Confessions of an Ex-Tinder-User

Burning question: Are you on Tinder? And if yes, do you use it? How often? What to do you use it for?
Confession #1: I downloaded Tinder out of curiosity. Having read multiple tweets (when I still had twitter) and online newspaper articles mostly condemning its superficiality, I knew I had to give it a try. So I did. I had just gotten out of a serious relationship, but I was looking neither for a new one nor for casual sex, which is basically what Tinder is mostly known for. “Tinder is a location-based social discovery app that facilitates communication between mutually interested users. It is used for dating as well as other kinds of networking.”  Nice try, Wikipedia. Urban Dictionary’s approach sounds a little more honest: “Dating app. Tinder is the McDonalds for sex.”
 

 

If Carrie Bradshaw had Tinder.

Confession #2: I downloaded Tinder out of childish curiosity. Initially, my innermost goal was to set a relatively short perimeter (somewhere between 10 and 20 miles), so as to find whether any of my friends were also on Tinder and then proceed and make fun of them. Please note that most of my friends in Athens live pretty close to me.  The main reason behind it is the fact that I regard resorting to the use of dating apps and sites as a sign of extreme desperation.
 
Unfortunately, no one of my childhood friends is on Tinder, which came as a great disappointment. However, the proximity of my search revealed an abundance of handsome men living close to me. Now I was really curious: How come I’ve never come across any of them? Don’t they do grocery shopping? Have coffee? Use public transport? Same thing happened when I repeated my social experiment in the tiny German city where I currently live and study – and whose name I’d rather not reveal. Until then I was perfectly sure that its population greatly resembled that of a nunnery (save for elderly men, university professors and the shy computer expert who repairs my laptop every now and then), but Tinder showed me that I was greatly mistaken.
 
If Game of Thrones characters had Tinder.
 
Confession #3: I might have said that I did not find any of my friends in Athens on Tinder, however you have to brace yourself for who you might across there. I stumbled upon my ex, most of his guy friends, my roommate’s ex, one guy that used to work in my gym (and, thus, had seen me covered in sweat and more shiny that the whole Cullen family together), and several people who study at my university. To be honest, a third option should be created, so that you don’t have to choose only between swiping left if you don’t like someone and swiping right if you do. I propose making circles with our thumbs every time a familiar person appears among Tinder candidates. Every time I swipe someone I know left all I can think is: What if he finds out?
 
Confession #4: A nationality comparison was almost inevitable. Brace yourselves for the stereotypes. Most of the Greek guys had dark hair and a beard. And tattoos – I can look at photos of people flashing their tattoos no more. Germans, on the other hand, were significantly blonder and had light colored eyes. No beards in sight, but mind the “I could cut myself slapping that face. Would you like me to try?” cheekbones, as Irene Adler once said to Sherlock. Moreover, I noticed that whereas Greeks are more eager to post photos of themselves smiling next to their pets (mostly dogs, so bonus points for the cat guys), Germans obviously travel more and post the photos to prove it.
 
If historical figures had Tinder.
 
Confession #5: Tinder made me realize that I actually have a type.
 
Confession #6: And that I am also intimidated – if not repelled by guys who are too muscular.
 
Confession #7: Tinder can also offer a confidence boost sometimes. For example, I “liked” several guys that I thought to be out of my league, but apparently we “matched” (this implies they had also liked my Tinder profile).
 
Confession #8: Tinder allows you to pick whether you are interested in men or women, so I took advantage of this opportunity in order to find out how many women are actually on Tinder. Wanna know? Overwhelmingly few. I’d say that there were at least twenty guys for every woman I saw on Tinder. How’s that working? 
 
 Confession #9: After several matches I decided that conversing with some of the guys wouldn’t hurt after all. However, due to Tinder’s reputation of basically being a casual sex app, I couldn’t shake the feeling that making small talk and acting interested was pointless; I had to either respond in a promiscuous way or skip the conversation altogether. Since I wasn’t going to use the app for its sole purpose and play the game, why should I invest time at all? So I went through my matches for the very last time, thinking of how nice it would had been if we had accidentally run into each other at a party, unlogged and uninstalled the app.
 
Confession #10: I don’t know if I am ever going to re-install it. Maybe in another city, life period or mindset, Tinder would have worked. Our relationship has been similar to what my friend E. has with yoga; even though I constantly tell her it’s fun, she finds it boring  – she once almost fell asleep during a yoga class. Tinder feels too impersonal. It makes me feel like a fish out of the water. If you, like me, belong to the category of person who bonds over 9gag memes and LOTR conversations, thinks that Colin Firth is the sexiest man on earth and falls in love with people’s auras, thenTinder is  probably not for you.
 
Do you think I might have got it all wrong? As I’ve asked previously, do you use Tinder? Do you enjoy doing so? Any good stories to share?
 
Still love reading Tinder Nightmares, though. Elen does too, apparently.
 
Hugs and kisses,
 
F.
 
PS: FacebookInstagram and tumblr, now you know where to find me!
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One thought on “Confessions of an Ex-Tinder-User

  1. So social experiment on tinder? That's a new one haha 😀
    I do believe I saw a video once where a girl asked 100 guys to have sex with her and about 85 said they were interested without hesitation, while when a guy asked 100 girls if they wanted to have sex with him, only 5 or 6 said yes. So I do believe these casual sex apps, really are more for the male population or for sexually promiscious women.

    But times change. We've come a long way. maybe in a few years, this app will be dominated by women 😉

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