As a single lady, I am not adverse to a bit of chatting online to guys. It’s harder than ever to meet nice men nowadays, and I can’t deny that social media and dating apps seem like much more accessible and easy ways to meet people. I have trolled through Tinder, asked to be considered by Raya (and was put on the waiting list…) and recently browsed through Bumble to see what the ‘female Tinder’ consisted of.
With such an array of apps available to us, you would think that meeting ‘The One’ or at the very least ‘Someone nice, normal and fit’ would be easy. But it’s not, not for me anyway. It’s easy to forget the shallowness of the dating apps that you’re using when you’re on them. Take Tinder: you might have a browse through the people available when you’re bored or waiting for someone. In those few minutes of skimming through everyone that comes up, you’re not going to read the bio’s, you’re going to click on the fittest people and hope that they’ll match you back. Maybe you’ll like someone ridiculously attractive who you think is out of your league, and then get either (delete as appropriate) excited and flattered, or feel horrible and down that he didn’t like you back. Shallow, shallow, shallow. And it makes me ashamed to say that I do it all the time.
However, this week I was introduced to a new dating app called Jigtalk. This app forces you to talk to people in order to reveal what they look like. I was intrigued straight away. To start with, you are asked your name, age and to pick a picture of yourself, and then you have to answer three simple questions: your occupation, favourite thing and a random fact. I found this quite challenging, as that’s all people can see when they are deciding whether to give you a thumbs up or a thumbs down. It made me realize straight away how much we rely on our looks and the extent our first impressions are based on image, especially through social media. But anyway, my answers to the Jigtalk questions were: student, Pepsi max and that I once sang in front of Girls Aloud (true story). Sadly, most of the boys had not been as creative: ‘Netflix and chill’ was a strong answer from 90% of the boys that came up, and if they didn’t like that then they almost certainly liked ‘banter’…
After I had disliked most of the boys on Jigtalk, largely because of the lack of actual banter, I did start matching with people. Once you’ve matched with someone, all you see is your conversation and jigsaw puzzles where the pictures should be. When you speak to the person, the puzzle pieces are taken away bit by bit, but only if you are both speaking to each other. It was quite nice to speak to someone without feeling intimidated or conscious about what you looked like, but I couldn’t help wondering quite soon on who I was speaking to.
The first boy that I spoke to was really nice, and informed me that his friend had just got back from a date with someone he met on Jigtalk and that he had spent £50 on the lucky lady. This was the first time that I managed to get past the whole ‘Netflix and chill’ saga at the beginning and see it as a legitimate dating app. Tom* quickly confessed to being a Jigtalk newbie too and also studied at Leeds university, so we had a few things to talk about. However, the conversation was in general just a friendly one, and I felt bad that I was really more intrigued by the big reveal of his photo.
The issue with this app is that the focus on having no photo and no physical identity to start the conversation builds intrigue immediately and it is almost impossible to not be interested in who is behind the puzzle pieces. When our photos were revealed, I thought Tom’s photo fitted him well, and that whilst he was attractive, he was not really my type. He in turn asked who I was in the photo, as my photo is of myself and a friend, and I got the impression he fancied my friend more from the descriptions he gave us: I was referred to as the “Trendy Blonde” whereas my friend was the “Brunette Bombshell”. Hopefully Tom will find a lovely girl to take out soon, but it will not be me!
I had hoped that Jigtalk would change the way that dating apps focus on image and looks, but in my opinion, whilst Jigtalk is an excellent premise, it fails to eliminate the shallower side of things because of the excitement that comes with revealing who is behind the jigsaw pieces. Maybe I just didn’t meet the right people on Jigtalk, but sadly I think that if you are meeting people through social media and dating apps you can’t avoid judging people on what you have in front of you, be that a picture or the little information stated in a biography.
To end on a positive note, however, Jigtalk has made me realize how much I tend to make snap decisions based on a first opinion and that it’s something that I need to work on in my day to day life. Maybe making quick decisions and judgements is why I’m currently single… OR maybe it’s because all the eligible men out there choose to use my favourite phrase: ‘Netflix and chill’.
Images:
http://weknowmemes.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/hey-girl-i-saw-you-on-tinder-.png
http://www.pocketmeta.com/jigtalk-blind-dating-app-unlocks-pictures-messaging-27566/