The Tinder subreddit is a comedic antidote to my breakup grief

I’m going through my 437th breakup this calendar year. We can talk about my poor relationship choices later, but don’t worry, my close friends are already on the case. They're full of support and practical advice. Everyone who loves me has reached to tell me so, and there’s friend-made soup in the fridge just waiting for my appetite to return. The reality is, though, that I’m not yet ready to hear about how it gets better, why I’m a great catch, or to answer questions about what I learned from the last relationship fail. What I need right now are dick jokes, bad puns, darkly sardonic relationship memes, and to see behind the curtain of other peoples’ dating lives to get a little distance from my own. And for that reason, only r/Tinder understands me.

For the uninitiated, r/Tinder is a subreddit about Tinder. It has some really practical features: a thread where you can post your profile to be reviewed by other users, a thread to share stories about your most recent dates and get advice, and an inspirational marriage announcement thread. Those are all great, but I believe r/Tinder’s true purpose is to help people with fresh breakup wounds feel better about their own shitty love lives by peeping in on the shitty love lives of others.

If you’re feeling broken-hearted, having a laugh can be healing. And if your sadness is about relationships, sex and dating humor can be especially therapeutic because it lays your heart bare but tickles you at the same time.

The humor is plentiful on r/Tinder, folks. People post screenshots of psycho DMs all day and night — you know the ones that almost ensure you’re messaging with a serial killer, but they’re kinda charming so you do it anyway? And there are way fewer dick pics than you might imagine. There are a ton of dick jokes, however. Of course, some of them are borderline creepy but the more clever small D jokes make me feel happy to be alive and single.

I also love seeing other people’s pick-up lines. Some of them are creative and funny, like a guy pretending he’s looking for an accomplice to rob a bank with or the woman who uses Tinder to sell her foot fetish photos for $5 a pop (someone responded by asking if she’d sell a pic of one foot for $2.50).

Redditors post the funniest profiles they made or found. My hands-down favorite is Alexis, who makes the old, “at just 16, I started an outreach for troubled boys” meme into her profile. Might as well use our clickbait material wisely, friends. Thank you, r/Tinder, for making a sad panda’s day a little brighter and for reminding her that we’re all in this thing together.