One of the many hazards of being a politics reporter in Texas is that when I’m talking to potential dates, I am usually asked my party affiliation or what “type” of outlet I write for. (Do I lean left or right? Does my outlet have a slant?) When I was an active Hinge user, I never shied away from the fact of my job. That said, the political discussions I’ve been roped into have typically centered around events that happened after 1963. Until now.
At my editor’s behest, I reluctantly descended back into Hinge’s sordid world. On the app, in addition to required photos, users are asked to showcase their personalities through their answers to three written prompts. My experience on dating apps suggests that most men aren’t, er, especially unique here. A decent amount will regurgitate answers they found on social media or saw while swiping. (And even more are genuinely that obsessed with their “morning coffee ritual.”) For this assignment, though, I wasn’t just looking for an ordinary boring man. Instead, I was on a quest for a particular breed: those who embrace one of the weirdest conspiracy theories I’ve encountered online. Men who claim President John F. Kennedy wasn’t actually assassinated in plain view on a downtown Dallas street on a sunny November day in 1963. In fact, our conspiracists claim, Kennedy’s head just happened to explode on its own.
About a week in, I located my first target—a man (let’s call him Nate) with the head-exploding theory displayed prominently on his profile. A quick glance revealed him to be a seemingly thoughtful thirty-year-old who claimed to be looking for long-term love. He checked a lot of boxes, as they would say on Love Island: tall, outdoorsy, could spell. He also seemed to have a large friend group, as evidenced by a photo of him and roughly a dozen others getting ready to float the San Marcos River. But tucked between the group picture and another image of him standing beside a giant cardboard cutout of an anxious dog, I spotted it: In response to a prompt asking “What if I told you that . . . ,” he wrote, “Nobody shot JFK. His head just did that.”
As of publication, we identified eight men who had this, or a similar answer, somewhere on their dating profile. Could all those millennial Austinites, who looked so strapping holding their floaties, believe that the head of the thirty-fifth president of the U.S. spontaneously exploded? Or worse—did they think that darkly gory and deeply random joke was funny? Did they think it was so funny that it was worth stealing from some other dude’s profile? Why does dating in this town mean having to think about the Kennedy assassination? It could be worse, though: At least I’m not single in Dallas.
I ignored other, more substantive statements on Nate’s profile and jumped straight to the topic of JFK. We didn’t talk for long—I was on Hinge for research purposes, while he wanted a girlfriend (or, for all I knew, someone to imprison at a bar while he talked about how AI was going to take her job away without asking her a single question [true story])—but I did ask him what prompted him to go brain-worm mode on his profile. His response: “Lol I think it’s just another silly prompt answer. I saw it on someone else’s profile and found it so funny that I stole it!”
“You’re supposed to answer these prompts to show your personality, so maybe they are trying to show their personality through jokes—but that’s me trying to give these men the benefit of the doubt,” said one of my Texas Monthly colleagues who has also encountered this no-bullet theory on the apps. “When I come across a man with the JFK joke in his profile, it’s an immediate left swipe for me. There are so many other jokes to make.” If the joke itself is a yellow flag, the fact that the joker stole it tips us into red territory. If he can’t put in the effort to write his own copy, I’m doubtful he’ll ever be making a restaurant reservation.
It may sound absurd, and it definitely sounds demoralizing, but the spontaneous Kennedy head–detonation conspiracy is one of many that live on Austin men’s dating profiles. In my brief stint on Hinge, I saw men regurgitating old and debunked theories about the supposed dangers of the COVID-19 vaccine; people insisting that Helen Keller, the deaf and blind writer and activist, wasn’t a real person; and even a few flat-earthers.
I can’t believe I have to spell this out, but yes, John F. Kennedy was shot. On November 22, 1963, Kennedy was shot dead by a lone gunman, a 24-year old radical named Lee Harvey Oswald. What has happened since can best be described as a kind of transmogrification. The event became endlessly complicated by conspiracy theorists who seized on so-called incongruities in the federal report detailing Kennedy’s death and used them as ample fodder for their baseless beliefs. Some questions regarding the assassination still linger—what was Oswald’s motive? why did the federal government keep the files related to that day under wraps for so long?—and among the many conspiracy theories that have come and gone in the years since, some have gained more traction than others. But for Austin singles to go a step further, asserting that there was, in fact, no bullet involved and that Kennedy’s death was a totally random occurrence with an unknown cause, is fairly off-putting. As a political journalist, I’ve heard a lot of conspiracy theories in my day. Even relatively tame ones like these make me uneasy. These jokes can still be harmful: They degrade trust in public figures and governmental reports. Who among us hasn’t pretended to love a movie or know a band on an early date? But I draw the line at gamely going along with the head exploding.
Dating experts say these types of conspiracy theories are unoriginal and risqué—two things likely to turn away prospective dates and matches. “For better or worse, the vast majority of men don’t create their profile with a lot of intention or thought. They just want to put something quick in there that might get a chuckle from whoever’s reading it,” said Blaine Anderson, an Austin dating coach who works mostly with men. Anderson’s biggest issue with the Kennedy line, she told me, is that, even if the goal is to be funny, it’s not a unique attempt at humor. “I mean, you’ve seen it enough times that you’re writing an article about it!” Jenn Styers, a matchmaker and relationship coach based in Dallas, agreed. “People need to be careful with what they choose. Whether you think a response like that is funny or cute, it all comes down to perception,” she said. “On dating profiles there are attractors and deflectors, and you typically want to stay away from those things that repel. Conspiracy theories? Definitely a repeller.”
To the credit of Nate and other men, though, it doesn’t seem like they actually believe Kennedy wasn’t a victim of a televised assassination or that his head magically exploded. As Nate told me, it’s all innocuous—even if this particular joke ignores the sage advice from experts. Were I to give these men credit for anything, it would be for the fact that they’re not embracing ableist or more dangerous conspiracies. A reporter like myself can also appreciate that Austin’s singles are at least in the loop on politics, even minimally. Now, if I could only get them to stop debating me over where to buy the best breakfast tacos in this city.
