The boy/girl dynamic is always a tough situation to get into. Same goes for same sex couples, friends with benefits, or whatever alternative “it’s complicated” label with which you choose to brand your courtships. It’s also tough to write about, especially being a girl. No matter what perspective you take on the matter, people will always be waiting to spin your words around to make it seem as though you have unrealistic expectations, or they’ll resort to the simple explanation: she’s a slut. We aren’t allowed to speak the same sexual language as men, even though the person we are currently seeing may be using that crude language in accompaniment with our names when they’re kicking it back with the dudes. It’s plain old not fair, and it never has been. It’s also just hard to adequately capture. Providing a glimpse into your insecurities and fears is no easy feat. It seems that the most intimate corners of your soul are put on a pedestal for everyone to judge when we talk about our 21st century perspective on “love”.
Well, I can’t be that embarrassed. I’m on Tinder, so I think I lose a sliver of my dignity with each right or left swipe I make. I might as well just go the extra mile and explain the motivation behind Tindering in the first place, and I really feel the term “tindering” should be added to the Webster dictionary’s ever-extending collection of verbs.
When I think of the pre-Tinder era of dating, it’s hard to refrain from picturing Lucille Ball from “I Love Lucy” taking a meticulous casserole out of the oven while dinosaurs groan guttural noises outside her window. I know, that makes no sense. You know what else doesn’t make sense? The world before Tinder to a confused nineteen year old like myself, and there is my point. I am both a hopeless romantic and a realist. My head and my heart malfunction when they work together. My head says that tindering is the devil in an earthly form and that no real, respectable relationship can come from it. Yet, a deeper curiosity that presses and persists much more valiantly than logic wants to go on the cliché coffee date, just to meet new people. I always laugh at the profiles I see on Tinder with bios reading, “Just here to make friends” or, “My boyfriend and I are looking to meet new people." Really? Did nobody inform you of Tinder’s main usage? Then again, I find myself feeling the same way. Yes, I want you to take me out and pay for my dinner. Yes, I am aware of the Tinder food stamp phenomenon and refuse to label what I am doing as such. Yes, I consider myself a feminist and don’t know if this makes me a bad feminist because I’m letting a man pay for my meal or a good one because I’m ignoring the imminent prospect of slut-shaming (and don’t pull that “feminism is just an excuse to be a slut” bullsh*t. Is owning your masculinity just an excuse to be a slut too?). I am aware of all of the downfalls of perusing the people of Tinder, yet I don’t let them stop me from doing just that, and I couldn’t tell you why.
Tinder gives you a selection of people for the option to swipe left or right. The direction of the swipe is determined by nothing more than their appearance and the slight glimpse of personality that is revealed through skimpy bios. It is basically a shopping app for men and women, you just have to hope they like you back and will answer your corny pickup lines once you have them in your cart. Then, you have to make sure your produce makes it home and onto the shelf (hence, go out on a date), and hope that it doesn’t grow mold before you plan to eat it. Inevitably, the produce expires and you are left to go back to the store and go through the same process all over again. It never ends.
Tinder has solidified my preexisting cynical perspective on dating, and I hate that it has done so. The worst part about it is that I can’t stop. It’s just too easy. Tinder altogether eliminates the fear of rejection, which is a huge perk in using it. If you swipe right on a person and they don’t reciprocate, the other person never knows it happened. If you happen to match, congrats! You both find each other attractive, and apparently that’s all you need to be able to date someone. It doesn’t matter if the other person doesn’t understand your Harry Potter references and is embarrassed by the way you immediately swoon over every cute dog you pass by on the street. If two people in this world show the slightest bit of affection towards the other, even if that affection only stems from appearance, that is all you need. When you grow old, you’ll be stuck with a face full of wrinkles and a companion who doesn’t know what you mean when they tell you to wait and you reply, “I did my waiting! Twelve years of it! In Azkaban!”
Not that most Tinder relationships actually turn out to be long-term deals. Most are just a “hit it and quit it," a casual affair that never results in any form of genuine commitment. This is great for the people who honestly aren’t looking for anything serious, but a nightmare for those like me who claim they just want to have fun, but get attached way too easily and end up crying into their Cinnamon Toast Crunch when the one they planned their wedding with disappears. You swipe left and right on Tinder, detaching pretty faces from actual human beings, and never really considering the consequences of the actions that could follow. Somebody’s bound to get their feelings hurt in the process.
The worst possible scenario is defying the odds and forming a deep connection with someone you met on Tinder. You can craft as many elaborate lies about how you met as you wish, but you’re always going to be the Tinder girl or boy, and that will never change. If the person is really that special, the fact that you met on Tinder shouldn’t really matter. People will judge you if they know, but who really cares? If you found someone you connect with, you should take it and run with it because it is so beautifully rare. I know that kind of contradicts what I just said, but it’s my hopeless romantic side speaking. That side of me always seems to prevail, despite my many failed attempts at Tinder and dating in general. Maybe I've seen too many romantic comedies, but whenever I detect a "spark", whether through Tinder or otherwise, something in me just has to see it through in the hopes that something good will come of it.
Yet, good things are increasingly hard to come by in the world of college dating. Instead of classic chivalry, we now have men and women available in every form while we swipe left and right in self-indulgent apathy. When writing our witty Tinder bios, we are creating ideal versions of ourselves in the hopes of effectively selling the package to someone else. I don't know what is more complicated--- the cat and mouse game of romantics when you are head over heels for one person and will stop at nothing to win them over, or the jungle of men and women that patiently await finding matches in the Tinder dating supermarket. It seems young people are caught in a tug-of-war between old-fashioned dating strategies and digitized approaches. What currently stands at a stalemate is bound to lean toward a clear direction as we progress into adulthood, and I'm not exactly sure which direction I would like it to be.
