Have you ever witnessed a friend of yours rapidly swipe their phone, flashing through endless pictures and bios without reading, only for the sake of getting as many matches as possible? This week I was that friend. For one week, I sought to only swipe right on Tinder for 5 minutes every day. I changed my radius to 10 km and excluded anyone I knew or suspected was a fake account. I even went into the week thinking I would reply to every single message. The results were shocking.
- The Good
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If there was anything positive about this whole experience, it was the massive and largely unexpected ego boost that I got. I knew I was swiping right on everyone but I didn’t think everyone would be swiping on me too! I don’t need outside validation to feel as though I am enough but it doesn’t hurt to know a large (though selective) group of people find you attractive.
- The Bad
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If I’m being honest, I only lasted 4 days of the whole experiment. After only a compiled 20 minutes of constant swiping-swiping-matching-swiping-matching, I just couldn’t take it anymore. The biggest problem was that I wasn’t actually attracted to very many of my matches and I knew nothing about them since I hadn’t even bothered to read their bios. I was flooded with over a hundred messages this week and didn’t have the heart to answer any of them. Simply sending a message over a dating app can be a big deal for people and I felt bad having grabbed their attention only for an experiment. Slightly less unsettling but still noteworthy, all the cuties (the few that I encountered) got lost in a sea of matches and messages. Even if there was someone who I was interested in, it would have taken so much effort to seek them out of the crowd that I never bothered with it.
- The Ugly
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This by far was the worst part of the experiment-I felt watched. Going to a relatively small university has its perks but being able to avoid people isn’t one of them. It’s especially hard to ignore that fact when you’ve matched with what feels like half the university population on Tinder. Of course, I am exaggerating and it was probably all in my head but I couldn’t get over the idea that anywhere I went one of my matches was watching me. The fear of being confronted for not answering a message hung over my head like an angry thunderstorm and I was never able to shake the feeling. If you haven’t already gathered… I won’t be doing this again.
So, what is the point of rapid swiping anyway? Maybe people just want as many matches possible and all the power to them! I myself found absolutely no pleasure in having a slew of matches and messages from people that I wasn’t interested in. All it really means is a second round of investigation to figure out who you’ve even matched with and potentially the feeling of being watched. Would you ever try this? Let us know in the comments below.