Tinder... Swipe left or right?
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!
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.
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