Tinder: The First Sparks of Romance

[I was going to use a whole host of tinder and fire puns and analogies here, but it seems this will be longer than one post, so I’ll keep a few in reserve!]

I’m eventually going to explain an important truth I came to realise about starting conversations with people, as well as how Tinder is like magnesium, which itself is used as tinder. #deep

For now, I’m going to tell you how I started using the infamous app. For those expecting erotic conquest tales, I should warn you that I was using it wrong…

Tinder has a reputation, as a friend of mine politely put it, for facilitating ‘overnight dates’. Women on the app put up with a near constant barrage of requests for hook-ups and nudes, and while some may well be looking for such instant gratification, many others use the app out of hope ‘there’ll be some nice guys’ among the masses of misogyny.

Plenty of both sex also just consider Tinder a game, and it was with this view I came to it – a friend showed me how it worked and the simple cycle of judging and swiping was addictive. This is how my process went: if they weren’t attractive, I said no straight away. Tinder gets a lot of stick for being shallow but you need to be attracted to someone and part of that is obviously their looks. Needn’t set too high a bar, but if you’re not going to fancy them even with the best personality in the world, there’s no point.

If they were attractive enough, I read their bio. Attractive girls with interesting bios (and, on occasion, super-hot girls without bios) received a yes, and everyone else was a no. It’s not hard to write a few interesting or funny sentences, and if it is hard (and you haven’t got the get out of jail free card of being absolutely stunning, thus giving you the benefit of the doubt, ‘maybe she just hasn’t had a chance to write anything yet’) then it’s not going to work. You may argue my supermodel leniency is flawed, because what if my perfect woman is there, just shy of the ‘any bio goes’ benchmark of cray hot-ness, and I miss the chance to explore her fantastic personality because her bio’s not great? Well, I reckon I will find my perfect woman so attractive that she would get a free pass, and her looks aren’t going to change (much!) from the photos I’m judging, whereas a poor bio doesn’t rule out her personality being the brilliant lovechild of Julian Barratt and Tina Fey.

It was this decision process that I enjoyed initially, being as selective as possible, while my mate who’d shown me the app happily swiped yes to everyone and asked them for nudes. Each to their own, I suppose. As for what happened when I actually matched with someone, tune in next week, or whenever I get round to writing that…