Much as I had hoped that my cornucopia of raw charisma, coupled with my mild case of celebrity, would be sufficient fuel to elicit dates as a forty-something single in 2022, I have been deeply disappointed to learn that I, too, have to travel down the well-worn but new-to-me path of online dating profiles and the ensuing small talk with strangers and awkward—sometimes awful—scheduled first encounters. I am also apparently required to have hobbies.
When the dating app asked me to list them, it was a little startling to step back and gaze at the hole in my personality where mentionable hobbies should be. Don’t get me wrong: I like to do things. I’m just not listicle-level proud of all of them. Imagine a Hinge profile that reads,
