The real user journey
Turns out all I needed was a break, some rest to recover my writing energy. So the end wasn’t really the end, after all? This happens to me quite often - I naturally operate in bursts, but thanks to social conditioning, I try to be “consistent” and get exhausted. But you know what, the only thing that I’ve been consistent at is actually not being consistent, so let’s all just embrace that ok? (self-note really!)
Ideally, you’d love to prance into a dim lit bar, connect with someone over a drink, make out wildly and wake up the next morning knowing that you’ve met the love of your life and have nothing to worry about, except you decided to go on a matrimonial site to recreate this serendipitous situation.
So you see, the user journey is a little bit different here.
Step 1: You get on an app, spend a few days figuring out who you want to be on this very public platform that will judge you over and over again in about 3 seconds each time.
Step 2: You scour through thousands of highly unsuitable people to find someone hot, and muster up the courage to send them a little love with a handcrafted expression of interest, leaving your number for them to reach out in case they’re interested.
Step 3: Within nano seconds, you receive some love back in the form of a default response “We like your profile too, why don’t we take the conversation forward?”.
Step 4: You want to say “Duh, that’s why I left my number in the previous message”, but you pretend like you sent a default message that you didn’t notice either, and then ask them for their number because clearly they don’t want to be the ones reaching out.
Step 5: They don’t respond, and now you don’t know if they’re uninterested or missed the notification. Either way, you are a sucker for efficiency, so you just go to their profile, unhide their phone number and exhaust your quota of contacts that you can view for your money’s worth.
Step 6: You add them as your contact and see the display picture on WhatsApp to realize it’s not the ward you’re talking to, but the parent. Of course, now the silent treatment makes sense you think.
Step 7: You drop them a message reminding them about connecting on some platform with your profile ID for reference because you see people throw out expressions of interests like seeds for pigeons to feed on.
Step 8: Again, they don’t respond. So now you are sure they weren’t interested in the first place.
Step 9: You are about to delete their message off your phone and you see that they’re now “typing..."
Step 10: They respond saying “Please send me your profile on WhatsApp”. Now, initially, you thought people were nuts to be sending out expressions of interest without seeing your profile and then asking you to re-share a “profile” on WhatsApp. But pretty quickly you realise the rationale behind this ask.
Step 11: You send them a one-page pdf with a picture and all basic life details.
Step 12: Again, they don’t respond. Now you’re wondering if they’re messing with you. Just to be sure, you follow up asking if they’d like to take the conversation forward.
Step 13: After about 3 hours, they respond saying they’ll check with their ward and let you know.
Step 14: You politely thank them, give up hope and move on with your life because of course, you don’t hear from them again.
Step 15: After 3 days of radio silence, you receive a message from them asking either your horoscope details, salary or complexion which didn’t have a mention in your profile.
Step 16: Now, you’re torn between responding to the message and blocking them. But since you still have some sanity left, you choose the latter.
Step 17: You delete the matrimonial apps on your phone. Download Tinder, again and swipe incessantly in the hope of finding meaningless sex.
Two hours go by, your finger is sore from the swiping, not one match. Let’s face it, if you had so much game, you’d be using your finger for something else. You put your phone away, use your finger anyway, and manage to put yourself to bed.