Despite the countless horror stories, I’ve always been a proponent of dating apps and not least because that’s where I met my partner. Even when they don’t succeed at their basic function, dating apps can introduce you to a host of people you’d never cross paths with otherwise, people who can turn into your best friends down the road. In a world where we want, most ardently, to connect with other humans, dating apps make messaging someone a necessity instead of a suggestion, which is sometimes the push we need to reach out to them.
Multiple times a day, I come across people online who I wish to befriend but find myself not wanting to risk being misconstrued and rejected. What a lot of us seem to struggle with is the art of the Perfect First Message. As the saying goes, a first impression is the last impression, and a first message can make or break a new connection. Often, we tend to either overexplain ourselves and demand too much, or we confidently presume that the other person is dying to get to know us. The trick is to land somewhere between those two extremes. Like the text with which Nick Jonas first slid into Priyanka Chopra’s DMs, which his brothers read out on the latest episode of their podcast, Hey Jonas!, with Priyanka Chopra starring as a first-time guest. When asked by his siblings how they met, Nick recalled looking up the actor on Twitter after seeing her on a billboard for Quantico. As one does, he promptly went on to check if she followed him, and after confirming she did—which Priyanka denied—sent her the following DM: “Hello. I’ve heard from a few people that we should meet. I have to agree with these people.. Are you in LA anytime soon?” To this, Priyanka replied, “Hey..Graham’s [Rogers] told me so much about you..Let’s text. More private. My team can access this.” They’ve been married for eight years now.
I know it’s a tough world out there. Everybody wants to fall in love, but nobody is sure how to find their soulmate in a sea of strangers who are all looking for the next best thing. So men, in their infinite wisdom, have concluded that overconfidence will get them over the finish line. The internet is rife with women bemoaning the bizarre opening moves men make on dating apps. There’s the cheesy “Looking for the Monica to my Chandler”; the cringey “‘I’ll fall for you if… you trip me’; the cocky “You deserve good things and I can be one of them.” Men approach women, then either bore them out of their wits in their dogged pursuit or pull out the ‘you aren’t even that attractive’ when women fail to show interest. Of course, Nick Jonas is a celebrity, which makes things easier for him in the dating world, but there’s no denying that his message to Priyanka Chopra, who is the more famous of the two, was disarmingly simple and backed by the genuine—but respectful—desire to connect. In a sea of “you ups?” and “I’m not looking for anything serious,” a message like this is perhaps what women appreciate most at this point.
