Ash Sarkar’s disdain for dating apps has been simmering away for the best part of a decade. The journalist and activist had her first foray into the world of online dating around 10 years ago, when she entered the online meat market feeling like “somebody’s country cousin who didn’t know the complex city ways”. Her time on the apps was mercifully brief, but she still remembers the immediate takeaway: people here are dismissive and non-committal.
Luckily Sarkar’s pursuit of offline dating was far more fruitful. “I found a man whose self-esteem was low enough that he wanted to marry me,” she laughs. She deleted the apps as easily as she joined them, but she could not escape the degrading state of online dating. It lived on in the experiences of friends or the woes of strangers, often submitted to the dilemmas section of her hit podcast, If I Speak, which she hosts alongside journalist Moya Lothian-McLean.
