New Dating App Twine Says You Shouldn't Care About Your Date's Looks

Hold onto your digital boners folks, because there's a new online dating app on the market. Tired of always knowing what your prospective date might look like? Miss the days when you had to chat online for weeks before finally deciding to meet each other at the mall by the fountain, right between the pay phone and the Hot Topic? Well then Twine is the dating app for you!

Twine brands itself as "the first gender balanced flirting network" that protects your identity by not revealing what you look like to those you're flirting with. WHUT? Life is a gender balanced flirting network, and if you're concerned about protecting your anonymity while flirting, try riding the 71 MUNI with a trench coat and ski mask like I do.

According to the San Jose Mercury:

Twine, which launched July 31, wants its users to form substantive connections based on common interests, instead of relying on appearances like most of the other dating apps on the market.

Because if there's one thing I've always said, it's that physical attraction is not important in a relationship. The second thing I've always said has been the first thing, but louder, because I'm blind and it's hard to tell if anyone was in the room.

Downplaying the importance of physical attraction has been a characteristic of overly zealous PC mongers for as long as I can remember. It's the notion that beauty is so subjective that it becomes impossible to actually exist while simultaneously existing everywhere. In turn anyone who seeks to be physically attracted to their partner is simply shallow. If you ask me, you shouldn't even see what your partner looks like. I was completely shocked when my roommate told me I had been dating a a Boston Terrier for the last three months.

The Mercury quotes a 23-year-old woman and Twine user named Liz Azevedo as saying "At first I was a little turned off by it. But after using the app, I like the fact that you're actually getting to know people. With Twine you're having real conversations and forming relationships before you even see them."

NO YOU'RE NOT! You're forming an online relationship with someone's portrayal of their idealized self. Your goal in online dating should always be to bring that date into your real life as soon as possible. All having "chemistry" with someone online means is that the two of you are really good exchanging carefully crafted, thought out and reworked text, free of immediacy, free of bad breath, and free of the consequence of rejection.

But if you think the product itself stinks, wait till you hear their business plan. Twine is free, vows to "always be advertising free", and does not charge for membership or premium services. When asked how they ever planned to monetize, Twine co-founder Etan Berkowitz told the Mercury, "As they say in the tech world, we'll figure that out later. Perhaps we'd monetize, but it's not on the table now.''

Don't worry folks, it's not like the Bay Area's economy is based entirely on vaporware and arbitrage. We definitely have real goods that serve a real value in our our economy, with no end in sight. Now hand me that $10 million check Sequoia and let's push some more poor people out of this city.

In the meantime, if you believe in in the Twine philosophy, try doing what I did, and just replace all your Tinder photos with pictures of cliche mantras you try to live by. Mine say "There's no time like the present", "If you love her, let her go", and "Don't drop that thun thun thun".