I’ve always been a late bloomer. It took me two decades – for some of these it was closer to three – to get drunk, knock boots, graduate from college*, and get a full time job with benefits. It should be unsurprising that I let the likes of Snapchat, tumblr, Instagram, something called Kik, and dog-face filters (wtf?) pass me by. It’s almost more exhausting to keep up with what I’m missing out on. But I digress. The one I couldn’t escape? Tinder.
I joined Tinder after an extremely inadvisable hook-up with an ex in which I made one one of those regrettable memories that sear themselves in your brain in order to haunt you while you’re falling asleep or waiting for the bus eight and a half years later. It this one-week personification of a Hot-Mess** that ended with a friend bitch slapping me out of my funk over text and punctuating it with what is surely every Hook-Up App’s slogan: “Forget him. Join Tinder.”
Tinder is a diorama that that showcases a fairly homogeneous (vastly heterosexual) landscape of men who are “looking for someone to go on an adventure with”, foodies, surfers, travelers, and who take selfie cues from Justin Bieber’s calvin klein campaign. The surfer bit is likely geographic, of course. But swap it with some culturally popular activity in each region and you get the milk-toast tinder profile. Many men insist that women won’t swipe for someone short, so they list their heights as if the app is a Sky Mall catalog for one night stand partners (maybe it is). I have no idea if this is true – that requirement never crossed my mind – but I don’t doubt the savage simplicity of the online First Impression.
My first promise to myself was to avoid people who didn’t bother to fill out a profile at all. Second, it was almost a universal Nope for pics of drug use, guns, and idiotic behavior. Third, a snapchat or instagram handle does not a profile make. I may be on Tinder, but I like to avoid that fact by hiding behind “standards”.
Which is how I met the Pirate, the Coffee-Table, the Flirting Serial Killer, and the James Bond Salsa Dancer.
*Attending undergrad as a 25 year old living and learning among 18 year olds was like living 21 Jump Street except nobody cared who was selling or doing or buying all the weed. One student asked me if I was “turnt” – at which point I grew the obligatory grey hair.
The Lonely Zarf 