Coming Un-Hinged

A vegan, married man goes on a dating app.

Regular readers of The Alignment will attest to the fact that this blog deals with some serious, weighty subjects.

You know, death, aging, the meaning of life, stuff like that.

Get ready for a change of pace today. No, we’re not going to totally eschew gravitas. That’s just not in my DNA.

The plan is to show you a sample of my profile, if I had a profile, on Hinge, a dating app that has grown in popularity over the last 10 years. What distinguishes Hinge is the use of prompts, or unfinished sentences, the responses to which can both reveal and entertain.

This exercise I’m undertaking is inherently ridiculous, since I’ve been happily married for 19 years and didn’t even engage in online dating back when I was single, even while my friends were scouring every inch of Jdate for a partner.

But this idea struck me earlier this week when I saw that PETA2, PETA’s young-adult division, put out a set of suggested responses to 40 Hinge prompts. Several of the responses were quite witty, so I accepted the (self-imposed) challenge of crafting my own true-but-clever responses. So here goes, my responses to actual prompts on Hinge:

the last time i cried happy tears was

when Starbucks eliminated its surcharge on plant-based milks.

my self-care routine is

meditation and exercise in the morning and reading books or watching sports at night. I need a lot of self-care. A lot.

typical sunday

I’m watching football and devouring homemade vegan nachos.

a random fact i love is

that chickens make more than 20 distinct vocalizations.

I’m sure one of them is, “Please don’t kill me and eat me.”

i could stay up all night talking about

By all night, do you mean until 10 pm? I’m not the night owl I used to be.

I could stay up until 10 or 10:30 talking about veganism. Or baseball. Or books.

don’t hate me if i

truly believe homo sapiens should be renamed homo stupidus. Seriously, just take a look at how humans treat animals and each other. How we enslave ourselves to our smartphones and easily succumb to social-media algorithms.

Homo sapiens? I don’t think so.

the kindest thing someone has ever done for me

is call me and encourage me to apply for a job with a nonprofit. I was a career newspaper journalist at the time and that call saved me from going down with the ship.

That one phone call — from an executive at the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh — set in motion a series of events over several years that ultimately led to my dream job.

my therapist would say i

never go to see her. Never.

I believe in bibliotherapy. (You can look forward to a future Alignment post on this topic.)

Memo to therapists: If you would like to get into my wallet, write a good book, and there’s a chance.

weirdest gift i have given or received

True story: A friend’s then-wife made a donation in my honor to Heifer International, a nonprofit that gives cows and chickens to people in rural India. She knew I was vegan. Fortunately, that friend is now divorced.

a life goal of mine

To sell The Alignment to CBS News for $150 million.

Failing that, I’d settle for reading every novel of Dostoevsky, Kafka, McCarthy, and Kingsolver. While simultaneously learning the guitar, becoming fluent in three languages and growing my own food.

my simple pleasures

Cracking open a Double IPA, which has been chilling in the freezer for at least 30 minutes, at the end of the work week.

I won’t shut up about

what happens to farmed animals. I take to heart what Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel famously said, that silence always favors the oppressor.

I don’t get invited to many parties.

i’m the type of texter who

Will send you food porn from that hot new vegan restaurant.

And photos of my dog.

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Suffice it to say: If I were really on Hinge, I wouldn’t get many dates. Unless someone just wanted to meet Maizie.

Please feel free to add any of your own responses in the comments below.