My friend called me at 3 a.m. the other day because he didn’t know if he should accept his Hinge match request right away.

“I want to seem interested but not chronically online and still maintain some mystery,” he said. I hung up thinking it was the most accurate summary of modern dating I’d ever heard.

Online dating is exhausting. It feels like there are plenty of fish in the sea with endless swipes until you see your psychology TA or that person from class you’ve made awkward eye contact with once.

Thank God I’m not participating in this clown show anymore. Now, I get to watch my single friends make the worst decisions of their twenties.

This abundance of choice is a disastrous grand illusion. It has commodified people into things you can easily reduce to one click. It’s turned a genuine human connection into something transactional. The more we can choose, the less we want to stay.

One minor inconvenience —  an ick, if you will — and you think, “It’s fine, I can always find better.” Whether he uses the crying-laughing emoji unironically or has too many Instagram highlight circles, there’s always a little voice in your head whispering that after this date, you can go home, crawl into bed and swipe your way to the love of your life.

That is, if you even get to the “date” stage. And when you accidentally swipe left on someone mildly cute, you’ll spend the rest of the night wondering if he could’ve been the one.

Sure, there are non-negotiables: If he’s against basic human rights, mistreats waiters, or — God forbid —  still thinks Andrew Tate is profound. But what about the rest? What about the people who are just … human?

We’ve become so quick to discard anyone who doesn’t immediately meet our curated list of preferences that we forget real connection grows in the messy middle.

The irony is that dating apps were supposed to make love more accessible. Instead, they’ve turned vulnerability into performance. Every match feels like a mini job interview where you have to sound witty, interesting, but not too interested in a desperate kind of way. You have to show that you care, but not too much. If you reply too fast, you might lose your mysterious nonchalant edge.

I’ve been on that carousel. The texts that start with “hey :)” and die three messages later. The ones where you and your friends crowd around a phone, debating whether to go with a simple “hey” or “heyyy” (emphasis on the number of y’s) before pressing send in the middle of the night, convincing yourselves this one might actually be different. But they all tend to disappear after a week because someone shinier appeared on their screen.

And yet, we keep going. Because what’s the alternative? Meeting someone in real life? That feels almost impossible now.

Sometimes I wonder if dating used to feel more sacred because it required actual effort. You couldn’t scroll through possibilities while watching a show. You had to actually try. Try asking for a number, calling, showing up and having the guts to say “no” in real life. Now, it’s too easy to forget there’s a real person behind every profile.

Maybe dating apps didn’t ruin dating. Maybe they just exposed the worst parts of human nature.

Aizere Yessenkul is a NU-Q Communication senior and author of “Yes-sentials.” She can be contacted at [email protected]. If you would like to respond publicly to this op-ed, send a Letter to the Editor to [email protected]. The views expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect the views of all staff members of The Daily Northwestern.