This started as an experiment, something to be joked about, a slush pile of faces and descriptions. I joined Tinder to prove a point to my roommate, I am not actually a chicken and I can be a little bit less awkward when it comes to talking to boys.
I didn’t achieve that the first time and so I steeled myself to try again the second time, I re-downloaded and started over. A few uneventful hours of swiping left later some very interesting patterns had been identified and three “matches.”
There is an interesting air of vulnerability that comes with putting together a profile on a dating site. In its essence, going on one of these apps signals to the world: I am available. But, am I interesting enough? People try to be funny, interesting, sarcastic, and sometimes just straight silent in order to be different then the five people you swiped left on before them. I have not yet wrapped my head around the concept that our current norm for beginning the consideration of another individual is a grand total of six selfies and a small paragraph. More importantly, I gave the world (within 50 miles) permission to judge me based on that same small criteria. In real life, I like to believe that I discourage this kind of behavior, however now I have no idea how many phone screen’s I’ve crossed.
If your picture is deemed worthy, you get tapped on. Welcome to phase two, you have the space of about a paragraph to make your case. Be funny, charming, sarcastic, and maybe even honest about yourself here to see what the masses think of you. My job is to make a little tiny sales pitch that convinces a boy I’ve never met that I’m worth his time. I have to earn his attention.
In turn, they have to earn mine. For the last three days I’ve mulled over the psychological consequences of this kind of interaction. This behavior makes sense from a logistics point of view but not at all when protecting self-image and self-worth comes in to play. You’re left drafting and redrafting yourself, trying to decide which details to include and which will make you sound boring. And all this happens before anyone even swipes.
Out of a few hundred folks, I swiped right maybe eight times. I found myself making snap judgments, less than half a second. Left, left, another one to the left. There was a distinct feeling that objectification was going on. These people weren’t people, they were faces and names going by under my fingertip at an alarming speed. They had none of my attention, I remember the details of less than ten of the few hundred I went through. Most of the biographies have blurred together into one statement: “I don’t know what I can say to catch your interest, but I hope I do.”
I have a grave but serious concern: We have forgotten how to talk to each other. As we search for relationships, the process has become a mental check list of characteristics instead of working to understand a whole person. We are looking for individuals to fit a mold that we have created and have slowly stopped taking the time to appreciate the beauty of the people around us. We have begun to boil people down to their face, their name, and a few key facts.
However, when I stopped to think about it, we have been doing that in the real world for generations. The problem isn’t Tinder, it isn’t online dating changing the face of romance today or anything of the sort. The problem is the fact that the way our mind’s work is starting to be exposed. If there is anything we can learn from society’s hugely mixed response to online dating, is that we need to take a second look at how we choose to connect to each other because when we put it into light we’re all a little bit embarrassed and slightly uncomfortable.
This phenomenon isn’t a cause for concern as much as it’s a cause for conversation. Let’s talk about objectification, healthy relationships, healthy habits, and self-worth before we once again accept our current behaviors as normal.
There is one bright spot in this story. A few minutes into this investigation, I found my third grade best friend on the app. We laughed at each other thoroughly and got pizza the next day. So thanks Tinder, a friendship has been restored.
