The Tragicomedy of Being on Tinder, From a Disillusioned Sceptic

By Cindy Low  •  18 Feb 2016 in Last Word

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Valentine’s Day was just last weekend – JUICE Writer Cindy Low recounts her experience with dating app Tinder… 

We’re always hearing from acquaintances (separated by several social circles) that he or she found their significant other on Tinder. Despite its obvious purpose for a late-night booty call, it’s also how Tinder tries to market itself. But perpetual singledom can render a person to be desperately hopeful, thinking that yes, even this un-dateable mass of ineptitude can find someone too – maybe. Additionally, Tinder is just another disposable app to have on your phone, unlike an investment that an OkCupid profile seems to require. So, we gave it a shot.

However, the thought of having to sign up via our Facebook account was frightening. What if our Tinder escapades were to be published on our page without our knowledge or consent– it would be mortifying. But, we’ve come to realise that being on Tinder is as pedestrian as finding your friends or colleagues on the app. It’s actually quite comforting to know that even your cute friend is perhaps lonely or romantically challenged too.

The validation from having a match is a welcoming ego boost, but the thrill fades very quickly because the real work is in the conversation.  Matching with someone who’s cute is dandy and all, but can we click on a textual basis? From a myriad of conversations we’ve had, we’d like to compare ourselves as a litmus test for pick-up lines that only range in two extremes – either adorable but cheesy ones, or transparently trite sexual ones – our internal reactions to these trivialities have simmered from acidic (“lmao are you fucking kidding me?”), to neutral (“lol okay”), to alkaline that is simply where we’ve become not bothered enough to care because we’ve become so thin with wear from these engagements; engaging with strangers online had lost its excitement.

Chatting with Matches also takes an amount of commitment and skill to carry the conversation beyond the stage of inane pleasantries. Sometimes, conversations are quaint, where we’d eventually find common ground with a few people. For instance, discussing about Oscar Isaac’s performance in Inside Llewyn Davis, or getting introduced to an overlooked song on Arctic Monkeys’ Suck It And See. Seemingly, they are the makings of a burgeoning offline relationship, eventually though, one of us either takes too long to reply, or gets matched with someone more attractive and/or more interesting. Conversely, encounters with fuccbois are endlessly entertaining. They get to the point, albeit aggressively, where they’d ask, “Where are you staying? Do you wanna do something?” at 3.30am, or the ever tasteful, “Do you not want to fuck?” Unsubtle as these suggestive queries are, we’re still grateful for their bluntness, in addition to the unintended comedy of these exchanges when we’d inevitably share these unfruitful matches with empathetic friends.

On the subject of actually meeting a person from Tinder, for us, it’s seldom successful, with one instance proving to be disappointing. The damned dude didn’t really look like the guy in his pictures (this is essentially catfishing, yes?), and had a personality that unfortunately didn’t translate IRL either.

One idea we have about dating that has been reinforced as a result of being on Tinder is that nothing is exclusive, and everything dissipates as it usually does. In conclusion, Tinder is effective if you want to find a fuck buddy, or maybe, if you want to make new friends (a sad consolation prize, we think). But based on our own as well as our friends’ experiences on the app, we’ve deduced that real-life romance is unattainable — and in our apathetic state, it’s almost a myth.

Give Tinder a try—there’s certainly no shame, trust us—and prove this writer wrong by flaunting your new boy/girlfriend in an email to her.