When I returned to my single life, I swore to myself: I will not return to apps.
From there, I ran out of likes on Bumble and OK-Cupid recycles profiles that have been viewed.
The highball is not bad so far, I'm not complaining, however, there is a detail that clouds the experience: most of the men that the apps offer me want children, now or in the future.
It's interesting, because most of them seem to be missing basic items that a father needs, like a shirt.
I, in any case, do not want children.
Some will call me "El Hurit", I have a bit of difficulty with the sound, which reminds me of an illegal slimming drug.
Either way, when I look ahead - pregnancies, births, back poops and parental approvals are not visible on my horizon.
In my previous round of apps, at age 26, I saw no need to point this out.
I thought the question was irrelevant at the moment anyway.
At 31, it seems necessary to put things on the table.
If in all the years of my existence the need to produce a person from my body and raise him did not shake me - I probably wouldn't want to at all, and it's better that the person in front of me knew that, and didn't try to convince me otherwise, for the sake of both of our mental well-being.
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the plot about the divorcee who is "dangerous" and almost succeeded in taking the children
. This condition obviously significantly reduced my target audience, but another insight quickly dawned on me: Even those who are apparently included in the market I am addressing, those who want a marital relationship without children, shy away from a woman who holds the same desires.
Some don't believe you, some conclude that you are completely screwed.
I'm probably really a bit screwed up, but I would put the degree of my screwed up at 18% and that's all.
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Other non-parents I spoke with also testified that they receive judgmental reactions, and my friend Karin, who edits these words, said in her blunt but loving way: "Of course they'll think you're screwed, you're meant to give birth to boys, sadly."
Somewhere, in an ultra-alternative and liberal four-and-a-half-year relationship, I kind of forgot that I live in Israel.
Do I even have anything to look for outside of the population group that includes three hipsters, which is not impossible because they also collect food from tins and each of them is already having a polyamorous relationship with three women and a larder?
Maybe there is just a marketing challenge here.
After all, that's what our dating app page is - an advertising flyer to market ourselves to potential partners.
That's probably why two different women advised me to hide my intentions in the matter.
I recoiled at the thought.
I have never hidden one or another part of my identity from men who liked me, and I hate those who do it themselves.
Maybe it's naive of me, but I still honestly believe.
Actually the advertiser Golan Nohian, contrary to the name that may have gone out to advertisers, agrees with me.
If it could be a deal breaker - on the contrary, declare it in advance.
"On the dating sites, one of the main components after the photos, is honesty," he says.
"If a person is divorced or not divorced, has children or not - he should declare it from the beginning. There are those who don't care and there are those who do, and if they find out later it will just be depressing, and it's a shame."
For him, this subsection is equally valid for the advertising of products.
@ofirsgerski identifies herself as divorced, what will you do??
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"You can't say something is delicious if it isn't, and you can't say a vacation is stunning if the destination isn't," according to him.
"You could do the most amazing and well-invested campaign, but the product would quickly fall off the shelves, because the customers would pick up on the lie. From the beginning, I say tell everything, and let the people choose."
The question for him is not whether to say it, but how to say it.
And here is the place for creativity.
"You can say, 'Yes, I'm not a parent, but that's why I have more time to invest in myself' or 'you', or 'in a relationship,'" he suggests.
"It's turning the advantage into a disadvantage and the lemon into lemonade. Say you're not a parent, but also say what comes out on the other side of it. In the end - and this is a hard statement - but these apps are like a super, and you go into them to choose products that are worth it to you."
Some have told me to still swipe right someone who declares that they want children if I like them, because people don't really know what they want.
"This is also true. The difference between products and people is that people can change their minds. People do change. People can make statements and think for 40 years that they are X and then find out that they are Y. Such things happen. I know someone who declared himself as El Hori, Today he has 4 children. And why? He fell in love and met the one he does want to have with her. So you can also make a reservation, and say, 'I'm not a parent, but you know.'"
But sometimes people do know what they want.
I feel like I know.
"That's why you have to try. Check. But for a start, honesty."
Golan Nohian/Sharit Katz
If Nohian had to compare non-parenting marketing in apps to marketing an inanimate product, in Israel - it would probably be Cafe Rajwan, whose publication he signed about 20 years ago.
"Putting black coffee into the market in Israel is an almost impossible task, because elites control the market and people are used to their taste," he says, "but then - we managed to change that."
To market Rajwan coffee to Israelis, Nohian and his team looked for a glaring flaw in Elite's black coffee, and they found it.
Many focus groups in surveys expressed dissatisfaction with the coffee beans floating.
The advertisers emphasized that in Cafe Rajwan the beans do not float, and the crowd empties the shelves.
"The problem," he adds, "is that the taste of the coffee was not suitable for the Israeli palate."
And the analogy is laid before you.
Well, finding a disadvantage in a relationship with children, for me at least, will not be so difficult.
I have a feeling that even couples with children, who wanted children, will have no difficulty finding shortcomings.
Speaking of marketing tips, in general, what's the most common self-marketing mistake you make in the dating market?
"To be banal. To write what everyone else writes. People are not looking for gray people, but colorful people. Those who write 'loves the sea, freedom, sunsets' - this is nonsense in tomato juice. What is special about you? If I enter such a site now, I write 'any Monday I eat shawarma'. No one has written this, I'm sure. So both honesty, and difference, uniqueness. Write something that can hardly be said about anyone else."
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