FOLIOIt started innocently enough.
“DTF?” I asked.
I was pretty sure Johnny — like the others in this story, not his real name — wouldn’t be offended by my forwardness. I’d seen his pictures, a series of faceless, half-naked selfies and a shot of his hand grasping his, um, manhood through a pair of chinos. And there was the fact that his profile told me he wasn’t “looking for anything serious,” and enjoyed “exploring the kinky side of life.”
No, Johnny was not looking for Victorian courtship.
“Yeah I just got off work,” he responded, not even a minute later. I had him on the hook. Now I just had to reel that twisted Tinder fish in.
I’m into the kinky stuff, I told him. That’s not really true. But I am into seeing how far a conversation with a stranger on a supposed “hook-up app” will go.
Call it the romantic in me.
For the uninitiated, Tinder is a simpler version of dating sites like Match or OK Cupid, made exclusively as a smartphone app. You, Dear Single Hopeful, can upload your most flattering Facebook photos, maybe include a short bio, and use your phone’s location services to find other users nearby. If you come across a profile you like, you can swipe that person’s photo to the right and hope he or she does the same. If your prospect is missing some teeth and has an affinity for keg stands, go ahead and swipe that mug to the left.
If both parties swipe right, it’s a match, and you can start chatting. If you swipe right and the other party doesn’t, sorry, DSH, but you’ll never be able to speak to that adorable aspiring artist/boutique coffee shop barista with the cute dog and even cuter friends. Unless you creepily Facebook-stalk him after he turned you down, the jerk. No, I’ve never done this ….
I didn’t have to wait long for my well-endowed, six-packed match to show how much he cared. Johnny quickly informed me that he just had to shower but that he was ready with a gag, a blindfold, a few toys and some cuffs — and, can he come over to my place? His is kind of small. I wondered if he kept these items in a bag by his front door, like some sort of sexy standby pilot ready to rocket away to the first girl with a fetish and her own apartment.
After a week of twice-daily novella-length messages entailing the naughty scenarios playing out in his head, I decided to come clean about my true intentions and end our Tinder courtship. I told him that I was like most girls on Tinder, just looking for a someone cool to hang out with for a while, maybe longer. It’s not that most Tinder ladies aren’t interested in sex, but — anecdotally speaking — most are looking for something of a traditional dating situation: coffee, then maybe drinks or dinner, followed by blissful trips to Ikea. Tinder’s just a way to cast a wide and fast net.
He said he understood, and sent me the link to his erotic literature, which I could purchase online for $2.99, and kindly offered to meet me anytime for more vanilla sex if I was ever up for it. Johnny had turned out to be quite the gentleman.
While this was by far my most unusual Tinder courtship, it was hardly my first. Tinder and I go way back.
I got into it like most people do: peer pressure. We were celebrating a girlfriend’s birthday, the last she’d have in her 20s. Some of the women at dinner were passing around their phones and pointing at pictures of guys.
“I’d totally hit that,” one of them said, a pretty blonde who I imagine has no problem attracting male attention. I was surprised she’d be on a dating site, but apparently everyone was. I was behind the times, living in the dark ages of meeting strangers in more polite settings, like the grocery store or a dive bar.
They explained that it was like Grindr for straight people. A bunch of my gay friends had been on Grindr for years, so I knew what that was. Like Tinder, Grindr uses your phone’s GPS to find other users nearby. Unlike Tinder, Grindr is almost exclusively a hook-up app. Some of my Grindr-user friends went on to date the guys they met, but most wrote off their encounters as singular nights of passion.
I told them I wasn’t interested in putting that much effort into a one-night stand.
“It’s different,” they assured me, and downloaded the app for me against my will. “Not everyone’s looking to hook up. Just most of them.”
I soon realized why the app is so popular with younger singles. It’s easier to sign up for than dating sites that require you to fill out personal questionnaires. And you don’t have to put as much of yourself out there into the online-dating ether. It’s less invasive — and more addicting.
I became obsessed with this endless game of hot-or-not, swiping left and right — and left and left — for hours until my hand hurt from the repetitive motion. The adrenaline rush when I first got matches was thrilling, but after a while, the allure wore off. Before I knew it, I had more than 100 matches in a week and a full inbox of prospective suitors. I had no idea there were so many attractive single men between the ages of 25 and 45 within a 60-mile radius. I was quite excited about it.
My first Tinder date was great. One of the best first dates in the history of first dates. We met at a small café, had a great conversation about history and spirituality and the possibility of time travel, and before I knew it, I was back at his place to see a painting he owned, done by an amazing local artist. I was smitten.
Brad and I dated seriously and intensely for four months, but when things inevitably crashed and burned, I got back on Tinder just to remind myself that there were other men in the world. I was meeting nice guys in real life, but I wasn’t ready to really date again. Tinder was a way to sort of pretend-date. To talk and flirt and nothing else. When I finally took the plunge back into meeting people in person again, my first venture out was beyond awful. After a miserable lunch, he informed me I was too fat for him, but that looks didn’t matter as much to him anymore so it was OK. I told him I appreciated the honesty, but lose my number, thanks. (I may have used some bad words.)
Then came Pedro. He was really sweet and quiet, sarcastic and so handsome. But I was cautious. We hung out for more than a month without anything happening romantically, just dancing awkwardly at clubs, doing Karaoke, going to out-of-town shows. When we started to get more serious, things got weird, and I was single again. I was over dating, and especially over Tinder dating.
In the meantime, all of my friends have joined. And so has everyone else, apparently. As of October 2014, there were more than a billion Tinder users. The stigma of online dating that existed a decade ago has dissipated, and even Tinder’s rep as a breeding ground for one-night stands is belied by the several friends I have who’ve met their significant others on it.
This is how we date now.
Meeting someone in real life can be terrifying. The risk of rejection is very real, staring you right in the face. Tinder can’t change the awkwardness of meeting a stranger, but it can at least give you the introduction.
As for me, I’m back on Tinder lining up dates for the week. Perhaps, eventually, I’ll meet someone worth my time. Or I might just end up texting Johnny.
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