Sack: Turning to Tinder

October 2, 2018

Left, left, right, left…

 

Sound familiar? And, no, it’s not a military march.

 

With close to 50 million users, Tinder is one of the most popular dating sites for millennials with an average of 1.6 billion swipes per day.

 

My Tinder “journey” started in April 2018 when a few of my friends hijacked my phone and created a profile for me, complete with a few swipes based on their own judgments.

 

I didn’t really think much of it at the time. I wasn’t interested in the hookup culture, and I knew that Tinder doesn’t exactly have the highest percentage of successful relationships. I wasn’t really looking for anything, aside from the entertainment of it all.

 

Regardless, once I was in charge of my own account, I was hooked. There was something addicting about swiping left or right. The low-level excitement of matching with someone new or receiving a new message didn’t help either.

 

However, I think that there is a self-valuing aspect involved that comes with it. Every time you match with someone or receive a new message is kind of an ego boost.

 

Unless you have your settings fixed to view profiles of people of the same gender, then you don’t really know who your competition is.

 

My Tinder experiences are limited to those of a straight, white female, so you can probably imagine my options when it comes to the world of Tinder. I would classify the guys I see into three separate categories: dudes who are into cars, country boys and stoners.

These categories are all pretty self-explanatory, but they’re pretty broad. Dudes who are into cars consists of any guys who have pictures of just their cars or say that they like working on cars in their bios, while country boys features any boys that have even a sliver of camo in a picture.

 

This category also includes the guys who have pictures of fish or other wild game that they’ve caught or killed. Finally, the stoners category is the most simple. If they post pictures of weed or say that they’re “420 friendly,” they are 100 percent a stoner.

 

Not all guys fall into these categories, but a vast majority of the weirdos do. My advice: Swipe left, you know, unless you’re into all that.

 

From there, there are countless reasons why people even turn to Tinder in the first place. The most common reasons include people looking for stoner buddies or hookups, i.e. the “good time, not a long time” crew. There are a few guy scattered in who say that they’re looking for a “real relationship,” but we’re taught not to believe everything we read on the internet.

 

I’m not trying to discredit Tinder and what it’s setting out to do. I know people who are in successful Tinder relationships. They’re very happy with their partners, and I’m happy that they were able to find love in one of the darkest corners of the internet.

 

However, there’s a certain level of awkwardness that happens when you accidentally cross paths with one of your matches. And, the more you swipe, the more you match. For me, Tinder is just another app that came about for the sake of entertainment. And, with all things, that factor slowly fades away.

 

Tinder is never the only option. If you really like the idea of online dating, there are plenty of other outlets, such as Bumble. However, most people don’t meet their partners via the internet.

 

Life exists outside of your phone. If you’re addicted to the swiping, then keep swiping, but it doesn’t have to be an endless cycle.

 

Molly Sack is a second-year nursing major.


 

 

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