While the papers will debate whether or not romance is truly dead, we have to acknowledge that the digital world of dating is a force to be reckoned with.
Everyone has a Tinder, it seems. It’s just how we date now. You swipe left, you swipe right, scanning through faces in the hopes of meeting someone. Sometimes you match, sometimes you talk, sometimes you ignore each other. Sometimes you go on a date. Hell, people are even getting married to their matches now, but something about the whole idea of online dating still makes me uneasy
I understand the appeal, especially in a city like New York. In this city, people are fiercely independent. They’re chasing dreams, to the point where they may even be a bit less social than they would otherwise because they’re so dang busy. They have less space in their day to go out, meet new people, get to know others through mutual friends. In this case, Tinder saves time, putting an incredible network on-call with the tap of a touch-screen. The format’s so easy and user-friendly, that it cuts the work of dating in half; it almost turns dating into a game. The swipes—and the evaluations of each person that come with them, are a bit addicting. You swipe right if he has a cute dog, left if his nose is funny, right if he has a good job, left if he has nothing but shirtless mirror pics as his photos. It’s quick and it’s easy to judge someone by a picture, and that’s why it’s caught on.
But at the same time, when you swipe right, the full image you see is doctored. People choose their best photos. They say things in their bio to make them sound funnier, or more intelligent, more aloof or more engaging. Some may say that it’s the digital equivalent of putting your best foot forward, and maybe seeing only the best of someone, regardless of the circumstance in which you meet them, is always uncomfortable if you think about it too much. But as I swipe, I can’t help but think: these people have lives beyond the pictures that they chose to show me.
And, most importantly, there’s information that Tinder will never give you. While we all joke about the importance of a guy’s height (some of us joke less than others), it’s absolutely true that we don’t get the same sensory experience that we would when seeing someone face to face. When you swipe right, you don’t see the way in which someone smiles. You can’t see how they walk, how they hold their shoulders; you can’t listen to the sound of their voice. These things are so innate to human attraction that trying to navigate a world without them is just strange.
I’m not going to preach about how I long for some sort of bygone era of 1950’s romance, about how we as a society have lost our morals and how this is the decline of civilization as we know it. I don’t need someone to bring me flowers (though I do think that they’re really pretty) and the world isn’t ending. But what I do want is to feel something, and you can’t do that through a screen.
