Ah, Tinder, a place where you can:
1. Match with undeserving men from all over the greater Rochester area
2. Receive one message from them
3. Forget to respond
4. Never speak again
5. See them three weeks later while in line at the mail center (where they remember you, but you do not remember them, making it sufficiently more awkward.)
If you are anything like myself — and I really hope that you are or this confession is embarrassing — you consistently download Tinder out of boredom just to delete it again once you’ve run out of random people in your area to entertain, but never speak to again. I fully accept that I go through this process simply for the validation of a “swipe right” on my silly little profile with my silly little bio, which in my mind means that my silly little self is worth something. And that’s so sad! I always wanted to be the type of person who doesn’t search for outside validation (especially from men), but there is something so addicting about Tinder that I can’t quite put my finger on. I actually get upset when I swipe right on someone and we don’t match… for about a second. But then I’m on to the next guy who probably looks exactly like the first like nothing ever happened.
I would like to think of myself as a decently confident, capable woman who— when faced with actual real life situations— can determine who she actually wants to sleep with. But for some reason, a person who I would never want to speak to in real life becomes a possible sexual partner in my fake life that I’ve curated on my Tinder profile.
So why do we do it? If I know my worth and don’t really even want to sleep with these people, why do I continue to swipe and swipe and swipe?
Maybe it’s just sheer boredom or maybe it’s the lack of new encounters during the pandemic, but either way, it perplexes me.
So I haven’t figured out the answer yet. But, if we match on Tinder, send me a message and maybe I’ll have a pickup line or two for you.
Or more likely, I won’t even reply.