App Dates From Hell: Volume 2

The saga continues... Happy Boxing Day!

Mr. Video

This image might be a slight exaggeration :)

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then it seems a video should be worth exponentially more. As I learned from Mr. Video, in some cases a video is worth just a single word: No.

Nothing about Mr. Video stood out as particularly good/bad at first, he was kind of vanilla. As we started texting, I learned that he had done a lot of interesting travel and was close with his twin sister. In my experience, sisters make good brothers so I was more than happy to meet him for coffee one afternoon.

We met the same week that “The 36 Questions that Lead to Love” was published in The New York Times. Mr. V thought it would be fun to answer them. Why that didn’t immediately send me running, I’ll never know. I think I was too curious to see how it would go and if it would make me feel anything towards a more or less complete stranger.

He was all, “ladies first.” Well great. This was not chivalrous; in fact, it was anti-chivalrous as it let him gauge each answer from what I had said. As we went through the questions, he let it slip that he had already done them with his sister and her best friend. Now the alarms were beginning to flash. Not only did he already know what he was going to say for each but he did these with his sister and her bff? Was he trying to fall in love with them? Suddenly it didn’t seem “so sweet” that most of his stories involved his sister and said best friend. Am I walking into a weird polygamous, sibling love-fest here? I know twins are close (at least in my experience) but their relationship seemed too close.

As soon as we’d finished (admittedly a few questions were skipped), Mr. V pulled out his phone…to take a video of the moment. WTF?! Turns out, he likes to record special moments. At this point I was flattered and also feeling very vulnerable and confused given that I’d just poured out some pretty personal things to this guy. [Author’s Note: I am ashamed of my former self. Also why, just why?] I made it clear that I wasn’t so cool with making a run for the Oscars and he turned the lens back on himself and then put the phone away.

A few nights later we met up for drinks. Everything seemed fine and the phone stayed out of sight. The next day I was running errands when he texted to say that he wasn’t going to use the app anymore because I was really special. Again, flattered but it was a little much. Maybe those questions really worked on him? Finally, my sanity started to kick in and I began thinking that there was no way this was going anywhere and he was… he was something and whatever that something was, it wasn’t good. At 1am the next morning, my phone lit up with videos of Mr. V out with friends. Did he really think this was the right time to send this video or that I’d want to see it? Did he really assemble them all so he could pan across while they waved to me? This was straight up creepy. At least his sister and her bestie weren’t there. It was shortly after that I told him it wasn’t going to work. Five months later, I was in a car with my family coming home from an event when I got a text that read “hi.” When I found out it was Mr. V, I was stunned. All I could think to reply was that I was still too busy for anything.