The late Queen once said, “If I wore beige, nobody would know who I am,” and TikTok, being TikTok, took it so seriously that they turned the colour into a personality trait. In short, beige equals boring. While dating in the online world, along with identifying bad behaviour, now it’s also recommended you look out for bland behaviour. If you have an opinion on pineapple on pizza, make references to mainstream sitcoms or use pictures of puppies as a substitute for a personality— sorry to say, but you’re fifty shades of beige.
Know Your Relationship Flags
At this point, dating feels more like picking out a colour palette for a new house. Red flags signify signs of romantic danger, green are welcome signs of stability, pink flags are mismatched love languages, white flags are issues you’re willing to work through and the new term ‘beige flags’ coined by creator Caitlin MacPhail, are signs that your potential date lacks spice.
Decoding Beige Flags
Favourite hobby? Sleeping. Way to win me over? Tequila. Competitive about? Thumb fights. Looking for? The Pam to my Jim. Typical Sunday? The Office and football— I’m sure all my fellow frustrated Hinge users can relate when I say that every second profile sounds exactly like this.
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Now, I know that painting someone’s entire personality beige based on a few of their cheugy interests isn’t fair and I’m not saying that you need to bare your soul online but playing it safe by hiding behind a cliche is like talking non-stop, but not really saying anything.
While dating apps aim to provide relevant information and try to make it easier to start a conversation by introducing some ice breakers, the approach that people take doesn’t always give an idea of who they are. But the lack of effort, does. Like coffee, sunsets and bike rides? Are you sure this is your dating profile and not your ’90s slam book?
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The Pressure To Be Different
You may genuinely enjoy watching Friends or find comfort in knowing your Hogwarts house but so do thousands of other people, and it’s no secret that the Internet rolls its eyes at all things generic. The trend ultimately comes back to the need created by social media to be different from the rest, to be the ‘main character’. In a world striving to be unique, being conventional or beige is far from cool. So you replace your dog memes with quotes from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s books and Taylor Swift’s pop music with underground tunes to construct a more interesting online image, not realising that trying so hard not to have beige flags, is ultimately going to become the biggest beige flag.
