Marketed as a tool for meeting “interesting people nearby,” often referred to as a dating app, but most widely known as a place to find easy hookups, Tinder is a hookup culture phenomenon. Users are shown a stream of profiles (taken from Facebook) and all they have to do is anonymously swipe right for like and left for pass. When both people swipe right a match is made and the pair can start chatting each other up. There’s a minimal amount of pressure for swiping right because of what the creators call a “double opt-in” system, which means that no one can know you like them unless they also like you. It’s so easy and non-committal that it’s no wonder that there are around one billion swipes per day.
Downloading Tinder is something I never imagined myself doing. To start, I’ve always been shy and socially anxious in situations where I need to interact with people I don’t know. So why would I download an app whose point was to talk to strangers, with the added pressure of trying to impress them, especially when the expectations are so unclear? Do they really want to get to know me better? Or do they simply want to meet up, undress, bang, and be done with it? As someone who cringes in the face of hookup culture, knowing I can’t—or at least shouldn’t—participate in it because I get too emotionally attached, Tinder never seemed like a valid option for me. But after seeing a close friend of mine download the app and quickly find a number of matches, I grew curious.
It was about 11:00pm on a Thursday, after a day of feeling frustrated about my romantic life, when I finally took the plunge and downloaded Tinder. I was sitting on the floor in my friend’s dorm, letting him show me the ropes. Despite his clear instructions, I botched my first swipe. Amused that a guy from one of my classes was the first person to appear on my feed, I naively swiped up to read more of his profile. That swipe up, though, meant that I had accidentally “Super-Liked” this person and that he would be able to see my unintentional preference, erasing all the anonymity of the double opt-in system. Mortified, I threw my phone down. But, realizing there was nothing I could do, picked it back up and began exploring the world of Tinder.
I spent too many hours the next day and a half swiping. If I learned anything from this experience, it is that I am extremely picky, which might explain my lack of casual dating in the past. And, to be honest, my pickiness bothered me. Because there were just so many people to choose from, and because there is such a small amount of information available about a person, I was making judgments about other people based on superficial things. Appearances quickly became my priority. I was beginning to feel myself using the same quick and nearly mindless decision making that I do when looking for a dress or a pair of shoes online, and then I started to feel guilty.
In a Vanity Fair article about Tinder and hookup culture, one Tinder connoisseur (a straight male) shared that it’s about competition and sleeping with the most attractive people: “‘you’re always sort of prowling. You could talk to two or three girls at a bar and pick the best one, or you can swipe a couple hundred people a day—the sample size is so much larger. It’s setting up two or three Tinder dates a week and, chances are, sleeping with all of them, so you could rack up 100 girls you’ve slept with in a year.’”
I deleted Tinder because I felt uncomfortable. If I was mindlessly swiping people, people were doing the same to me. I even felt vulnerable, in a way, knowing that my profile was out there for anyone to see, especially people I only half knew from walking around campus. Although Tinder was supposed to be anonymous, I felt like I had lost some of my anonymity. In a strange way, I felt Tinder had become a part of my identity. Without Tinder, I could be any sort of girl, but with Tinder, I became a Girl on Tinder Looking for Someone. Maybe this is an overly fine distinction but it was someone I didn’t want to be.
So why did I do it in the first place? I wanted to be distracted, but even more so I wanted approval and a boost to my self-esteem. I wanted to see that there are people out there that could like me, or at least think I’m attractive. And when I got a match, I felt these things. But I also felt like I was pretending to be something that I wasn’t, or was offering things I didn’t want to give. In the end, I don’t regret the experience, and honestly it was pretty fascinating to see the way in which some people go about the whole “dating” (hookup?) thing. It’s not impossible that there will be more Tinder in my future.
Image Credit: Mashable, Meme Generator