It was Finals Week of last Fall semester. All of my friends were busy studying and didn’t have time to hang out with me, so naturally I did what every other bored college student would do… I downloaded Tinder. Now at first, this app is super entertaining. I found my calculus TA who didn’t speak a word of English, one of my old residence assistants, the boy who used to live on my floor who never spoke and plenty of other college-aged men ranging from “eh” to “ayyyy.” There is a certain sense of shame I had to get over initially knowing that hundreds or thousands of guys could now see that I was active on Tinder, but that passed pretty quickly. After all, in our generation, I don’t think one’s dignity should be lessened by one’s utilization of dating technology. Let’s be real: Do we millennials even know how to meet people without technology after navigating our weirdest and most socially awkward years of adolescence with Myspace, AIM and Facebook?
Ultimately I deleted my Tinder three months ago, after a fun yet anticlimactic six months of having one. Being that I spent half of my freshman year perusing through this slightly objectifying phone app, let me explain what motivated me to end my activity on it and how my life has improved since I deleted that little red flame off my phone.
I was sick of running into people that recognized me and couldn’t remember from where. I will never be quite sure if they knew they swiped right on me and were just ashamed to publicly announce their use of one of the most popular apps in a college town, or if they just knew they had seen my face before but couldn’t place where. Yes, it’s me, the girl in the black dress known to you as “Jenna, 19,” who was located 3 miles away from you. I don’t know why these awkward encounters bothered me as much as they did, but I just missed the feeling of genuinely meeting a guy without him having a preconceived idea of who I am and what my intentions were.
Waiting in line at the Chipotle near campus while it was crowded became a whole new type of anxiety. Do yourself a favor and prevent this terribly awkward encounter from happening by deleting your Tinder now. If not, you risk running into “Matt, 21,” who messaged you five times today asking for companionship. There is nothing that ruins your burrito bowl more than a creepy boy making resentful eye contact with you because he knows you are in fact alive and well and still never messaged him back.
I decided meeting people in person is far more rewarding than meeting them on my phone’s 4-inch screen. Meeting someone in real life for the first time is something I think our generation takes for granted because, like Tinder has shown us, we can meet a boy and talk for weeks and then boom, one day he appears only if we invite him to come over. In my opinion, this isn’t how it should work. Whether you are looking for a relationship, a friendship or just your quick fix of affection, I believe a face-to-face first impression is more meaningful on a human level than a right swipe on a screen. That way if that person is weird you can find out right away. And if he isn’t, then hey! At least you won’t have to lie to people about how you met him.
I may be as single as a Kraft slice of American cheese, and maybe I’m a little old fashioned, but I really do not need an app to tell me how many matches I have based on how attractive my picture is and how clever my two-line bio is. Yeah, it’s a lot harder to approach people in real life for the first time and say “hi” than it is to message them behind the safety of a phone. But it probably will instill a little more confidence within you, and maybe you’ll even meet someone who makes Chipotle a better place, not a scarier one. Check back with me in 10 years and I’ll let you know how I feel about eHarmony.
Photo credit:www.Jonathonaslay.com