For a good part of the summer, I took the train to work with a friend of mine. His last day was a week before mine was, so my time on the commuter rail became excruciatingly boring in his absence. So, I figured why not embrace my spinster lifestyle and re-download Tinder for the first time since 2014. Now, every time I've ever had this app on my phone (twice), I've used it more for window shopping rather than making purchases if ya know what I mean (I even saved it in the 'Shopping' folder on my phone). When I was in high school, one of my friends used to call using the app "playing Tinder." Since then, I've always viewed the app as a game. No one seriously considers the people they talk to on Tinder as legitimate potential partners; and if you do, I'm not gonna lie and say I'm not judging you (even though I may or may not have spoken to my last boyfriend for the first time on the app then dated him for the vast majority of my college years. That's a whole different story for another time). Anyways, I decided to log back in for the remainder of my time in Boston - partly to check out all the hot men in suits that had to be wandering around the financial district and partly to occupy myself on the train by playing the Tinder "game." I also had a feeling it would make a pretty funny article...
Because I hadn't even thought about the app in years, I totally forgot that old matches show up when you download it. Naturally, I had to begin my new Tinder journey by reading through all of the things people said to me back in the day. I don't know what I was thinking, or who the hell hacked my phone, but some of the matches are extremely questionable. They range from boys who have names with no vowels to boys I used to work with at Walmart. Cringe. I now remember why I deleted this app off my phone - none of these people qualify as potential husbands.
Once I was done reading through the creepy-yet-funny old messages, I set my radius to one mile away and was ready to shop. As I expected, I was seeing more pictures of men in suits than pictures of boys in high school football helmets in an attempt to hide their unfortunate features. However, this does not mean that I haven't seen my fair share of strange profile photos; including men in cat suits, men strangling baby chicklets, men in leotards, men making out with their pets, men with photoshopped wrestling belts on, men with tribal paint all over their bodies, and men pictured as floating heads with captions like 'I beckon thee. Sleep. Rise and release me from my prison.' I can't make this shit up, guys. It is definitely safe to say my window shopping will never progress into anything more.
As if their pictures weren't comical enough, I figured I'd share with you some of the life-changing pick-up lines I received:
Would you mind if I could borrow your picture? I have to let Santa know what I want for Christmas.
Wow, how nice. Women are being viewed as presents rather than humans now. I hope Santa at least puts a pretty bow on my head when he kidnaps me next December.
Sara, will you accept this rose? *insert rose emoji*
To this, I responded I'm allergic and the boy answered "to emojis? That's gotta be rough in 2016." I do have to admit, that was a good response on his part.
How many push-ups can you do?
I said zero. He told me about how fitness is important to him. I told him that I spend my afternoons sitting on the floor eating literal pounds of chocolate.
Aye sorority girl!
Don't even get me started on all of the stereotypical things he could've meant by that.
You're so far away :/
Says someone I matched with while using the 'one mile away' radius setting.
Yo watz up Sara
This grammatical nightmare was from an old coworker at Walmart who used to stalk me when I was in high school. Lovely. Does Tinder have a 'block' button?
Do you blow
No comment.
Get away from me freak!!! ;) ;) ;)
I'm very unsure of how to react to this one.
What's a beautiful girl like you doing on Tinder??
Oh, you know. Just window shopping and writing about all the stupid things boys say to me. The conventional use for Tinder.
DISCLAIMER: Everything I wrote in this post was all in good fun, and I understand that referring to using Tinder to 'window shop' for boys is just as inappropriate as some of the messages I received. However, I didn't claim for this post to be a piece about the hypocrisy of sexism. If you can't recognize that this was meant to be humorous, you missed the point of the post.
