*This piece is entirely satirical. Read the rest of our April Fool’s edition, the Trinibonian, here.
In early February, my editors gave me an assignment: go on seven dates in seven nights and write about the experience for Valentine’s Day. At our story idea meeting, I pleaded with them for an alternative. There was absolutely no way it would be a successful endeavour. When I returned to the newsroom the following week, however, I returned not with a good story, but with a wife. It might seem implausible, dear reader, until you know the method: Anonymous social media app Jizz.
On Jizz, I encountered an oasis. A sea of anonymous posts meant a selection of people I didn’t know if I’d ever interacted with before. Failure, here, was truly low stakes. Quite unlike the primal fear that accompanies the prospect of approaching a real person, the only feeling pervasive in my attempts at finding love on Jizz was the sense that what I was doing was surely a new low. But it didn’t matter. I needed to fill the agenda for seven nights. I sent direct messages. Fewer people responded. And we set our calendars.
But first, a bit about the love of my life. She likes to crochet, read ethnographic sketch comedy, and is working on an erotic thriller about a polyamorous throuple whose relationship name alternates between “Cando” and “Candall,” depending on the party visibly receiving more attention that day. She’s on her fifth rewatch of “Heated Rivalry,” fills her playlists with Phoebe Bridgers and Snow Strippers, and I think her friends all hate me. Except for her best friend, who quietly hates her, and is romantically interested in me in spite. It’s complicated. But that’s love. And love, it turns out, has a methodology.
According to a survey conducted by none of your business, 73% of successful campus relationships began on platforms where neither party knew what the other looked like. Research suggests that removing physical pre-selection from the equation forces participants to develop what sociologists call “conversational accountability,” or the radical condition of having to actually be interesting.
There is also the matter of Trinity’s peculiar social ecology. At a school this size, the conventional dating market operates less like a market and more like a small claims court. Everyone knows everyone, grievances are public, and the cost of failure is reputational. Jizz inverts this entirely, turning a poorly conceived anonymous social media app into a haven for sincerity. The anonymity functions as a kind of legal immunity, allowing both parties to pursue an outcome they actually want without the overhead of managing how it will look to mutual acquaintances. Sociologists call this “context collapse prevention.” I call it not having to explain yourself to your roommates.
Your first date acquired via Jizz will probably be awkward. The medium tends to lend itself to such encounters. You probably will not “click,” and you may struggle to come up with conversation topics. You can expect to encounter the kind of person that looks to the state of Ohio as a comedic device. My first date wanted to talk to me about how the latest Nettspend album would change underground music. As I sat across from her anxiously, waiting for the next opportunity to ask the waitress for more ketchup packets to accompany my chicken tenders, I considered what the stakes of failing here were. On Jizz, failure is just a bad anecdote. In real life, you both know that you tried.
The caveat, of course, is that Jizz demands a tolerance for embarrassment that not everyone possesses. You will go on bad dates. You will discuss Nettspend. But this is a feature, not a bug. The willingness to fail publicly, or at least semi-publicly, is precisely what filters out the kind of person who would use the restroom mid-date to post something obscene and return as if they hadn’t. Jizz may not reward the faint of heart, but it rewards the person who is, at minimum, willing to try.
After this revelation, I decided to lock in. Known by some as the “left-wing Ezra Klein,” others as the “right-wing Kash Patel,” and the rest as the “most feared undergraduate” in America two years in a row, I decided to up the ante. I would return to my editors with a riveting story and a wife. On night six, I met her. I was first taken with the Labubu doll attached to her purse.
“That looks like a special one,” I commented. “The kind I always hope for when I buy them.”
In retrospect, maybe those were the magic words. A sign that I wouldn’t use the restroom mid-date to post something obscene on Jizz and return as if I hadn’t just done so. One month later, and we are now the proud parents of seven.
