The Sincerity Drought

Ripe are the fruits that hang low on the tree of romantic desire.

---

Do you feel that? I’m sure you feel it all around you, online, offline, spiritually. Everyone is morphing into a court jester. Symptoms include yearning for an autistic girlfriend to the point that it gets creepy, casting judgment on people for having a boyfriend, and declaring “I need someone who can match my freak” in your Hinge profile, when your “freak” is just enjoying leaving the house. It is thrilling and addictive once you start, but going back seems like a Sisyphean task. I am referring to our collective inability to be sincere, earnest, and honest with ourselves and potential romantic partners. 

DAZED’s Angel Martinez recently penned this compelling article, investigating an alleged influx of men fetishising autistic women on dating apps — they say men, but let's be real, this issue supersedes the gender spectrum. The presumption that DAZED seems to offer is as integral to a viral article in 2025 as baking soda is to a cake rising: it's all men’s fault! They desire autistic women because they are vulnerable and easy to manipulate. It couldn’t possibly be because autistic women can be wonderful partners, or that maybe this is a sign of netizens’ well-meaning but misguided attempts to normalize neurodivergent romance. The piece paints autistic women as lacking agency and emotional depth, likening them to “people with youthful interests and colorful outfits.” What is most fascinating about this whole issue is not what is being said, but rather what is not being said.

I’m not sure if it's AI, chronic irony poisoning, plummeting self-esteem rates, or a combination of all of the above, but our collective phobia of sincerity is only getting worse. Fetishizing autism is one piece of the puzzle, but this points to a larger problem, a communication breakdown that leaves us disjointed and maladjusted. Perhaps autistic people are being sought after because there is an illusion, to no fault of their own, that they are the last remaining sincere people on earth. To have faith in this myth is to do a misdeed to yourself and others. Stating that you’d like a partner with a specific neurodevelopmental condition needs to be taboo again. It’s not even about having “standards”; it’s that the premeditated inner scheming that goes into choosing partners is increasingly based on repairing complex shame systems that no one except oneself can fix. I’d love to travel back in time to 1970 and tell people that in 2025, youngsters are wearing T-shirts that say “girls love my autistic swag” with an image of the Grim Reaper on a motorbike. It didn’t originate with evil intent, but has snowballed into something monstrous after rolling down the long, debris-ridden slope of cyberspace. “Situationships” are another sign (though this is often rooted in insecure attachment) that people have a romantic drill sergeant inside them, whacking them with a wooden stick to stand up straight whenever they have thoughts of beginning a serious, devoted relationship. 

Art across space and time shows us this drill sergeant has always lived in us. Countless films, music, and other media depict women “playing hard to get,” not wanting to be tied down, and mediating their desires. As art and communication have migrated to digital spaces most accessible to young people, those ideas are amplified and much harder to ignore. Short-form content on TikTok prompts women not to settle for less (if he wanted to, he would), and gives us access to a host of advice on the pseudo-psychology of love. The perpetual nagging on social media for girls to stop chasing men and instead use the power of their mind to make one appear is a crude example of the psychological warfare we are encouraged to engage in for love. Videos like this instruct women to take a laissez-faire approach to dating, insisting on the part of men, “If they don’t want to work for it, they don’t want it.” Lying down and basking in the sun like a lizard waiting for a cricket to crawl by, brushing off all attempts at vulnerability or sincerity,  might have worked wonders in the 1950s; nowadays, if you ignore men's assertions of romance, they will simply stop contacting you. Nobody has the time and energy to play the dating chess game anymore. Young couples are just trying to make rent and put food on the table for their cats. 

Even simple features, such as a push notification lighting up your phone and hailing your attention to somebody “liking” you on Hinge, have effectively rewired our reward systems. We’re conditioned into believing that, when navigating dating, you’re home free as long as you avoid stepping on broken glass or making too much noise. But romantic desire is programmed to be ritualistic, and quite frankly, irritating. The heterosexual dating gap is exacerbated by women’s ability to be financially independent and pursue post-secondary education; while this may not feel new, across millennia of societal adaptation and evolution, women’s lib is still fairly adolescent. Social scripts that have existed for thousands of years tell us that men should pursue, so it's no surprise that women are confused by the apparent lack of assertiveness. Could it be, perhaps, that social norms are finally changing? I thought we wanted men to embrace their emotional side, their inner tenderness, and that it’s OK not to be OK. We neglected to consider that, with these positive leaps in mental health care, we cannot cherry-pick the emotions we are encouraging people to connect with. When their machismo is unmasked, men likely feel a newfound discomfort. Pouting and using passive aggression online as a tool in hopes of inspiring women to leave their partners instead of communicating their needs is a lost cause. Needs boil down to the individual. Not everyone wants the same things from their partner, regardless of gender. And not everyone wants sincerity anymore.

The addition of technology to mediate our relationships also changes the way we think about the distinction between childhood and adulthood — nonchalance signals maturity. A generation whose youth is intimately immortalized on Tumblr and the like tends to reject classic markers of childhood, including joy, naivete, risk, and play. They want to grow up fast and leave their potentially embarrassing home videos collecting dust in the attic (I guess they wouldn’t be on VHS at this point — iPod Touch videos, perhaps?). And yet they have the gumption to exclaim, “I’m a minor, you know!” when a man breathes too close to them. I don’t say this to disparage young women; the urge to run as far away as possible from your past self is real. Even just thinking back to your childhood can feel scary — we cannot imagine existing in a world where irony flies over our heads. 

Admittedly, my peers and I have uttered similar yearnings for an “autistic” partner more times than I can count. Sometimes, we’d even say “a little bit” autistic — this was years ago, however, I still see it online from time to time. We knew that it was utterly bizarre to think like this, yet it was everywhere, so it didn’t mean nothing. It’s helpful to reflect on earnestness as intrinsically linked to childhood. To remove the term “inner child” from its obsolete, pop-therapy context of today, and just leave the bones of the words stripped clean to their origin: what do you see when you envision her? Maybe you see innocence. Is it truly innocence, per se, or is it just the absence of shame? She might be sporting a Hannah Montana tee, whom she adores. It’s not a “guilty pleasure” to her; in fact, the very notion that deriving pleasure from something might spark guilt or shame is absolutely mind-boggling to her. In her book Cook, Eat, Repeat, celebrity chef Nigella Lawson stresses that guilt should play no part in pleasures. Of course, she was referring to food, but the same goes for desire. Digging deep, I realized that what I wanted when throwing around the term “autistic boyfriend” was to love someone who I could learn endlessly from, and have them love me so much that they would want to learn from me, too. I wanted devotion, an intellectual fortress, substance that fueled my rich inner world, and the ability to give back to theirs. 

“There are few greater pleasures than sharing your enthusiasms.”  — Nigella Lawson via CBC Radio

Desire begins at a cellular level. We are all wired to seek out mates that have healthy immune systems, reproductive fitness, all that sexy stuff. Someone with no hobbies or passions, especially as an adult, is not very likely to fit the bill for that kind of health. The undesirable basement-dwelling neckbeard gamer archetype has taught us this for decades. Depression takes an unspeakable toll on our bodies, and loneliness automatically increases our risk of death. These neuroses are often temporary and come in phases, though our primitive ape minds suck at remembering that. Having clear-cut interests serves as an indicator for cognitive focus, stability, and sociability, all of which are paramount in child-rearing — sorry to be that guy, but at the end of the day, we are all driven to seek partners because our biology wants us to have babies. I don’t condone fetishizing neurodivergence, but to put all our eggs in the basket of misogyny is not productive in this case. The aforementioned DAZED piece includes this statement by Milly Evans, an autistic sex educator, referring to the burst of “I’m looking for an autistic partner” in online dating profiles: “I’d like to have a conversation with these people to understand what they’re hoping to achieve.” Asking this question with the intention of waving a finger, like the article seems to do, is useless. Posing it as a rhetorical question, however, might yield fruitful revelations.

When swiping between Hinge, Instagram, YouTube Shorts, and your inbox full of millennial marketing quips, the lack of linguistic code-shifting becomes increasingly palpable. Most people prefer to wade in the dialect of the masses; the warm, familiar waters of memetics, which is the smartest way to attract a mate, at the end of the day. Why wouldn't one make their dating app prompts as funny as possible? This language is universal. Women love a silly, goofy guy, right? Our species’ mating ritual is performed on iPhones, so it’s important to evoke a visceral emotional response in potential mates. Igniting laughter in someone is the most streamlined option — it creates an intimate physiological reaction, your face blushes, and you might even vocalize laughter. Have you ever laughed out loud at a flirty text and felt somewhat violated? I mean, what can I say — if food is the way to a man’s heart, laughter is the way to a woman’s heart (and bed). These intricate patterns are what make insincerity an easy fallback.

When fishing for love on the apps, post-ironic humour is placed like sticky fly traps. It allows users to be easy to respond to, to be entertained, and then be kicked to the curb. Hinge bios that say “I need a woman with a touch of the ‘tism” are now as ubiquitous as live laugh love signs in TJ Maxxes. Historically, the Manic Pixie Dream Girl archetype is a classic example of a widely desired partner who puts aside her own desires to fix the male protagonist’s life. She’s full of whimsy and is not afraid of sharing her eccentricities with the world. Contenders in the dating marketplace that express a similar passion to MPDGs and people on the spectrum are very attractive, no doubt. I tried to illustrate this in a MS Paint project, shown below. 

Ripe, juicy, red fruits of sincerity hang from the tree of romantic desires’ weary branches (they taste like Swedish Berries gummies). Most notably, these fruits are low-hanging. These are three distinct examples of cultural byproducts produced by skirting around sincerity in any way we can. I’m sure they won’t be the last.

The obsessive focus on maintaining nonchalance can also be seen as a nihilistic response to our capitalism fatigue. It’s a penetrating, bleak reality, and no wonder it’s so easy to roll our eyes at everything. A member* of a group chat I’m in recently unleashed their feelings at another user, stating: “idk how u dont see the actual active harm nonchalantism, brainrot, and insincerity does to you and the world at large. Anti-intellectualism is why tf this stupid ass country is bland, corrupt, (...) Especially for artists and creatives like me who care and will not conform to a hateful and disenfranchised world.” The palpable frustration shown by this individual is something I think many people feel, and the medium of this message, Discord, is a perfect snippet of irony. 

Being ambiguous is a useful skill, especially as women, in that we are often asked to be absolutely obsessed with something or, inversely, hate it (see this stellar Substack post by Liv Jarrell). It gets dangerous when ambiguity becomes a self-defense mechanism. Don’t get me wrong — I love ironic humor just as much as the next person born in 1999. Wearing a cloak of irony as armour prevents us from developing meaningful, complex relationships with one another. We’re constantly doing this balancing act of channeling our sense of childhood whimsy and our “adult” demeanor. I fear the muscles that allow us to do this meaningfully have atrophied, all at the hands of the fear of appearing naive. Harnessing the power of irony takes vigorous practice, akin to climbing the tree of romantic desire. The branches may look intimidating, but you do have the strength; your muscles have memory, too. 

Being a jokester can help us grow closer to those we love by offering a simple touch of vulnerability. Verbal irony can also help us regulate our emotions. But have you ever had a friend ironically enjoy another person? Forget about the ironic enjoyment of art, that of which we typically analyze through the lenses of camp and kitsch — this is human to human; sort of like bullying, but permissible, for some reason. It’s that one friend who leaves you bewildered when they say things like, “He’s so hot, I really like him, we had an amazing date, but I’m going to ignore his texts and maybe just hook up with him with a paper bag over his head.” Lying to yourself about your desires isn’t a new phenomenon, but the reckless ways we deploy irony and sarcasm (especially online) have waterboarded our last few breaths of conviction. This sort of rhetoric drives a wedge in all directions — towards our own needs, and towards our friends and family who are grasping at straws to give us the benefit of the doubt while we stumble through the outrageous, carnivalesque exhibition of modern romance.

Biz Sherbert recently gave this golden advice in a Substack post: “Do not undercut your work, do not be self-deprecating. You did not 'write a thing.’ You wrote something.” I say: Say it with your chest. Write it on a cue card and tape it to your bathroom mirror. Throw your arms into a self-embrace, and say, It’s okay to want somebody who I find interesting. It’s OK that I don’t have the right tools to convey that on Tinder right now. I am scared, and I am willing to get better at this. 

The line between irony and cruelty is thin. The leaves on the tree of romantic desire carry toxic dewdrops leftover by an ironic storm. It’s truly poisoned the whole tree — once we accept nonchalance as a learned behavior, and stop denigrating autistic people (or anyone) in the process, a veil will be pulled back, revealing full individuals that deserve love and inquiry. Let’s leave having a crush on someone as a joke in elementary school. As bell hooks reminds us in All About Love, “If you do not know what you feel, then it is difficult to choose love; it is better to fall. Then you do not have to be responsible for your actions.” This book is a must-read, assigned to you by us. There will be no quiz, but please take notes.

We are living in a mental health crisis; debilitating anxiety and depression make it even harder to say what you mean, and in some places, you’ll even go to prison for it. Sincerity is vulnerability. You don’t have to have it all figured out, but take a stab at it. Post that cute picture of you and your boyfriend. Write a long, enthusiastic blog post about your vintage clothing haul; people will love it. Commit to treating post-ironic humour like it’s nuclear, and practice discipline to wield it with clarity and consequence. We need to spread the fruits of sincerity and share them with the less fortunate. People are starving, and the fruit is inches from the ground, about to drop and rot into nothing at all. This is an excellent opportunity to practice uplifting each other as citizens of the web, and, dare I say, set an example for the next generation. In a world where it seems like your only communication tools are the skull emoji and fire emoji, practice dipping your feather into the inkwell of earnestness — hey, it might feel like an old friend. 🌀

---

Lauren Lexa Brown is a Canadian writer, cyber-anthropologist, hardcore perfume enjoyer, and admirer of any and all vintage ephemera. She can be found adding things to her cart and singing to her pet guinea pigs. You can find more of her work on her Substack.