Toward the beginning of the semester, my suite mates and I were talking to our friend and casually mentioned his Tinder account. In high school, I would roll my eyes when people told me they had Tinder accounts — it seemed like a match.com for younger people. Living in a tiny town, Tinder was not a very practical way of meeting people, and I knew most high schoolers who did use the app were definitely lying about their age.
Despite this, as our friend showed us his profile and how the app worked, my suite mates and I became a little intrigued. He explained how you make a small profile, then can just swipe through pictures of your desired gender. You swipe right to "Like" them, and left to keep going. You can also then look at your potential "matches" profiles.
I knew that Tinder basically opposed everything that I am about - not wanting to be judged by my looks or social media and not wanting to judge people for those things, either. But for some reason, this strong lesson was starting to get fogged by fascination...
Our friend explained how many more people in college have the app and how many attractive people there are looking for matches literally all around us. You could see the user's locations and set the criteria to be within a given number of miles. We were sitting in our dining hall and within one mile, there were hundreds. For some reason, it looked fun. I also almost felt left out from this whole world because I'd learned how many college students actually use Tinder. My suite mates and I looked at each other with the same expressions of allurement and because of that, half shame. There were looks and shoulder shrugs that seemed to read, "I meaaan we could just give it a try."
So we gave in to our temptations, downloaded the app, and were secretly excited to explore this whole new, virtual world. The whole time we were doing it we said things like, "It's just for fun" or, "We're just doing it as a joke," and yet, we managed to spend the entire afternoon on the damn thing...
I'm not being dramatic, we literally spent our entire day uploading our best pictures onto our profile, swiping right on cute boys, and laughing at the dumb things people put on their profiles. Despite our claims that we weren't taking the app seriously, we were still swiping left at people based solely on one picture. We still were choosing our best pictures to display on the profile. And we still kind of got excited when we saw that a guy "liked" us.
Hours went by until we finally realized how little we'd accomplished because we were too occupied by this app that just days before, we never would have even considered downloading. I knew deep down that I wouldn't want to find a boyfriend on Tinder, but I wasn't opposed to finding some new friends. At the same time, despite the fact that I wasn't looking for a date on Tinder, the thought was becoming more and more plausible in the very back of my head.
Later, we finally went back up to our rooms where we told my roommate, Hanna, about our new craze for Tinder. To say the least, Hanna's response was like my subconscious talking back to me. She reminded me of everything I knew so well to be true:
Even when we told her we were just using the app for fun, not to actually find a potential boyfriend, simply using the app was enabling society to idolize things like social media and appearances.
By simply using it, we were allowing people to judge us solely by one picture. We were enabling someone on the other side to say "hot" or "not" and swipe. All the same, we were judging people by a picture. We were still arbitrarily judging these people by their profiles and linked Instagram accounts.
Hanna brought to light how, in college, we can literally walk outside of our door and meet new people. We can go talk to anyone anywhere. There are ample opportunities to meet new people, including potential partners, why would we hide behind a screen?
I thanked Hanna a hundred times and deleted the app, including the profile that I spent hours crafting to have the perfect pictures and clever bio.
Hanna reminded me of how easily it is to let things - even things that you know so well to be true - to slip. I spent the whole year prior learning that I didn't want to be judged by the way I looked and I think I had gotten pretty good at not judging others by their appearance either. I spent the whole year prior learning self-acceptance and losing my need to be validated by other people. Yet, the little dopamine high that I received when I got a notification that I got a match, or the false feelings of knowledge about these people had lured me in so quickly.
Hanna's words also showed me how lucky I am to have a roommate who can remind me when I stray off the path. Who has the exact same opinions as me, but is a little better at staying true to her beliefs. She inspired me simply because she was not afraid to shut all of our excitement down and tell us that what we're doing was not right. I aspire to stay as true to myself as Hanna does herself.
It's not to say that there can't be some silver lining to Tinder. If people actually end up meeting up and hitting it off, kudos to them. But I think it's undeniable that that's oftentimes not the reality and that regardless, people need to keep in mind that a profile is not an adequate way to judge someone else. I think that Tinder in itself is a great idea, but it also enables our society to judge people by looks, and to feel validated by a simple motion on social media. Tinder still feeds into people's unrealistic needs to always be looking for potential mates, instead of just living life and letting the person they're supposed to be with walk into it. I think that Tinder still does the opposite of promoting self-love and acceptance, rather it encourages the value that happiness can be found in one's partner. Although these apps are cool, I think they feed into society's lessening values of personal connection and personality.
