Ghosting the Algorithm

By Sabyasachi Roy

The dating app really shouldn’t have matched us. Big red ZERO PERCENT COMPATIBLE flashing like a middle finger from the universe. I screenshotted it. Sent it to my group chat. They said it was probably a bug, or the end of hope, or both.

Then you messaged: “Wanna go out and break the algorithm?”

Honestly, I said yes because my dinner was leftover fries and I hadn’t spoken to another human in forty-eight hours.

The café—if you can even call it that—reeked like someone burnt milk twice and decided the smell was “part of the vibe.”

You’re already there, waving. The wave looked like you were trying to hail a cab inside a café. And that sweater—Jesus—some nerd-symbol that might’ve been a molecule or maybe a diseased snowflake. I looked at that thing first, then realized, oh right, attached to it is an actual person I’m supposed to flirt with. I’m in a jacket with one broken pocket. So yeah—power couple energy from the start.

You slap your phone on the table. “Look. It says we’re a statistical impossibility.”

I show mine. Same error message. Little spinning wheel of doom.

We decide to run “tests.” Like we’re in a lab instead of a place where they charge a ransom for sad pastries.

Test 1: Movies.

You say sci-fi with bad CGI. I say slow romances where nothing happens for two hours. We write it down like it’s data.

Test 2: Snacks.

You like spicy chips that melt your tongue. I like anything that tastes like cardboard but pretends to be “baked.”

Test 3: Hobbies.

You build tiny robots out of junk. I knit lopsided scarves that can strangle people if they move too fast.

Every answer should make us worse. More incompatible. The app should explode or at least send a warning message about life choices.

Then you drop this weirdly soft line, the kind people only say by accident: you don’t give a damn about labels or charts or whatever the app spits out. You just wanted to meet the maniac who wrote that their biggest fear was dying mid-laundry cycle, socks sitting there judging them forever.

And all I manage is this dumb, half-shrug, half-yeah noise, like my brain forgot how words work. “Well, yeah. Ghosts shouldn’t have dirty socks.”

We laugh again. Not forced. Not polite. Just… easy.

At some point you suggest a real test: walking without planning where. So we wander past grocery stores and families and a dog wearing a raincoat better than my jacket. You keep brushing my hand with yours like you’re checking if gravity works.

By the time we end up on a bench that wobbles dangerously, the date feels less like an experiment and more like something quietly happening to my ribs.

You pull out your phone. “Ready?”

I pull out mine. “On three?”

We count badly. Delete the app anyway.

My screen goes blank. You grin at me like we won. Maybe we did.

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