The Opposite of Every Match.com Profile Ever Written

by Ryan Kearney

About me:

I did not just join Match. I have been here since Day 1, 1995. And since I do not contain multitudes — nor pretend to — I find it quite easy to describe myself in several paragraphs.

I don’t love to share laughs, or to share anything, really. Smiling also brings me no pleasure, unless I’m making someone cry, preferably in public. I am not driven; I strive to do everything minus-110%. I don’t have a job and never have, but if I did, I’d hate it — just like I hate dogs and cats and horses and most other animals, including humans. I’ve never done a spontaneous thing in my life, which has been mostly dictated by my autonomic nervous system. I’m neither easygoing nor outgoing; the “-going” suffix annoys me in general. I avoid trying new things, and my discovery of new places is always purely, irritatingly accidental.

I am not originally from anywhere. I did not grow up, go to school, or move anywhere before landing where I am, which is exactly where I’ve always been. I am a mix of exactly zero hyphenated nationalities. In my free time, I do nothing. I do not have a favorite sports team that excites me to the point of ending sentences with exclamation points. I don’t go running, except at the end of every date. I don’t enjoy exploring this hellhole city in which I have always lived, let alone the entire world, which is so much bigger than the Sherman brothers have brainwashed children into believing. I abhor the outdoors. And the beach is the absolute worst, what with all that fucking sand.

Generally, I am a fun-hating, dishonest, unambitious, and mean person who loves creating drama and is always trying to get the least out of life. In fact, I treat every single day like I have many, many more days left in this interminable life.

About my date:

You don’t want kids. Hate ’em, in fact. You are not independent, and won’t be independent for the foreseeable future, which is to say forever. You love to play games. You are dumb and have a terrible sense of humor. You enjoy inane conversation, preferably while sipping curdled milk in some fecal alleyway. You are not compassionate or loyal or even aware that there are other people in the world. You neither know how to have a good time nor like to spend a quiet, laid-back evening on the couch; you don’t even own a couch.

Family is the least important thing in the world to you because family is always demanding things of you, like presents and emails and phone conversation, which is a problem because you have no money to buy presents or a computer or a cell phone; you set up your Match profile at the local public library, where, right now, you are rightly being mistaken as homeless. Friends are equally unimportant to you for similar reasons, which is why I would not be your “best” friend, but rather your “only” friend.

Though I admit to being in desperate need of completion by another person, you will not be the person who accomplishes this. You believe that a balanced relationship is based on lies, misunderstanding, and mutual disrespect. You are closed to everything and won’t ever challenge me. You’re not looking for a partner in crime, or even law-abidingness; “partners” is perhaps your least favorite word, after “love.”

In short, you are the person of my worst nightmares. So email me and maybe sparks won’t fly.

Ryan Kearney dates in Washington, D.C. and is a story editor at The New Republic.