“We’re smart and attractive and nice, so why don’t we have dates?” I wondered aloud to my friends as we sat together on the benches on the scenic lawn of my college. It was the end of the spring semester of our sophomore year and we were bemoaning the lack of boys in our lives. While we weren’t able to come up with an answer to that question (other than boys are stupid and what are you gonna do?), we did attempt to come up with a plan to address it. We began to discuss dating apps and decided that we would all download Tinder and try our luck.
If you don’t know, Tinder is a dating app where you are presented with the pictures of people in your area who are around your age. You swipe to the right if you like them and to the left if you prefer to pass. If you both swipe right you’re “matched” and can start messaging each other and see where it goes. Tinder has the reputation of being a place where people go to find a quick hookup, but my friends and I went in with a little bit of faith that we could find a decent guy.
Once we got started, it was pretty addicting. Each time we got a match, we experienced a little thrill of possibility. While my friends ended up deleting it after less than a week, I stuck with it for months. I went through phases of opening it a few days a week, to ignoring it for a month, and cycling through again. I went on quite a few Tinder dates and actually met some pretty cool guys, but ultimately I realized that this wasn’t really what I wanted to be spending my time on.
I’d like to say I came to the realization on my own, but it took my friend putting me on a week-long boy ban for me to see it. I truly don’t think there is anything inherently wrong with Tinder: it’s fun, entertaining, and trust me when I say you get a lot of good stories, but it’s not the place to go if you want more than just a few dates. It began to feel like a chore to go through and respond to messages and check out my matches, so in the spirit of my love of minimalism in all its forms, I removed the unnecessary from my life and deleted it.
The likelihood of meeting someone who is right for you on an app with so little substance is thin (although I have heard of the rare success stories here and there) and not really worth the effort. Instead of putting so much focus on “fixing” this area of our lives (I always seem to need a project, but this shouldn’t be it!!!) let’s instead hone in on what we’re interested in and enjoy doing and allow ourselves to meet someone in our own time. Having a connection aside from a swipe will certainly be a better basis for dating.
What are your thoughts on Tinder? Do you have it? Do you hate it? I’d love to hear all about it!
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