“I’ll just be honest with you,” the message said, as she retells it. “I really didn’t have a good time and honestly you’re just not as attractive in person as you are in your pictures.” It came from a man who had taken her on one date, gone silent, and then, a couple of months later, liked her dating profile again from a new account.
The woman telling the story posts as @www.icarly.com___ and gives her first name in the video as Carly. She filmed it sitting in a car at night in an orange sweatshirt, under the on screen label “dating story time,” and posted it on October 2, 2026. It opens with, “If you’re wondering what dating is like in the year 2026, I have story time for you.”
She says she matched with him on a dating app earlier this year, which she calls “mistake number one.” She was between jobs at the time and her replies slowed to “a couple times a day, once every couple days.” He kept writing anyway, “double, triple messaging me sometimes.” When things calmed down she reread the thread, decided he was “pretty cute” and “very interested,” and gave him her number.
A few days into texting, he asked for her Snapchat. She says she normally tells men she does not have one. This time she reasoned that because they had met on an app, he might want to check she was not a catfish, and she set herself a condition: if Snapchat became the only way he contacted her, she would cut him off. It did not. He kept texting, and on Snapchat she sent “full face pictures, no filter” and unposed videos of herself talking.
“This man knew what I looked like,” she says. She is candid about the profile itself: “I pick my best pictures,” and they “might have a little bit of a filter,” but nothing she would call a “night and day difference.”
A couple of weeks into texting, he asked her out and set the date for a Thursday. On Wednesday night he began planning a second date for Friday. “We haven’t even met in person yet,” she says. “Another red flag.” He was also complimenting her “left and right” and sending “good morning beautiful” or “good morning gorgeous” every morning at the same time.
The date was “okay. Not a bad date.” At the end, by her account, he hugged her, looked her in the eyes and said, “I will text you. We’ll get a plan together for tomorrow.” She had a 30 minute drive home, which she says he knew about, and no text came that night. For her, a message to check she got home was owed “regardless of how the date went.”
She heard from him at 2 p.m. the next day and felt a “big energy shift.” She sent one message asking whether they were still on, “knowing we weren’t, but I just played dumb.” The answer was “crickets.” She deleted him “off of everything” without blocking him.
A couple of months later she opened the app for the first time since that date, and his was the first profile she saw. She says he had deleted his old profile, made a new one and liked her. “So me being petty, I matched with him and I was like, oh, funny seeing you here.” He responded, she says, as though he did not know who she was.
So she asked him outright whether acting obsessed, “showering them with compliments,” “planning the second date before the first date even occurs” and then ghosting was “just a normal occurrence for you or what.” He told her it was not normal, then said he did remember her, and then sent the line about her pictures.
“That’s his opinion. That’s fine,” she says. Her complaint is the silence: “If you aren’t feeling it, just let me know. Just send me a text. Like, I’m not gonna be offended.” Even so, she says she spent a week asking everyone she knew, “Be honest with me, do I look like my pictures or not,” and they all said yes. She wished him well and unmatched, still asking why a man who felt that way matched with her a second time.
Her account marks three checkpoints anyone setting up a first date from an app can use. The first comes before you meet. Do what she did and send current, unfiltered photos or a short video of yourself talking, and ask for the same back. After that, how either of you looks in person is not news.
The second is pace. A Friday date arranged on Wednesday, before the Thursday one has happened, can be slowed down with one line: “Let’s see how Thursday goes first.” How the other person takes that tells you more than a daily “good morning gorgeous” does.
The third is the trip home. She treats the missing text after her 30 minute drive as the moment she stopped being interested. If you are the other half of that date, send the “did you get home okay” message even when the evening was flat.
If you have met in person and do not want a second date, send one text. Carly draws the line herself: she admits she has ghosted people she had only texted with, but after an in person date she wants a message. Two sentences cover it: “Thanks for meeting up. I didn’t feel a match, and I wanted to tell you instead of going quiet.”
If you are the one left without a reply, her sequence is short enough to copy. One direct check (“are we still on”), then remove the person from your apps. When he turned up on a new profile, she asked one pointed question, got her answer, wished him well and unmatched. Matching again was optional, and she calls her own reason for doing it petty.
