I once sent a man a three paragraph text about my feelings and followed it with a thumbs up emoji, so I am not throwing stones from a glass phone. But cringe texts from men who skipped every step of basic human conversation are a different species. They open with a request you’d hesitate to make on a fourth date, then get offended when you haven’t answered by breakfast. Somewhere, each of these guys hit send and felt fantastic about it. Let’s all sit with that together.
She took eighteen months to reply, and it was still too soon.
Save
Sir, she is a mammal.
Save
Hey, how's it going? Apparently, politically.
Save
Sixteen hours of silence, and he chose violence.
Save
Nate from Science has a hypothesis and rejects the data.
Save
The reply reads like a curse from a medieval witch.
Save
Sir, the unmatch button was right there.
Save
Awooga, but make it a novella.
Save
Anyways, he said, as if that fixed it.
Save
Spooky Bill lived up to the name.
Save
That's not a pickup line, that's a safety warning.
Save
From hello to yes or no in forty-eight hours.
Save
The reply deserves a trophy.
Save
She asked for dinner. He sent terms and conditions.
Save
She said hospital. He heard something else entirely.
Save
Management material, apparently.
Save
A man of few words, all of them wrong.
Save
A negotiation that somehow went backwards.
Save
Oh my God, he said, discovering lesbians in real time.
Save
PG-13ish is doing an incredible amount of work.
Save
A big plan, and an even bigger mistake.
Save
Public health guidance, rejected.
Save
Kevin has not read the guidelines.
Save
Multitasking is not the flex he thinks it is.
Save
Age doesn't matter, said the man who was 24 years older.
Save
From snowshoeing to that in a single text.
Save
Wasted is right there in the contact name.
Save
Nobody puts Baby in the DMs.
Save
Again is the most important word in this text.
Save
She corrected him with one word.
Save
Cringe texts
Read More
What amazes me is the pacing. These guys treat a first message like a closing argument, skipping hello and going straight to a request that belongs behind three dinners and a background check. Bad pickup lines used to at least pretend to be charming, and now it’s one word, sometimes a fruit, with a wink emoji doing all the heavy lifting. I have seen more romance in a parking ticket.
Then there’s the man who hears no as an opening bid. Texting fails in this category follow a very specific pattern: she mentions her girlfriend, and he informs her she doesn’t have one; she points out a 24 year age gap, and he answers with three exclamation points about love. I respect persistence in a job interview. In a DM it reads like a hostage negotiation, and the hostage is my patience.
The real stars of these tinder fails are the women replying. A stranger types something unholy at 3 AM, and she responds with the calm of a night nurse and the aim of a sniper. One of them told a man she expected absolutely nothing from him and was still disappointed. I would frame that sentence and hang it in every group chat I’m in.
Here’s my theory, and I’ve done the research, mostly against my will. A text removes every social cue that would normally stop a man mid-sentence: the eye contact, the long silence, the bartender slowly shaking his head. Without them, the brain goes straight from thought to send, and that thought was never supposed to leave the building. Screenshotting is how women hand the social cues back, a little late, to a much bigger audience.
And honestly, sharing these is a kind of sisterhood. Every screenshot says it’s not just you, and also, look how well I handled it. I have a folder of my own, and yes, one of them is from a man who proposed before learning my last name. We laugh because the alternative is throwing the phone in a lake, and phones are expensive.
He typed it. He sent it. She posted it.
If your thumbs are still recovering, our dating app memes are a good place to decompress, and the cringy Tinder profiles will show you exactly who is sending these. We also keep a collection of the worst pickup lines on record, plus funny dating profiles from people who at least tried. Stay hydrated. Block early and often.
Read Memes.
Get Paid.
The only newsletter that pays you to read it.
A daily meme recap, and every week one subscriber gets paid.
How it worksWho needs to see this?
Send it to the friend who’ll laugh the hardest, or post it for everyone.
