Note: this post is purely for fun, and all social observations are based on a very small sample of the population. Actually, just 2 people.
A couple months ago, I was visiting my family in the midcoast Maine area and went out to lunch with my cousin JD and one of his friends. While we were waiting for food, JD decided to play on Tinder. Having never actually been on Tinder, it’s intricacies baffled me (everything I knew actually came from this Conan bit with Dave Franco). Besides that, I’d only heard about it through friends who live in cities and articles like this one. The popular swipe technology used in Tinder has been used for shopping, personal stylists, music, and even investment apps, and that’s just the beginning.
But I still didn’t get what all the fuss was about. Since Tinder is location based, it didn’t make sense for me to have it- in small town Maine, odds are I would already know anyone else using it. Watching JD play on Tinder was fascinating, so I started grilling him about it. Fed up with my questions, he asked “Why don’t you just get it and find out?” “Because…fine.”
So this is the story of how I had Tinder for less than an hour.
Step 1: Download the app. It’s free! Boom.
Step 2: Profile setup. This was a piece of cake, 30-60 seconds, max. You just log in with Facebook and it automatically pulls in your profile information (admittedly, I didn’t look into the privacy information very deeply because I knew this was all temporary). So far, this whole Tinder experiment seemed awesome. It correctly assumed two things about me: a) that I had Facebook and b) I’m a bit lazy, so the less set up I have to do, the better. After lazy profile setup, you’re ready to make some matches.
Step 3: Swipe Away: Once you hit “Discover,” the location-based technology kicks in. It felt like I was sending out my own little “Check it, I’m on Tinder!” Bat-Symbol. Or that I was a killer whale using echolocation to avoid an iceberg.
Once Tinder located me, the fun started. The first picture came up: “Greg, 21.”
Me: Wait, so how do I play?
JD: It’s not a game.
Me: You know what I mean.
JD: If you aren’t interested, swipe left. If you are, swipe right. Easy.
So, I swiped left.
JD’s Friend: What was wrong with him?
Me: Meh. Too young. And his picture had part of another girl’s face cropped out. C’mon…
And then, I just kept swiping left like it was my job. In fact, if swiping left was a career path, I would have risen from unpaid intern to CEO in ten minutes. Mentally, the whole thing felt like more of a game than a dating app. You never know when people swipe left (i.e. reject) you, unlike real life (depending on your level of self-awareness). It’s anonymous until you match someone, so it’s low stakes (and we’ve talked about anonymity in social media before). The stakes felt so low, in fact, that at least 50% of my mental energy was spent debating whether or not I should have ordered fries.
Me: Why am I not getting any matches?
JD: You haven’t even swiped right yet…
Me: *Stares blankly*
So, after a few more left swipes, I made my first right swipe.
Me: How many times do you swipe right? I don’t want to overdo it.
JD: Uh…I pretty much always swipe right. Even if I think I want to swipe left…I swipe right.
Me: Oh. Pause. Am I playing wrong?
JD & JD’s Friend: It’s not a game!
Still convinced this was totally a game, I was a bit more generous with right swipes (the final countdown was 5-6), and lo and behold, actually made a few matches. Once you match up with someone, you can start chatting with them, which made me feel weird and uncomfortable (yet another sign that I wasn’t grasping the basic concept of Tinder). Keep in mind, the last time I blind-chatted with someone was back in the early 2000s when chat-rooms were cool.
Step 4: Match & Message (…maybe).
Me: EEEK!
JD: What’s wrong?
Me: Some guy I just matched with messaged me. What do I do?
JD: Uh…write back?
Me: But…he said “heeyyyy.” That’s terrible. Can I take back that swipe?
JD: *Stares blankly*
The highlight reel of my brief foray into Tinder chats: I didn’t realize that my Facebook “About Me,” and subsequently my Tinder bio, was a quote from Hot Rod (see below). Excited by the lazy setup, I never thought to actually look at my profile. One fellow broke the post”It’s a match” ice with “Heyy there. Nice Hot Rod quote. Solid movie!” This Tinder win was followed by a chat with a guy who, through the course of the conversation, I discovered does Crossfit with one of my uncles. So much for escaping the small town aspect. The third person who messaged me asked where I was at the moment, and if I’d be down for grabbing coffee later. In response, I deleted my account and the app, and contemplated setting my phone on fire (ok, maybe not the last part). But, by this point, I felt that I’d seen enough.
Thanks for nothing, 17 y/o me.
This all took place before our food had arrived. JD continued happily swiping, and I resolved the fries debate by eating most of his.
Step 5: Abandon app altogether and enjoy food. And we all lived happily ever after.
In short, the swiping technology used in Tinder is pretty incredible, and I’m intrigued to see how it will be adopted by businesses/industries in the next year or so. As for Tinder itself, I still don’t understand what the fuss is about. But then again, maybe I just wasn’t playing right.