“Looking for jokes!”
It's a standard dating app, among the Billboard Hot 100 of biobanality. Along with a passion for food, travel, plants and “The Office” (yes, still), the ability to joke, whatever that means, has become a common prerequisite for someone to swipe right.
The number of Tinder users in the US who included “jokes” in their profiles has increased almost 7% since 2022, and the word appears much more frequently in the biographies of men aged 33 and older than women of the same age, according to the Tinder spokesperson. Tomás Iriarte Reyes. Uncountable articles provide directions and advice on how to increase dating app banter. Reddit threads help introverts joke like the pros or suggest ways to increase the joke quotient of a conversation. Apple TV's Fictional “Ted Lasso” Dating App Is Even called bantr.
But what are jokes really? And what is it for?
Sex educator Shan Boodram, Bumble's resident sex and relationship expert and workshop facilitator on the UK Netflix dating show “Too Hot to Handle,” notes that the word “banter” is used more frequently in the United Kingdom. The popularity of British reality shows like “Too Hot to Handle” and “Love Island” may have contributed to the word's adoption in the United States.
Boodram says banter encompasses two of the most consistent factors that contribute to the longevity of a relationship. “Kindness and willingness to comply with everyone's offers,” he says. She explains the latter as “You scratch my back and I'll scratch yours. In 2023, this also means that you will look forward to my saved TikTok and I will look forward to yours.”
Most of the 100 or so dating app users I surveyed about banter using an online form noted that the presence of a quick exchange established intellectual parity, comedic compatibility, and similar interests. It's a way to test boundaries, casually introducing personal details that can break the deal and create intimacy. Even those who didn't explicitly look for biographies that mentioned jokes wanted everything that jokes represent. About a third said they preferred biographies that included the term. Boodram explains that, like our companions in the animal kingdom, whose mating rituals include playful little dances and call-and-response trills, we have invented our own ways of signaling interest and encouraging reciprocity through play.
“It's romantic movie terminology,” he says. Erin Carlon, author of “I'll Have What She's Got,” a deep dive into the Nora Ephron canon. She explains that as romance novels gained popularity during the pandemic, the language they employed seeped into mainstream cultural consciousness and, in turn, dating apps. That, along with films like Ephron's “You've Got Mail” and “When Harry Met Sally” and later grittier comedies like “Wedding Crashers” and “The Anchorman,” led to Generation millennials to believe that they crave, and might even have, the verbal dexterity and impeccable rapport of the characters in the script.
At its most exciting, teasing mimics the build-up and climax of good sex. According to Carlson, tension-filled banter was Hollywood's response to the promulgation of puritanical film production guidelines in the 1930s: if sex itself was forbidden, charged dialogue was the next best thing.
It's “sex without having sex,” says Christopher Cartmill, director of drama at Rutgers University. He points to the 1980s TV show “Moonlighting” and its equally garrulous 1940s film predecessor “His Girl Friday.” (and Shakespeare's “The Taming of the Shrew”) as examples of tough jokes that serve as a viable substitute for the boudoir.
In those examples, heterosexual couples demonstrated their attentiveness through their quick wit and matched cruelty. They are two proud people who admit that they have found the only person who can see through their steel exterior. And the result can be better than sex.
Which, if you're asexual like Alexis Bates, 26, of Waco, Texas, is part of the appeal of the jokes. She explains that she and her current “date partner” will fake fights and smooth her way through an argument to reach a mutual release. However, she adds, there is no ill will. In fact, her openness to teasing each other and being silly and vulnerable is a testament to the safety and kinship they've found in each other. “It's cathartic,” she says. “The body records that we have argued, we have had these little skirmishes and we are fine. “Continue to build a healthy relationship.”
Despite their ubiquity on dating apps, banter is not inherently flirtatious or sexual. The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as “mocking, humorous or scathing comments made about people or things in order to expose their defects and make them appear ridiculous; humorous ridiculous; (also) good-humored ridicule or ridicule, witty or amusing retorts.” And almost everyone who responded to my survey wrote that outside of dating apps, they joked around with friends, family, or colleagues (or all of the above). It's a general term used to describe everything from a team's locker room dynamic, to gossip at a high school girl's sleepover, to a comedian's work with an audience, to workplace dialogue. of Aaron Sorkin and the friendly antics of “Seinfeld.”
Which makes asking for pranks on a dating app a bit of a guessing game. Are men looking for a foxy lady with a wickedly sharp sense of humor and a dynamite body? Are they looking for their Jim's Pam, a lifelong co-conspirator who is goofy and charming, or are they looking for a “cool girl,” what Gillian Flynn describes in “Gone Girl” as a “fun woman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes and burping, who plays video games, drinks cheap beer, loves threesomes and anal sex.”
Maybe what they really want is a true friend. And since there is There has been a drastic decline since 1990. With the number of close friendships men have, it makes sense that they ask for the same banter between friends where it's easier to seek out new connections.
Or maybe they're looking for all four in one.
Studies investigating humor and romance in heterosexual relationships have found that both men and women view having The sense of humor as an asset.. Hinge's love and connection expert, therapist Moe Ari Brown, says that “92% of daters on Hinge consider a shared sense of humor to be an important factor when considering being in a relationship with someone.”
But a sense of humor doesn't mean the same thing to everyone. According to a 2015 study published in “Evolutionary Psychology”, which replicated a 2006 study, men seem to want women who laugh at their jokes and women want men who make them laugh. (I've even seen men write in their bios that they're “looking for someone to laugh at my jokes,” and respondents who don't limit the parameters of their dating apps by gender noted this sentiment much less frequently among women and non-binary users. .)
“When guys say 'I'm funny' in their bios, I say, 'Let me be the judge of that,'” says Kate Parrish, a 38-year-old straight woman from Nashville, Tennessee, who relies on Bumble to find dates. She says that since she joined the dating apps after her divorce, she has met couples who express that they are looking for a sparkling conversation but can't bear the weight of it. Still, she says she prefers men who mention jokes in profiles.
“I suspect that many men who write that they want someone with good jokes and a good sense of humor are actually saying that they want someone who talks enthusiastically about what interests them and who laughs at their jokes even if they are offensive,” he says. Boodram. (Donald Trump excused pussy-grabbing comments he made on Access Hollywood in 2016 as “locker room banter” and bullying in the Workplace, at school and in the sports field underscores a widespread willingness to excuse derogatory humor as “joking”).
Like Parrish, I discovered that many men who said we joked well were deluded into believing they had anything to do with it. Our conversations were not so much about “Moonlighting” fan fiction as if they were a game of T-ball. I unloaded the plastic rack, bases, and mesh bag of balls from the trunk of my car, handed them the bat, and said “go get 'em, hitter” before throwing them a slow pitch. They would achieve it and be named MVP.
Unfortunately, I had also once included “jokes” in my profile, a sort of sign for liberal arts students. I had seen it on the profiles of the types of men I wanted to match with and thought that maybe if they saw it was on my timeline too, they would identify me as a kindred spirit. Just two chatty people with a penchant for sexual jokes, bad puns, and blink-or-you'll-miss-it cultural references. I wanted the Harry for my Sally and asked for the only thing I knew he could offer.
It didn't work.
Ultimately, “banter” is nothing more than a buzzword, 2024's answer to the “sapiosexual” craze in which online daters upgraded their titles by designating their sexual preference as “intellectual.” It's a Boy Scout badge for the chemistry you get by simply passing a written test, a promise of something you may not be able to keep once memes and GIFs give way to a cup of coffee or a walk in the park. . Or as Carlson says: “Men have always looked for smart, fun women. “This is just a different way of saying it.”
