Pseudonyms on a Dating Apps: How Lance the Tantric Goat Whisperer Helped Me Find Myself (and Block Myself)

In the golden age of digital love—where “DTF” is a personality type and “Hey” qualifies as a courtship ritual—there’s a rising epidemic quietly corrupting the swiping masses: pseudonyms on a dating apps. What began as harmless anonymity has now blossomed into full-blown self-deception with artisanal lighting and emotional unavailability, all set to a Spotify Lo-Fi Chill playlist.

I know this because I did it. I became Lance.

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I Created a Pseudonym on a Dating App Because I’m a Coward and a Visionary

Let’s start with the facts. I, a sentient adult with a checking account and a degree in comparative literature, willingly created a pseudonym on a dating app. Why? Because authenticity is exhausting and my real name, “Todd,” doesn’t exactly scream complex, mysterious sapiosexual with a past.

So I became Lance.

Lance was everything I aspired to be: bold, bisexual, and slightly allergic to gluten. He wore flannel in non-ironic ways, volunteered at animal sanctuaries, and had an extensive knowledge of tantric breathing. I gave him a vague job title like “creative technologist,” and in his bio, I wrote, “looking for someone to read poetry with while building a fire from emotional kindling.”

He was a monster. But he was my monster.

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Digital Deception or Emotional Innovation? Experts Weigh In

Dr. Fiona Ballentine, who teaches “Radical Honesty in the Digital Age” at a community college in Vermont, weighed in on my pseudonymous plunge.

“What you’re doing isn’t lying. It’s emotional roleplay for the identity-impaired,” she explained while sipping a turmeric latte and avoiding eye contact with her real husband.

Meanwhile, a 2024 Pew Research Center survey revealed that 41% of users on dating apps admit to using pseudonyms, and 17% have accidentally fallen in love with a version of themselves. The remaining 42% are in long-term relationships with people who still think their names are “Blade,” “Saffron,” or “AstralDanny_69.”

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The Psychology Behind Pseudonyms on a Dating Apps

According to Dr. Keisha Mendoza, a relationship psychologist and semi-professional tarot reader:

“Pseudonyms allow users to explore dissociative versions of their sexuality, free from the constraints of realism, accountability, and their mother’s Facebook friends.”

In layman’s terms: Lance wasn’t just my fake identity—he was my emotional stunt double. He could say things like “I love easily but trust slowly,” without choking on the irony. He could match with women, men, and ambiguous soul-energy profiles without any confusion or guilt.

He wasn’t dishonest. He was brave. He was bisexual with confidence. He was gluten-free before it was convenient. He was, in every way, the hero I needed to catfish myself.

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I Swiped Right on Myself and Found Inner Peace (and a Restraining Order)

I should’ve known things were getting out of hand when Lance matched with someone from my real life—my yoga instructor, Dahlia. She didn’t recognize me, of course, because my real-life profile was just me holding a cup of tea and trying to look like I wasn’t recovering from an emotional landslide.

Lance, on the other hand, exuded pheromones. He quoted Rumi. He said things like “I don’t date—I connect.” Within two days, she sent me a poem she wrote titled “For the Man Who Glowed.” I panicked and unmatched.

But that wasn’t the worst part.

The worst part was that I started messaging people as Lance… and forgetting I wasn’t Lance. I found myself saying things in real life like, “I feel your moon energy” and “I did ayahuasca last fall with a shaman who used to be a dolphin trainer.” None of it was true. But it was true enough.

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The Role of Gender Fluidity in Pseudonyms on a Dating Apps

Lance also gave me permission to explore fluid identities. I matched with people who identified as genderqueer, panromantic, and one person who listed their orientation as “climate anxious.”

Before Lance, I hadn’t considered the possibility that I could be emotionally available to more than one gender. But as a man named Lance who once free-climbed Machu Picchu in a dream journal, anything was possible.

When I eventually “came out” to myself, it wasn’t at a Pride parade or family dinner. It was while I was halfway through a text conversation with a Swedish aromatherapist named River, using six emojis, four acronyms, and one ironic haiku.

“You remind me of someone who isn’t ready to meet themselves,” River wrote.

I sobbed. Into my oat milk latte.

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Pseudonyms on a Dating Apps: Ethical Nightmare or Soul Safari?

Let’s be real. Using pseudonyms on a dating apps is ethically murky. You’re deceiving others. You’re also, probably, evading some deeply rooted emotional truths. But it’s also the most modern form of existential therapy.

According to a study published in the Journal of Human Catfishing, 62% of people who used a pseudonym ended up liking that persona more than themselves. And 31% of those people began integrating parts of their pseudonym’s identity into their “real” self. That’s not deception—that’s branding.

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The Great Tragedy of Authenticity

Here’s the thing about being real on a dating app: it rarely works.

I once tried using my real name, real job, and real personality. My first message was, “Hi, I’m Todd. I make spreadsheets and have unresolved maternal tension. Want to get coffee?”

I didn’t get a single match.

But Lance? Lance said, “Let’s skip small talk and start with your favorite kind of silence.”

He got 67 likes in one hour.

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When Your Alter Ego Gets More Action Than You

Eventually, I fell in love with someone as Lance. Her name was Theo (short for Theodora, not theory), and she worked at a nonprofit that trained rescue goats to become therapy animals for hedge fund managers.

We had chemistry. We talked about ethics, dreams, past lives, and the sociopolitical implications of kale. I nearly told her the truth… until she said, “You’re the first man I’ve met who doesn’t hide behind some fake version of himself.”

I swallowed my guilt. And also my phone, metaphorically.

Our relationship lasted two weeks and ended when she accidentally saw my real name on a parking receipt. She screamed “Todd?” like it was a racial slur. I fled the scene and rebranded as “Sage.”

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Helpful Content: Should YOU Use a Pseudonym on a Dating App?

If you’re considering using a pseudonym, here’s some totally helpful, questionably legal advice:

Pros:

• Explore your sexuality without Aunt Karen’s judgment.

• Attract people you actually want to talk to.

• Say things like “I’m not afraid of intimacy, just allergic to small talk.”

Cons:

• You may fall in love with yourself.

• You may run into someone you know.

• You may lose track of who you actually are and cry in a Home Depot.

Tips:

• Choose a name that evokes confidence, mystery, and possibly an artisanal beard.

• Don’t pick your real middle name. That’s too traceable.

• Only lie about the things that are emotionally relevant: hobbies, trauma, whether or not you believe in monogamy.

• Never, ever use the same pseudonym twice. You’ll start building a franchise, and then you’re basically Tinder’s answer to Marvel.

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Why Pseudonyms on a Dating Apps Are the Future of Romantic Delusion

In the end, pseudonyms offer more than just a romantic cheat code. They offer a chance to reimagine yourself outside the constraints of trauma, acne, and financial instability. They are avatars of hope, lies draped in emotional potential.

And as long as people keep expecting authenticity on platforms designed to gamify attraction, we will keep inventing versions of ourselves that are just fake enough to feel real.

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Final Swipe: I Still Use a Pseudonym, But I Also Use a Co-Star App to Justify It

Today, I’m neither Lance nor Todd. I’m Casper—a gentle, emotionally aware specter of potential. I tell people I used to be more grounded, but I lost that during a mushroom ceremony in a national park that may or may not have been a VR simulation.

Do I feel guilty about the deception? Occasionally. Do I feel sexy in my emotional shapeshifting? Always.

Because in the world of dating apps, we’re all just pseudonyms—desperate not to be seen, but absolutely begging to be swiped right on.

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TODAY’S ESSAY

A Moment That Changed Me: I Used a Pseudonym on a Dating App and Became My Own Secret Admirer

By a Confused Essayist Who Accidentally Catfished Themselves

There comes a time in every person’s life when they look at themselves in the mirror and say, “I need to lie online.” For me, that moment came after three and a half dates, two bottles of Merlot, and one crippling fear that I might be, dare I say it… emotionally available. So I did what any rational adult with a liberal arts degree and a profound misunderstanding of personal growth would do: I downloaded a dating app and signed up under the name “Lance.”

Lance, dear reader, was everything I wasn’t. Lance liked hiking. Lance drank oat milk without irony. Lance had a tight core, a soft heart, and a suspicious number of photos with baby goats. Lance was, essentially, a lie stitched together from Pinterest boards and aspirational gender studies lectures. And yet—Lance got matches.

The Birth of Lance and the Death of My Grip on Reality

Using a pseudonym was not just a decision. It was a psychological experiment disguised as petty deception. I told myself this as I constructed Lance’s profile like a 21st-century Victor Frankenstein, only with better lighting and an affinity for words like “sapiosexual.”

Within days, I was getting messages. Not to me, but to the idea of me. The idealized, glute-clenched, emotionally evolved me. One woman even said, “You seem so emotionally intelligent and grounded.” I dropped my phone in my soup. Not because I was shocked, but because I realized she was right—and I was neither.

I found myself staying up at night chatting as Lance. I laughed, I flirted, I quoted Carl Jung incorrectly. It was electric. I wasn’t just pretending to be someone else—I was discovering parts of myself I had previously buried under layers of self-doubt, crushed velvet, and Spotify algorithms.

What If Lance Is the Real Me, and I’m Just His Avatar?

This is the kind of question you only ask after two weeks of pretending to be a bisexual beekeeper from Asheville. I began to question everything: my preferences, my gender expression, my favorite salad dressing. If I felt more authentic pretending to be Lance, did that make Lance the real me? Or was I just bad at being me in public?

I reached out to a friend who’s a therapist, or at least owns a couch. She said something profound like, “You’re not lying. You’re narrating a version of yourself through a fictional filter.” I wept, partly because of the truth in her words and partly because I had just stubbed my toe on a Himalayan salt lamp.

The Dating App Became a Portal to My Third Self

Here’s where things got complicated: I started talking to people I knew… as Lance. Coworkers. Friends. My downstairs neighbor who once borrowed my air fryer. They didn’t recognize me, which raised serious concerns about how forgettable I must be as myself. One woman wrote, “You remind me of someone I work with, only more confident.” I almost screamed. Not because I was caught, but because… I agreed.

So I began seducing myself, in a way. Rewriting my personality, one DM at a time. I felt like God, if God had a ring light and abandonment issues.

Sexually Fluid? Emotionally Fraudulent? Spiritually Inflamed?

Somewhere in the middle of the week, I matched with someone named River (of course). River believed gender was a suggestion and monogamy was a prison sentence. We talked for hours. They introduced me to the concept of “shapeshifting attraction,” where you fall for a soul regardless of its meat vessel. I responded by quoting a tweet from 2018 and pretending it was my idea.

Through River, I started questioning whether I had only ever dated women because I had confused attraction with cultural obligation. Was I pansexual? Biromantic? Post-hetero adjacent? A Libra? I didn’t know—but I was having more fun than I ever had as myself. At one point, I described my sexual orientation as “a lightly stirred Negroni: complex, a bit bitter, and hard to categorize.”

Coming Out to Myself in an IKEA Parking Lot

One Sunday, after a match ghosted me for misusing the word “non-binary,” I sat in my Prius and cried. Not because I was rejected, but because I realized I had become the person I was pretending to be. And then I realized I wasn’t even sure what that meant.

So I did what any emotionally overwhelmed person would do—I drove to IKEA, where I stared at a DÄRFLÖNGEN table and thought, “Who am I… really?” That table didn’t answer, but a man named Theo in the light fixtures section did. He said, “You look like someone who’s recently unraveled the fabric of their personality.” I said, “Thanks,” and we got lunch.

I’m No Longer Lance. But I’m Also Not NOT Lance.

I eventually retired Lance’s profile. He had served his purpose: a Trojan horse for my own psychological breakthrough. I now date as myself. Kind of. I still use some of Lance’s better lines and sometimes pretend to have a more stable relationship with my parents than I actually do.

But I’ve realized that we are all pseudonyms. Digital echoes. Filtered fragments of people trying to be liked, loved, or at least left on read.

What the Funny People Are Saying

“I once pretended to be a vegan Buddhist on Tinder. I ended up getting invited to a mushroom ceremony and left with a boyfriend and a rash.” — Sarah Silverman

“This is like that time I catfished myself into therapy. Spoiler: I didn’t go.” — Jerry Seinfeld

“So you’re telling me you invented a fake man to finally be honest with yourself? That’s not sexuality, that’s just tax fraud with hormones.” — Chris Rock

“Lance sounds like the kind of guy I’d hate at a dinner party and envy in a dream.” — Ron White

Helpful Content for Fellow Identity-Challenged Daters

• Use a fake name responsibly: If you start preferring the lie, maybe explore that in a non-catfishing way.

• Experimentation is healthy: So is therapy. Know the difference.

• Don’t meet your coworkers on dating apps while pretending to be someone else: That’s HR’s job, not your kink.

• Remember: Gender, like your IKEA bookshelf, is self-assembled and held together with tension and tiny pegs.

Final Thought

So yes, the moment that changed me was when I created a pseudonym. Not because I found love. Not because I explored my sexuality. But because I tricked myself into realizing I was interesting all along—just deeply, deeply confused.

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Disclaimer: This satirical essay was written by a sentient emotional pretzel and a human being who once used a fake name to get out of jury duty. Any resemblance to real people, apps, or IKEA furniture is entirely ironic and probably subconscious. Auf Wiedersehen.

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What the Funny People Are Saying About Pseudonyms on a Dating Apps

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“He used a fake name on a dating app to explore his sexuality? Buddy, I just use tequila and an embarrassing Spotify playlist.”
— Ron White

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“So let me get this straight… you catfished yourself… into emotional growth? I once ghosted myself mid-therapy.”
— Sarah Silverman

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“Lance is his confident, sexy alter ego? My alter ego is just me with better lighting and less lactose.”
— Amy Schumer

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“This guy’s like Batman, if Batman used Bumble and cried in IKEA.”
— Chris Rock

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“You ever notice how people online are way more interesting than people in real life? That’s because in real life, you can’t Photoshop your childhood trauma.”
— Jerry Seinfeld

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“I used a pseudonym once. Got married under it. Turns out, I also divorced under it. Long story short, I’m legally single and illegally confused.”
— Roseanne Barr

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“You’re telling me you invented a man named Lance to discover you’re bi? I invented a woman named Sheila just to dodge jury duty. Same emotional payoff, less goat photography.”
— Larry David

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“This guy didn’t come out of the closet, he redecorated it, installed mood lighting, and invited a tantric astrologer to bless it.”
— Wanda Sykes

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“I once tried using a fake name on Tinder. But every time someone messaged me, I panicked and confessed. So basically, I’m emotionally Catholic.”
— Jackie Mason

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“So he became emotionally available as a fictional bisexual lumberjack? That’s not self-discovery, that’s a Wes Anderson prequel.”
— Marc Maron

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“He cried in a Prius in an IKEA parking lot? Bro, that’s not a sexuality crisis—that’s just Tuesday in Los Angeles.”
— Chelsea Handler

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“His alter ego was so successful, even he fell in love with him. If that ain’t the gayest Greek tragedy ever, I don’t know what is.”
— Joel Kim Booster

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“So what did we learn? Sometimes you gotta lie your way into your truth. Just like my ex-husband did. With three families. And a ferret.”
— Leslie Jones

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