Whenever I go to a new place, I open Tinder—or re-download it if the trip falls in one of the rare moments when I’m trying to convince myself that I’m better than online dating—and begin hastily swiping through strategically manicured profiles. It’s based out of some survivalist, narcissistic instinct—to test balance, find sturdy ground, make a mark.
And each time I utilize Tinder, it comes tied up with a distinct purpose.
When I’m at college in Boston, it’s to see which of my friends are on the app, and who of the multiple passersby I eye-stalk on a daily basis have noticed me. It’s also an easy way to avoid heartbreak if I’m able to sort my crushes into “Str8s” and “Gays.” When I was abroad in London, it was to roughly gauge on what side of the annoying-charming line my humor fell (I wasn’t pleased with the answer). When I was traveling abroad (abroad from abroad) in Italy and Madrid, it was to see if I was beguiling to various hot European men. Apparently, I’m catnip to European dudes—if “catnip” is code for “tall skinny white boy who quotes Tina Belcher in his profile.”
I never intend to meet up with anyone—I’m the person who spends the entire line up to the barista psyching myself up and repeating my coffee order in my head like an alien trying to pass for human. I can’t talk on the phone to strangers. I let people cut me in line because confrontation makes me break out into hives. And the one time I did actually go out with someone I met online, within ten minutes of meeting he told me that his car was recently broken into and that he skipped out on a threesome to hang out with me.
And when I’m home—surrounded by green patches of lawns and streets heady with the smell of freshly tarred potholes—I use Tinder as a lifeline, a way out, a reminder that while I’m stranded in this landlocked—manlocked—state, I was (once) cool and hip and young.
I was reading "I Was Told There Would Be Cake" by Sloane Crosley—who is as funny as I am tall (very). She grew up in a town twenty minutes north of me; we live so close together that we share—albeit separated by a good decade—the same mall. And she said, of growing up in Westchester, that as suburban kids, the idea was that we were supposed to be able to experience each end of the spectrum—sandwiched neatly between rural and urban. But, stuck in the middle, we ended up identifying with neither and instead floated in the flat landscape, lit by the orange-y streetlights.
Tinder has proven to be the most valuable and accurate litmus test for culture that modern science has ever produced.
In Westchester, because we’re not really surrounded by colleges, the only people in my age-range on Tinder are: A) teens who have somehow hacked the system, B) employees at the new Carvel Ice Cream-Subway combo, C) high school classmates at community college, or D) “young” “professionals” who live at home with their parents (aka me next year). So either I’m committing a felony, mixing business and pleasure, running into people I expressly avoid at the supermarket, or glimpsing into my future. I’m not sure about you, but I don’t need dating apps to give me an existential crisis. I’m a rising senior in college—I already have those at least three times a week, more if I go on Facebook during daylight hours.
As the heyday of Tinder shrinks further and further in our collective metaphysical rearview mirror, it seems like its purpose is shifting from “Meet the love of your life in 60 seconds or less” to the millennial equivalent to echolocation. We want to see where we are; and more importantly, we want to see other people see where we are. The Tinder litmus test allows us to do that—to assess our surroundings as assuredly as our cavemen ancestors did. To see if the soil is—metaphorically—fertile or if we’re setting up camp on scorched earth. In the lens of this metaphor, I live in the elephant graveyard from The Lion King.
And maybe that’s okay. Because Tinder isn’t the only indicator of what a place could turn out to be. And in the grand scheme of things, it’s just a game. An addicting, mentally corrosive game, but a game nonetheless. Who cares if the other players look like extras to a high school production of Fame? It might be entertaining.
Also I fully support the union of any fast food franchises. Give me your Carvel-Subways, your Baskin Robbins-Dunkin Donuts. Let them shepherd me into a brighter, fatter tomorrow.
