Nothing Personal

My Secret Life in the Dating App Inferno

De: Nancy Jo Sales

Narrado por: Therese Plummer

A raw and funny memoir about sex, dating, and relationships in the digital age, intertwined with a brilliant investigation into the challenges to love and intimacy wrought by dating apps, by firebrand New York Times best-selling author Nancy Jo Sales

At 49, famed Vanity Fair writer Nancy Jo Sales was nursing a broken heart and wondering, “How did I wind up alone?” On the advice of a young friend, she downloaded Tinder, then a brand-new dating app. What followed was a raucous ride through the world of online dating. Sales, an award-winning journalist and single mom, became a leading critic of the online dating industry, reporting and writing articles and making her directorial debut with the HBO documentary Swiped: Hooking Up in the Digital Age. Meanwhile, she was dating a series of younger men, eventually falling in love with a man less than half her age.

Nothing Personal is Sales’ memoir of coming-of-middle-age in the midst of a new dating revolution. She is unsparingly honest about her own experience of addiction to dating apps and hilarious in her musings about dick pics, sexting, dating FOMO, and more. Does Big Dating really want us to find love, she asks, or just keep on using its apps?

​Fiercely feminist, Nothing Personal investigates how Big Dating has overwhelmed the landscape of dating, cynically profiting off its users’ deepest needs and desires. Looking back through the history of modern courtship and her own relationships, Sales examines how sexism has always been a factor for women in dating, and asks what the future of courtship will bring, if left to the designs of Silicon Valley’s tech giants - especially in a time of social distancing and a global pandemic, when the rules of romance are once again changing.

©2021 Nancy Jo Sales (P)2021 Hachette Audio

Reseñas de la Crítica

“In this warm, witty, and rigorously honest memoir, a Confessions of an English Opium-Eater-type exposé on dating apps… Against all odds, this unsparing, must-read portrait of modern dating and sex is also a love story.” (Kirkus)

“For those of us questioning what courtship even means in the age of dating apps, Nancy Jo Sales is a guide and a much-needed voice of reason who has swiped, sexted, and survived. Nothing Personal will be remembered for translating the world of 21st century sex and romance.” (Marisa Meltzer, author of This Is Big)

“Nancy Jo Sales is officially the world expert of dating apps. For years, she’s been a rare voice exposing the underbelly of hookup tech. The retaliation by Tinder to her earlier work didn’t stop her from penetrating the industry harder. Now, she’s reincarnated as a user taking us on the harrowing journey of her own hookups while telling us the ugly truth about the misogyny these companies perpetuate.” (Carrie Goldberg, author of Nobody’s Victim)

Nancy Jo Sales is the leading voice in the issues with online dating

I’ve been hooked with the author’s take on dating since a famous article by her a long time ago, was a big fan of her HBO doc and now just finished this book, the level of insight and analysis on this incredibly new phenomena (at least compared to our 10s of thousands of years mating in person) is on point and ahead of its time. We’ll look back to this in a few decades when we ask ourselves what went wrong?

Courageous, warm, vulnerable

As a woman in her 50s who has been through this grinder, her humor and pathos resonate tunefully through me. ♥️

Pretty Personal!

The vulnerability and honesty in this book are astounding. As a single woman of 58 who never married and has had her share of relationships, I heard a voice that is so rarely heard in this agest society. It was empowering to hear from an independent, older (yes, I said older because it's an honor and not something to be ashamed of!) woman navigating what was a "new" dating tool and with no apologies for her sexual appetite, because, frankly this is STILL an issue in our society today. Ugh.
Sales is a wonderful storyteller and journalist. Offering data, research, and her own experiences as a foundation for her conclusions about the societal repercussions of dating apps in general and this inspires trust in her writing. I enjoyed this book very much. Thank you Nancy Jo Sales!

Mixed Feelings

I have a lot of mixed feelings about this book because it is itself filled with contradictions. On the one hand, it's a look at the world at online dating that, among other things, details the exploitation of women. On the other hand, it's written by a middle aged woman who used these apps to engage in very risky sexual trysts. And how do we understand these trysts? As a form of female independence when so many times women get hurt emotionally and physically from them? Also, the book is shockingly frank in that Sales reveals all the details of her one night stands with a multitude of young men. On the other hand, she never explores why she isn't interested in using online dating to look for a serious and more mature relationship which so many middle aged women have found using them. Overall, I found myself entertained by her stories but also rather annoyed that such an intelligent woman couldn't do better.
The narrator was fine but I found her southern accent for one of the main male characters annoying and demeaning since there was no indication he was from the south

Salacious, statistical, psychosexual, sad

This memoir is a brave piece that left me feeling sad. The author writes clearly and well, and is obviously highly intelligent. Her descriptions of the workings of dating apps and their societal implications was eye-opening and at times, shocking. She addresses the topic from both a macro and micro view, and ties it together with occasional statistics.

The book is a little uneven at times, jumping back and forth through her life, with the main thread being her relationship with a much younger man. What struck me was her wish to "date" men half her age, having apparently given up on finding anyone who is age-appropriate. Anger about her prior failed relationships and men in general bubbles up at times, and I am left concluding that her attempts to find a relationship with a much younger man is a defense against being rejected by more appropriate men. She describes many of her hook-ups with disdain, and it becomes clear that these "relationships" cannot provide her with what she really wants: someone to love and care about her. Even her main target, Abel, can do little more for her than lie in bed with her, "take me from behind," and have the trappings of intimacy without any real connection.

Still, the memoir is a nice piece on the pros and cons (mostly cons) of the world of internet dating, how it works, and the substantial negative effects on relationships that result from the use of dating apps.

A Long Rant

I was hoping for a more balanced and complete story and review of life in the dating app world. Instead, this story is mostly about the bad dudes and downsides of dating apps. Now, that is an important aspect for everyone, to be aware of, but there is more to the story than that.