commitment.

Every interaction is provisional, suspended in the possibility of someone “better” just one swipe away. Even while talking to someone, one is haunted by absence—of what else could be, who else might match, where else attention might go. Again, this is a fear consciousness that paralyzes, snares, and holds you captive to its anxiety – which is a precursor to darker things (for another discussion). For now, it is incisive to say that doubt is what drove online daters to perform and cost them their well-being and the higher good of authentic connection and the truth of human frailty in relationship.

Instead, the online dating profile becomes a locus of external control – the last refuge of the self.

French philosopher Jean Baudrillard has a warning for you, young sir. Online dating platforms have turned seduction into simulation, love as performance, and truth untraceable. The cost is the the loneliness felt after hours of “connection,” the self-doubt after being ghosted, the sense that no one really knows you, not even yourself.

The Fifth Instance: Leaving the Cave that is Hyperreality … (few dare tread here)

To leave the cave is to renounce the shadows—those curated selves we craft for the applause of others—and to risk living in the light of truth.

Know this about online dating apps: ethically speaking, they are not meant to match you with the most compatible person; but rather, they are engineering for optimal dopamine hits. In other words, these apps are not neutral—they are designed for engagement, not union. Their economic incentive is to keep you swiping, not to help you pair off. Each match delivers a dopamine spike; each “like” validates your desirability. In this way, the app becomes an instrument of distraction, not connection.

Many use it more for entertainment than for serious pursuit.

Philosophically, this is called deceit since it is not fully revealed by its app makers. In fact, they attest to the opposite; however, the ramifications herein show otherwise.

The way out of hyperreality – whether it is online dating, the workplace, or elsewhere – is to know thyself. Your attention is in your own keeping. It is not for someone else to give it back to you. Seek the truth about yourself and your telos in the world. Vanity for its own control is not your friend. Understanding and acceptance will serve you far better. Pursue wisdom, not control.

In dating and relationship, To love truly in an age of performance, is to become a kind of rebel—one who dares to know and be known without costume, without conquest. To date with dignity in such a world is not to retreat, but to risk everything for the sake of what is real. Yes, there is no escape but to know yourself.

In truth, JR

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