Tinder... Swipe left or right?

15:18 Unknown 1 Comments


 With Tinder making such a massive appearance in the world of dating, I found it unavoidable not to write anything about it. I actually avoided writing anything about it because I felt that I couldn’t make my mind up about how I feel, but after a while I decided that maybe it’s time to put my thoughts down in writing.

For those of you who don’t know - and I imagine it’s very few of you - Tinder is a dating application. It’s really easy to use, you sign up with Facebook, a few photos of you get uploaded and then you go through a list of guys, swiping left if you don’t like them and right if you do. If two of you swipe right to each other then it’s a match and you can start talking to each other. It’s basically an application that lets you decide solely on looks, and occasionally people may write a couple of sentences about themselves, or a quote. It’s nothing more than that.


Swiping Right for.. Tinder!

 Tinder is easy to use, it’s simple and the best thing about it is that you don’t get random messages from people you don’t like or weirdos that keep texting you because you never replied to them. You choose who you talk to.

 I downloaded Tinder maybe a year ago, and I found myself flipping through photos of numerous guys pointlessly for nights on end. I actually dated a couple of guys for a while from Tinder, but it didn’t work out. Gabriel was the first guy I met from Tinder ( see When is it Too Early to Start Liking Someone?) and Aaron was the second (see Threesomes...Three Times the Pleasure or the Trouble?). None of them worked out for separate reasons, but I had a good time with both of them while it lasted. Many of my friends started using Tinder after that. Shayla for example, met a guy through Tinder quite recently and things have been going quite well. One of my friends however, got introduced to Tinder tonight! She knew all about it, but never actually bothered to download it. When we had the conversation about the most fashionable dating application of the day, Vivi suddenly told us that she never used it. We had her signed up in five minutes and there she was tindering away all night long...



Swipe Left for... Tinder!

I have to admit, it was somehow exciting seeing someone that had not used Tinder getting carried away with it on the first night of using it. In fact, she got so absorbed that she hardly spoke to us for an hour.  After sometime I decided to go see what was going on and I found her looking at photos and swiping left within milliseconds of looking at someone. When I asked her why she never swiped right she said ‘No one is my type’. How is that even possible? She swiped through photos of all types of men: blondes, brunettes, tall, short, with beard, clean-shaven, blue-eyed, dark-eyed, and the list goes on and on. How could she not find anyone she liked?

 And suddenly the excitement that I had for introducing her to Tinder, faded away. I knew that Vivi is really picky when it comes to guys, but while I watched  her aimlessly swiping left to tens of guys and then looking up to her expressionless face, I couldn’t help but wonder: How vain do we really become with this application? We look at someone and decide we don’t like them because his nose is too big, or his hair is too long, or his beard is too long, or because he’s making a silly face or wearing a bright coloured T-shirt. But honestly, are all these grounds for dismissal? We tend to forget that all these are people, and someone that you might have thought has a big nose, might turn out to be the real deal. We learn to take a look on someone and decide whether we like them or not, but whatever happened to physical contact? I walk around London and see people fetching their morning Startbucks while flipping through photos on Tinder, but what do they really think about when they flip through those photos?

 And that’s the least of it. Apparently, having talked to both guys and girls that have used Tinder, I found out that there are two main opinions out there about men and women on tinder: The men are just looking to get laid and apparently, the women on Tinder are emotionally fucked up!  Who says these things? As if it’s not enough that both sexes fall into gender social construction every minute of every day in the real world, we have to go through the stereotyping in the world of Tinder as well?

 After a while, Vivi looked up and just said ‘This is sad’. She switched off her phone and threw it on the couch. And seriously, who’s to blame her? This is sad! We judge people based on their appearance in two photographs and then we expect to find Prince Charming. Let me tell you, you won’t find him riding his horse and posing with his sword in hand for his Tinder profile photo. So put your phone down and look around you. You might miss bumping into someone in the middle of the street that you could potentially like because you have your face glued on your phone. Whatever happened to the good old fashioned way of meeting guys? A simple, ‘the weather seems promising today’ to the cute guy next to you at your local Starbucks, might gain you a good conversation and potentially a date.

 You can keep tinder if it’s just for fun, but for all of you out there that expect to find a real relationship out of it, let me tell you it’s even harder than the real world. As for me,  I might still log on Tinder every now and then before falling asleep at night for a few minutes, but I don’t believe that anything serious might come out of it. And maybe I will meet a few more guys, but I stopped thinking that’s the way to go. I just do it for fun now and if anything good comes out of it then great and if not... I didn’t have high standards for this application to begin with.


 What do you think? Have you used Tinder? Please comment and share your experience with me! 

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1 comment:

  1. Seems like a waste. All it really does is indicate to a user that they won't be rejected of they like someone who's super-liked them.

    ReplyDelete