The Tinder Stories My Single Friends Tell Me
Bronwyn Wilkie
So who here thinks Tinder is fascinating?
If you answered, ‘ME!’ to that question then I’m guessing you, like me, are in a relationship and don’t have an account. Any exposure you have to Tinder is probably limited to when long-suffering single friends let you play on theirs (that is to say, foolishly leave their phones unattended in front of you). You might even have been secretly jealous of your single friends for all the fun they get to have flirting with good-looking people all day (and night) long. Well the grass is greener on the other side…or…is it? Here are the Tinder stories my single friends tell me.
For those who use the app, however, the reality seems to be a little different from the roller-coaster ride of passionate possibility we imagine it to be. In fact, it seems to have a lost a little bit of momentum among the people I know. My housemate, for instance, went on a few dates after she signed up but hasn’t met up with anyone in months. I still occasionally catch her with her eyes glued to her phone, swiping left and right like she’s conducting a tiny orchestra – but then I also spend hours browsing online stores and adding things to wish lists without any intention of making a purchase.
So what gives? Why is it that something coupled-up people can’t wait to play with is so boring to the people who have unlimited access to it. Well for one thing, being a single girl on Tinder isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Picture this little scenario: you’re delicately sipping on a cocktail in some trendy hipster bar—because bushranger beards and bowties aside, those guys know how to mix a drink—when you lock eyes with the handsome man-bun-sporting dude across the room. You blush a little and both look away, but your eyes keep being drawn back to him. Eventually, Man Bun casually saunters on over. He smiles, brings his lips to your ear, so close that you can feel his breath on your skin, and whispers, ‘Want to sit on my face?’
Ahhh, sweet nothings.
This is pretty unlikely though, right? Because that kind of behaviour is just not socially acceptable—and Man Bun doesn’t want to wear your martini. So why is it happening to so many women online?
‘There is a level of anonymity on Tinder to some extent,’ says my friend Jamie, 33. ‘You haven’t decided to meet the girl yet, you’ve just been matched in the initial stages.’ A lot of guys on there just want to get laid, he says – the implication being, I guess, that they will just throw it out there (almost literally) and if the girl is up for it, great; if not, there’s plenty more fish in the Tinder.
It’s not always vulgar come-ons. My housemate (who literally as I am writing this sentence had a guy message her, ‘Can I see you naked?’) has also had weird questions like, ‘If you were a mushroom, what kind of mushroom would you be?’
Jamie has heard dudes chuck out all sorts of interesting openers – ‘everything from Game of Thrones references to blatant insults’.
The reason, he says, is that, ‘When you’ve been on it for a while and start to match with a cluster of different people, you realise that you need to be either really good looking or say something really unique to get their attention.’
Women use the same online anonymity to be a bit more flirtatious and provocative than perhaps they would be in the real world. This isn’t a bad thing, necessarily, as long as you don’t go too far outside your comfort zone and feel trapped or committed into following through. But an element of flirtation is certainly necessary in order to take things further – you can sense chemistry within seconds in person, but without body language or tone, text-based conversations with strangers can be so – well, two-dimensional.
Although Jamie says flirting with multiple people at once can be ‘a massive ego trip’, without face-to-face interaction the buzz eventually wears off and conversation dries up. At which point you move on to the next match. It all sounds a bit tedious – less 50 Shades of Grey How People Imagined It Would Be and more 50 Shades of Grey The Reality. Really boring and so awkwardly bad that it was almost funny.
In Tinder’s favour, it does quickly sort the men from the slimeballs – the kind of guy who would open with, ‘Can I see you naked?’ would no doubt turn out to be a creep sooner or later, even if you’d met him in person and seemed nice and normal at the time. And, as Jamie says, being on there is ‘easier than growing some cajones and going up to girls on the street. At least you know they like you to some extent already.’
Personally, I think cajones are underrated. It takes guts to go up to someone and strike up a conversation, and anyone who does deserves to be treated with just as much respect as the person they are approaching. It should be the same online, but unfortunately this doesn’t seem to be the case.
Who knows, if I were to become single and it became a choice between signing up or remaining lost in a sea of people who are either staring into the eyes of their partner or staring down at their phones, maybe I would, eventually, have to try a little Tinderness.
But any man who asks me if I want to sit on their face, be warned: I will find out who you are and I will publicly shame you, including sending a screenshot of the conversation to your mother.
Because the internet giveth anonymity, the internet taketh away.
What's Your Reaction?
