It started as a joke. Then, like most things in my life, it spiralled.
Let me set the scene for you. It was a cold, snowy December evening on the mean streets of Long Island. I had a fresh Bath and Body Works hand sanitizer in my purse, which isn’t relevant, but I wanted you to know. My friend and I had been catching up at a local coffee shop, and as it tends to do, the conversation eventually turned to dating. My friend had been using Tinder throughout the year, and I thought it would be fun to swipe for her – give my unsolicted advice and pass judgement on people based on their respective coalescence of 1s and 0s, you know, that sort of thing. Some time passed, but we eventually realized that our combined efforts were for naught. She didn’t receive one match in my time swiping, something that shook my instant-gratification heart to its core.
“I bet I could get more matches than you,” I said, because I’m annoying, and this is the type of thing I say.
“Yeah, right! I challenge you to a duel except on our phones because that’s what this is about (phones) and you’re trying to write relatable content for Her Campus involving phones (phones),” she didn’t say, because I’m writing about this conversation a month after it happened and its specifics are lost to the void inside my brain. Regardless, she did agree, and we spent the next fifteen minutes furiously swiping as we waited for her car’s heater to kick in. Coincidentally, what also kicked in at this time was the aforementioned spiral. The fifteen minutes quickly extended to another thirty minutes when she dropped me off at my house, then another thirty minutes while eating dinner, another hour while something like Finding Bigfoot played on TV, you get the idea. Bottom line is, the spiral had begun, and once I begin a spiral, there’s no stopping it. Other than, like, metaphorical gravity, I guess, but let’s say in this metaphor there is no gravity. Right off the bat, there were a few ideas I had formed about Tinder. The informality of it, the swiping through real live human beings like objects. The unsolicted sexual messages that I have fun responding to.
I initially compared Tinder to online shopping, which is kind of horrible once you start thinking about the real live human being part again. But admittedly, at first I did not. Tinder is a notorious hook up app, anyway, and as a girl that typically does not hook up under any definition, what was there for me to experience other than talking to cute(ish) boys when I’m bored and impressing myself with pun-based opening lines? Turns out, a lot!
After a few weird exchanges and one euphemism centered around open border socialism, I started having more substantial conversations with people. I had boys being surprisingly candid, talking about their emotions, lives, and way more philosophy than I had anticipated. Maybe I just have a type (I do), but this honesty from anyone at all on something as superficial as Tinder took me aback. I started caring, even if I didn’t want to and maybe hated myself a little for it. And then I started thinking, which is usually never a good idea for me, but I did, and now here I am. I know a lot of people like to discredit social media as not being “real,” and in many ways, it isn’t. It isn’t anything directly tangible, its incredibly prone to fabrication, and often the perfect outlet for selective omission. In other words, it’s highly stylized, in a way that the natural world rarely is. However, this doesn’t change the fact that our world is becoming more and more technologically integrated. Some people spend more time looking at a screen than at anyone’s face. What’s real has been redefined, and as much as press and Youtuber storytimes like to vilify forming real relationships off of things as seemingly vapid as Tinder, the truth is, a person is a person no matter how you meet them. Meeting someone on Tinder didn’t stop me from feeling sad and listening to angry girl rock when they didn’t text back. It didn’t stop my friend from crying in a cab two months after a boy decided to break things off. It didn’t stop some couples from getting married, or prevent some women from being murdered. That’s as real as anything.
I don’t know if I have any grand conclusions to make from this. I don’t even entirely know my opinion on Tinder or similar apps. I just know that no matter how many more screens are introduced into our lives, the value of a person should never be lost. A bit of a shift here, but if I’m honest with you, I’m someone that has a hard time experiencing emotions. I don’t necessarily shut them out, but I burn through them quickly and have trouble processing them. I definitely have an inclination for theatrics, but the truth is, my main emotion is usually just comfortably placid. With that said, there were people that I spoke to off of Tinder that made that baseline shift to uncomfortable. Not necessarily in a bad way, just different than what I’m used to. I think sometimes we forget to let things in, and I’m being completely genuine when I say that using this app helped me do that. As for the future, I think I’m probably going to tap out of the Tinder world for some time, at least when I’m not testing out cool new pick-up lines.
I’ve been sitting here for a couple of minutes, and still can’t think of a good conclusion. Instead, here’s a fun #NotClickbait creepshot my friend took of me meeting a Tinder boy in person. Yes, this is my life now. Happy spring semester, everyone.