Drama-Free: My Facebook Group about Dating App Dudes that Caused Some Drama

I started online dating after becoming a widow at 46, but the men I found on the apps were so lacking I had to share their profiles with other women in the dating trenches

Lara Starr started a Facebook group to highlight some of the worst dating profiles she encountered after joining dating apps as a widow at age 47

I was excited to start dating.

I had been with one man my entire adult life. My late husband and I were together for 28 years. So, a year after he died, when I was 47 years old, I was more than ready to get on dating apps; I was chomping at the bit.

That year had been the longest I had gone without love, romance, or sex. I didn’t miss it while I was mourning and building our new lives with my teenage son; there were too many other things to do, too many other things to feel. 

But toward the end of that year, my mind started to go there. I looked down at my ring finger and could see taking my wedding rings off. I looked down at men’s ring fingers to see if they had wedding rings on. 

I started to dictate a potential dating app profile in my head. I wanted it to be clever, witty, and fun to read. To convey who I am and what it would be like to date me. To attract the right guy. 

Even though I was a new baby dater in my late forties, I instinctively knew that my profile should be a filter, not a magnet. I didn’t want to attract just anyone. I was all about quality, not quantity. 

I began to slide cute photos into a folder for potential profile pics. 

When I finally signed up for Match.com, I did it with the supreme confidence of the seriously ignorant. 

I thought, “I’m awesome! All of my friends are awesome! There must be all kinds of awesome men to meet!”

I had never looked better. I had been significantly overweight for most of my life. I successfully lost 150 pounds in my early forties and beat the odds by keeping it off. While most women my age were lamenting their lost youth and beauty, and the attention of men, I had never had the attention of men. Some people might have looked at me and assumed I had been a hot chick who was now, while still attractive, past her prime. 

Instead, I moved through the world like I owned it. None of that middle-aged invisibility for me. 

I paid for Match to telegraph that I was taking this seriously. I wanted to show up like a grown-up.

I wrote out my profile in Word and proofed it for errors and typos. I curated my photos into a gallery of The Many Faces of Lara: Smiling Lara! Sexy Lara! Fun Lara! Cute Lara! Travel Lara! Fancy Lara! 

I loaded it all up, paid for my six-month subscription, clicked through to peruse the available men.

Within just a few clicks it became abundantly clear that the vast majority of the men had not made similar efforts.

I had been warned about scammers and heard jokes about fish pics, but I was absolutely unprepared for what I was seeing. And reading.

Photos that looked like scowling mug shots. Photos with other women in them, sometimes blocked out, sometimes not. Photos in beds and bathtubs. Men posed in front of the beer cooler at 7-Eleven, in filthy basements, with their arms slung around women in low-cut dresses and bikinis. Unshaved faces, unkept hair, and dirty fingernails. Bathroom mirror selfies with a visible open toilet in the background. 

Profiles rife with misspellings, typos, and the inexplicable random capitalization. Man after “laid back” man who claimed to “work hard and play hard,” and like tacos, laughing, music, and travel. Almost every profile had some mention of alcohol, and it was troubling how many men in their forties and fifties were looking for “girls.” 

Not to mention the many citations of “drama.” Claiming to be “drama-free” or “not into drama.” Before I had even been on my first date, I knew that that meant a woman ( more likely, many women) had called him out on his BS and he dismissed her as “dramatic.”

It was almost adorable that a man with one (or more) ex-wives and children claimed to be “drama free.” I mean, of course he can have a good relationship with his ex, and his kids could be angels, but no one in relationship with other people lives life without drama. Life is dramatic! 

It was like a graduate course in Gender Studies in under 10 minutes. I very quickly figured out that men weren’t putting effort into their profiles because it makes them feel too vulnerable. If they put in effort, that meant they really wanted something, which made them feel exposed. It was safer to “just check this thing out” or “if you want to know, just ask.”  

Or maybe they were used to things coming to them as men with minimal effort.

Or perhaps they were just low-effort, clueless, entitled douchebags. But so many of them?

I’m fortunate that I haven’t experienced a lot of sexism or toxic masculinity in my life. My husband was raised by a single mother and had six sisters. He knew what it looked like when women were mistreated by men, and he didn’t want to be that man. In book publishing, where I had worked for most of my career, straight men are in the minority (at least on the west coast).

It was like a veil had been lifted. “Oh, this is why women say those things about men.” I felt demoralized, jaded, world-weary. Like I had joined a sisterhood I didn’t know existed. Today I am a woman, and this Bat Mitzvah bites.

As I continued to swipe and read more about dating apps, the narrative wasn’t jiving with my experience. Sure, there were the obvious scammers and creeps, but those guys were easily spotted and avoided.

No one was talking about the banality. The jaw-dropping lack of effort. The arrogance of believing all you have to do is toss up a few blurry photos of yourself sitting in a car wearing sunglasses and a baseball cap and a few poorly-punctuated lines about how much you love camping and beer and the women are gonna come running.

The sexism simmering under it all was so obvious to me, but no one was talking about it. I was in a widow’s Facebook group called “Young Widowed and Dating” and tried several times to post about it, but was always shouted down by both women and men for being “picky” or “snobby” because I expected a grown-ass man who presumably is capable of presenting himself professionally in his career to be able to do so for what has the potential to be the most important job interview of his life.

It was the women who really bummed me out. The pretzels they’d twist themselves into to excuse, explain, and justify the men’s profiles. Their bar was set so low. What else would they be willing to settle for?

I’m someone who processes best in community. I talk a lot. I write a lot. I post a lot. It was so isolating to be experiencing this thing and not have anyone to share it with. Since I wasn’t getting any traction or finding like-minded gals in my widow’s group, and I didn’t have many friends who were single and dating, I started my own Facebook group: Drama-Free: Making fun of Men on Dating Apps.

From the group’s description:

Sharing screenshots of the low-effort, the meh and the red flag wavers.

We're not here to make fun of men for their looks, ages, bodies, jobs, or characteristics and qualities that other women might be into. It's not about cheap shots or punching down.

We're expressing and commiserating our weary frustration with the way men on apps present themselves that reflects and reveals their laziness, poor choices, delusions and entitlement, and the patriarchy that enables and encourages them.

I invited a few like-minded single gals, and started posting screen grabs of profiles with brief, snarky commentary like this:

The group is small, intentionally so. There are only about 60 members, mostly women I know, and a few friends of friends.

The group had been going for a while when I decided to post about it on my main Facebook Page. I knew I was taking a risk that I would offend or alienate folks. It was a risk I was willing to take to offer like-minded women a safe space to vent their frustrations with dating in particular and the patriarchy in general.

For the most part, my Facebook community picked up what I was putting down. However, there were a few people who were angry, hurt, and lost respect for me. I was accused of bullying. I was told I shouldn’t use their real names or photos. I was asked what would I think if men did the same thing?

Bullying? No. Bullying is repeated harassment by someone with power over you. 

Real names and photos? There is no expectation of privacy on a dating app. It’s public and free and anyone can see and share what you post there.

What if men were to make a similar site to make fun of women’s dating app profiles? Go for it, fellas; it makes me no never mind. I stand by my photo choices and what I write in my profile. If you can find something to make fun of about it, you’re welcome to do so in community with like-minded men, as long as you, like I do, don’t make fun of my appearance, weight, or. age. Spelling and grammar are fair game    

I lost a few Facebook friends. I lost the esteem and respect of some people whose esteem and respect I aspire to earn. That didn’t feel good, but it didn’t feel bad enough to stop posting in the group, and, in my little way, smashing the patriarchy one tiny little bit of snark at a time.

Most telling was the comment from a male acquaintance who defended his brothers by suggesting, “They didn’t know their profiles would be so scrutinized.”

Oof. Yes. That’s abundantly clear. And it’s clear both he and they think it’s too much to expect for a man to put thought into how he presents himself on a dating app. That he needs to make a case for why a woman would want to spend time with him. That he show up on the app the way he’d show up on a date. 

Even if all he’s looking for is a hookup, show a gal why that prospect would be appealing.

And at the risk of turning my sarcastic little group into more than it is, every time I swipe, snicker, and snark, I say my version of a prayer for the vast majority of women throughout the vast majority of human history who couldn't.

I honor the women who had/have no choice but to marry men like these dudes for their survival. Who couldn’t/can’t leave those marriages for their children’s survival. Who spent/spend their lives in servitude and silence.

How very, very rare it has been until very, very recently for women to make fully informed choices about their partners because they were not fully allowed to be themselves.

I haven’t given up on love. Not by a long shot. I still swipe. Mostly left. I’ve met some lovely men who will make other women very happy, a few boring duds who I hope find the gals for them (although I can’t imagine who they might be), and a couple of real doozies. 

I live a full, fun, busy life. I have a wide and deep social circle and am also happy to do things on my own. I’m rarely lonely and almost never bored. I make friends easily and meet cool people all the time. Overwhelmingly those people are women.

I would love to meet a man I’m super exited to spend time with. Who intrigues me and makes me laugh. Who is intrigued by me and who I make laugh. 

Do you know anybody? 

Lara Starr is a publicist, Substacker, Charm School Principal, sometime cookbook author, former radio producer, low-key activist, and semi-pro thrift shopper. You can learn more at larastarr.com, and follow her antics on Substack, It’s Kind of Long Story… You’ll want to start with the Sister Ex Saga, in which her life is upended by her ex’s ex.