“You should get Tinder,” my well-meaning friend suggested during a lunchtime heart-to-heart.
“Isn’t Tinder just a bunch of creepy people looking for sex?” I asked.
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“Yes and no. It can be, but you just need to try it out for yourself.”
“Whatever.”
Originally, I laughed off the idea of dating apps. I wasn’t even sure I wanted a relationship, anyway. Seven months after my serious seventeen-month relationship ended, I was kind of enjoying the single life. And I had PLANS, too. Big plans, to go back to Germany for a year, visit a bunch of places and continue to find myself. I kept saying, “It doesn’t make sense for me to be in a relationship for AT LEAST another two years.”
And yet, I found my curiosity growing. While I knew it made sense for me to be, I wasn’t sure if I WANTED to be single for the next two years. I knew such a pool of (potentially) eligible bachelors would likely not be available in my post-grad life. I also have a stronger sense of adventure than previously recognized, and I’d been a bit restless since I got back from Germany.
So, after some thought and with the motto “FOR SCIENCE!” I downloaded Bumble, Coffee Meets Bagel and, of course, Tinder, apps that I’d heard of through either friends or the internet. For kicks and giggles, I set up my Bumble account first. But when it came to scrolling through guys, I sort of froze. I’ve never been good at snap decisions, and to have to immediately choose whether or not I was interested in someone based on a few pictures, a name, an age and possibly a bio, was at first quite difficult. What if they were the only decent person in the rest of my lineup and I just didn’t know it yet? How dare I toy with a guy’s feelings like this? Am I a terrible person for wanting to test the waters? I’m not necessarily looking for a mate, but I’m interested in surveying the scene to see what I might find later. The bottom line is, I AM CURIOUS about what’s out there. Surely it can’t be that bad, right?
Hence, “The Great Social Science Experiment: Downloading Dating Apps” was born.
What my friends thought would happen: I’ll find a great guy and maybe live happily ever after.
What my mom thought would happen: Nothing good. Probably date rape. (I also didn’t tell her until I had everything set up and there was nothing she could do to convince me otherwise.)
What society thought would happen: “Netflix and Chill”.
What actually happened: I used the apps for approximately a month and will share my ratings and a summary of my experiences below.
Bumbling Through Bumble:
User-Friendliness: 1/5
Price: $$ ($10/month)
Apparent Compatibility/Quality of Potentially Eligible Bachelors (PEBs): 4/5
Number of PEBs: 3/5
Actual Matches: 0
Actual Conversations: 0
Actual Dates: 0
The cruel truth of this app was that while I liked the PEBs it gave me the most, I was apparently not technologically competent enough to correctly work the app. My matches would disappear out of my match queue when I would try to get a closer look at them every. Single. Time. However, since I had already paid for a month’s subscription, I was hesitant to delete the app from fear it would wipe my purchase history, too. And once I’d swiped through the first and largest batch of PEBs, offerings became slim, few, and far between. Unfortunate—I really liked the app and the types of guys on there, but due to either something unintentionally undesirable in my profile or my technological incompetence (for the sake of my self-esteem, I’m betting on the second option) no connections were, in fact, made.
Coffee Meets Bagel—AKA, Girl Meets No One
User-Friendliness: 3/5
Price: $ (Technically free, but might need to buy “beans” depending how involved you get.)
Apparent Compatibility/Quality of PEBs: 2.5/5
Number of PEBs: 1/5
Actual Matches: 1
Actual Conversations: 1(ish)
Actual Dates: 0
I’ll be honest: I was severely disappointed by the lack of offerings on this app. Another collegiate site I read (geared towards college women) called The Lala gave this app rave reviews, but I had the worst luck with this app out of the three I tried. Again, it took me a bit to figure out how it works (and it’s STILL telling me my profile incomplete, even though it most certainly is NOT) and there were not that many guys for my trouble. Most were either my age and kind of creepy-seeming, or old-ish but respectable looking. Maybe it would work in a more densely-populated area, where more people are into dating apps BESIDES Tinder. The reason I say I had “1(ish)” conversations is that once you have a match, you have a week to talk to them. I thought you had a week to begin the conversation, not to have THE WHOLE conversation. As a result, I waited two hours before the chat room expired to say hello. Oops.
It’s Going Down, I’m Yelling Tinder:
User-Friendliness: 4/5
Price: $ (technically free, but can pay for features like being able to reverse a swipe)
Apparent Compatibilty/Quality of PEBs: 2/5
Number of PEBs: 5/5
Actual Matches: 7
Actual Conversations: 2
Actual Dates: 0*
*see write-up
Tinder is the definition of “there are plenty of fish in the sea, but they’re probably all blue gill.” Speaking of fishing, or hunting, there are no shortage of PEBs whose profile pictures contain their latest catch or trophy (or their truck, of all things.) But that’s also not my type, so as I scrolled through for the first time, I swiped right on, let’s say, five out of fifty guys. As I continued through Tinder, I felt as if I were the Oprah of left swipes. “YOU get a left swipe.” “And YOUUU get a left swipe!” “EVERYBODY gets a left swipe!” Part of this is, as I stated in my bio, I’m not looking to hook up, so I have the help of my (pretty high) standards and self-respect to help me weed through the (maybe not-so) PEBs. No biographical info other than name, age and college? Left swipe! I want to get to know you, dude! More than 20 miles away (well, I’ll be honest, anywhere besides FHSU because I suck at driving)? Left swipe! Are you wearing a cowboy hat in more than one of your pictures? We’re probably not going to agree on politics. Left swipe! Are you involved in a sporty activity in most if not all of your photos? That’s awesome, but not my type. Hard left swipe. Is your only biographical info your social media links? I’m not interested in boosting your follower count, sorry. #leftswipe. Do you look drunk, high or the life of Party Central in your profile pictures? Swipe to the left! Are you trying too hard to look like a thug or gangster in any of your photos? Sorry dude, lefty swipey! Are you proudly chugging alcohol in any of your pictures, even though your profile CLEARLY states you are under 21? LEFT. SWIPE. In fact, one of my biggest technical peeves with Tinder is that I could not always swipe left as easily or as quickly as I wanted to.
As seen by the numbers above, I did, in fact, have the most success with this app. I had more matches and conversations with (seemingly decent) guys on here than I did with the other two. And there was one guy in particular I really hit it off with. He was from about two hours away (I didn’t realize that when I right-swiped,) but started our conversation with a Doctor Who reference, was about my age and seemed like a quality person in comparison to those looking for hookups. After messaging for a few days, I asked him when he was coming to my town next, and we agreed on a day to meet. The morning of the day he planned to visit, he messaged me saying he’d gotten called into work on his day off and couldn’t make it. I completely understood, and we rescheduled for the following Monday. But when I messaged him over the weekend trying to nail down specifics, he didn’t respond. When I messaged him Monday morning to confirm he was still coming, he still didn’t respond. Friends, it has been OVER TWO WEEKS and I have not heard a peep from this douchewaffle in gentleman’s guise. In his defense, I don’t know him well enough to know what’s going on in his life. His phone could have kicked the bucket and he was too proud/afraid to try to explain why our meetup didn’t work AGAIN. He could have died, for all I know (but that’s the worst case scenario and I hope he’s still alive.)
I also received an interesting (if not rather horrifying to my English-major self) message from one of my matches. He had an incredibly well-written and interesting bio, wasn’t bad looking, and I was pretty pumped that he decided to swipe right on me, too. However, my excitement dissipated the second I saw the four-word message he’d sent me by way of introduction.
“Hey Nicole Whats sup”
Four words. No punctuation. Basically, no effort shown. He probably had hundreds of matches, so why would he bother putting effort into me? I decided to show the same “what do I care” attitude back to him, and left his message unanswered. (But seriously?! NO PUNCTUATION!?!)
The Takeaway:
While I’m sure there are plenty of great guys on Tinder, I failed to find them. As far as the other apps go, I apparently did not possess the base level of technological competency needed to use them properly, and my area was not densely populated enough in at least one case to get a good sample. Maybe Google could help out others who want to try them?
Another unexpected result: I started getting to know guys in real life. Guys from my building, guys from my classes—suddenly, they were EVERYWHERE and, well, I kinda liked them. They definitely seemed nicer, more personable, and, to be honest, more accessible than the random guys online. I could get a much better read on their personalities in a ten-minute conversation than I could in a week of messages. They were funny, passionate, kind, caring—all sorts of things I knew I wanted in a potential boyfriend, but never expected to find in those particular packages. Slowly, I became less and less interested in the virtual guys, and more and more interested in the ones I knew—actually, on some realistic level, KNEW—in my off-screen life. Call me old-fashioned; I know I am. But I think it would be a lot more fun to go on a date with a guy I’d seen more than a few pictures of beforehand. Not like any of these guys have asked me out or anything. But hey, a girl can dream.
