An Open Letter to the Pillow Pics Men on Dating Apps

Jennie Young
2 min readMar 24, 2024

Dear Harold et al.,

First, you can thank me for scratching out your face, which you may assume I did to protect your identity but which I actually did to protect The Internet from the contents of your nostrils.

Secondly, I know this profile isn’t working for you, but I suspect you don’t know why, so let me explain.

You seem to be offering up this debacle of an image as some kind of thirst trap. And it’s not that we don’t get the implications of this exact vantage point — we definitely get it. We just hate it.

In addition to our concerns about how icky you are, we have additional concerns about your critical thinking skills or appalling lack thereof.

You must be under the impression that what you’re displaying here is appealing to women, and this suggests a fundamental misunderstanding of How Things Work.

Do you believe, Harold, that the dating apps are full of middle-aged women combing through Bumble in hopes of finding a lazy man who would like a blowjob?

That is actually not difficult to find, Harold. That is like finding a golden…

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Jennie Young

Professor and humor writer in Green Bay. McSweeney’s, The Independent, HuffPost, Ms. Mag, Education Week, Inside Higher Ed, Slackjaw, Weekly Humorist, others.