So I’ve decided to write about something more personal this time around after my very long hiatus (My apologies), and I wanted to put out how I feel in an organized way. Now the concept of online dating seems cool on paper and all that because all you have to do is type in interests and then you can freely be picky about who you’re interested in without having to worry about them knowing. While Tinder eliminates the concept of typing in what you want and replaces it with just ‘liking’ and ‘disliking’ people who live within up to a 100-mile radius, it still keeps intact the concept of being as picky as you want to be.
When I first heard of Tinder, I thought the concept was just foolish and I never wanted to be a part of it, until later last year. I decided to download the app for the heck of it and give it a whirl. Now before I get into my experience with the app (Or lackthereof) let me go over my background with dating. I have never gone on a date, nor have I ever had a girlfriend.
Call me Jon Snow, because I literally don’t know anything when it comes to the whole dating scene, I just don’t get it. Like any teenage boy, I’ve ‘liked’ girls here and there, but nothing ever worked out. Along with that, I’ve never been 100% confident with myself, even though I have an inflated ego a lot of the time. I have confidence in my potential and what I can achieve, I have confidence that I am funny and entertaining, I have confidence that I am intelligent and I know what I’m talking about, but I lack confidence when it comes to my looks; This is where Tinder fed into my decline.
You see, on Tinder all you have is six pictures of yourself, and 500 characters to describe who you are, and most people don’t even bother reading your bio. In reality, they look at your first picture, and if you’re not attractive, they’ll just swipe left without even bothering to view your bio. Now I’m sure we’re all guilty of that, but here’s where I have found myself annoyed, to say the least. I have remade my Tinder a total of three separate times, seeing if maybe I could change something that would get me a match. Well, I was wrong.
Time and time again I fail to get a match, and after a while, I just thought I was undesirable. Maybe I am just not good looking enough, or maybe I was too picky. So my second time around, I right swiped every girl that popped up until I ran out of people up to a 50-mile radius. After a week I still didn’t have any matches; That’s when I concluded I wasn’t being picky, I just wasn’t considered attractive by every girl using the app. After having plenty of problems with girls, this didn’t help me at all. Maybe I’m just not good enough for anyone.
That’s where I see the problem with using the internet and apps to find someone you could potentially date. Online people cannot see how you really are, they can’t experience your personality, they don;t know your actions or quirks, they don’t experience any of that. All they see is what you look like, and in the end, that’s all they care about.
I’ve seen girls’ bios saying that if you’re a Republican, swipe left, if you like cats, swipe left, if you don’t like Hillary, swipe left. Are you serious? I take politics very seriously but I wouldn’t even reject someone based off of their beliefs. While I understand the concept of making a Tinder as a joke (That was my first intention, but then it stopped being a joke) I still just don’t understand it. While Tinder has worked for my friends and their friends, it just hasn’t worked for me, and that’s taken a toll on how I view myself. If I’m not good enough for girls on some stupid app where you just sit there and swipe through people all day, am I not good enough for the people I interact with in real life?
Modernized Romance is that of the imagery we see of a person on their social media accounts, and how they present themselves. On an app like Tinder, sure you can write a bio, but what might have been envisioned as a space to write about yourself that would further peak the interest of someone, instead holds foolish jokes or nothing at all. Instead, it all revolves around the way the person looks, and that’s not how a true organic relationship should be started. If you’re someone like me, who foolishly thought Tinder would link me with my future girlfriend, you’ll look at yourself in the mirror and just think you’re not attractive enough for anyone, that it doesn’t matter if you’re intelligent or funny, because you’re not good looking for an app created due to the superficial nature of humans. Tinder might have just killed true romance.
