Love at First Swipe
01:29
Love it or hate it, Tinder’s the app that’s
taking modern dating by storm.
Tinder
- it’s one of those words that are only ever said in hushed tones. Like adults
are afraid to use the word ‘sex’ around children, or children giggle as they
whisper the god awful word ‘poo’ to each other in the playground, ‘Tinder’ is
seen as taboo word amongst the young. We all use it, and we all love it, yet it
still has a stigma attached to it.
For
those of you who have been living under a modern-romance repelling rock for the
past few years, Tinder is a dating app in which your profile includes up to 6
photos of yourself and an incredibly brief bio (which usually just consists of
your occupation, or if you’re Dan, 20 from Brighton it may include a witty one
liner such as ‘catch me while you can’). You then present yourself to the world
as a commodity to be swiped left or right depending on whether they find you
attractive or not. It’s not an app for the easily offended.
When
you consider the basics of it, Tinder is an incredibly shallow app and perhaps
that’s why its developed this stigma around it. We all know the vast majority
of us are guilty of judging a book by its cover, especially when it comes to
dating. But realistically, there’s got to be some level of attraction for any
type of romantic relationship to form – no one wants to end up in bed with
someone with the personality of Ryan Reynolds but the looks of Sloth from ‘The
Goonies’, or as one Tinder user I spoke to put it “someone who looks like
they’ve brushed their teeth with a firework”. But Tinder takes judging someone
on their looks to a whole other level. Rather than getting to know somebody and
allowing your attraction to grow for them the more you get to know each other,
Tinder destroys any chance of an unexpected attraction blossoming as no one
wants to have to admit to their mates that they swiped right to someone any
less attractive than Zac Efron on steroids.
However,
today social media plays a key part in our lives, especially when it comes to
socialising and meeting new people, so the invention of an app like Tinder
couldn’t have come at a better time. Despite its downfalls, it’s still an app
which has allowed an estimated 50million people from all different walks of
life to come together. It may surprise you to know, but Tinder isn’t used
solely as a dating app. It’s also used by people to open up the doorway to new
friendships, to find people to help them on business ventures or to just meet
like-minded people with similar interests and passions.
In
a time when we’re all so busy and immersed in our own lives with our phones
glued to our hands and hardly even giving ourselves a second to glance up as we
cross the road, meeting new people let alone someone you could see yourself in
a relationship with was starting to seem like a dying art. However, Tinder has
helped dating to evolve to fit in with the modern day. We no longer have to go
through the terror of going up to people at bars in hope that they may possibly
be attracted to us and praying that they won’t reject us and make us spend the
rest of the evening drowning our sorrows in jager bombs. Instead, we can be
rejected behind the safety of our phone screens and in the comfort of our own
homes with a bar of chocolate and a rom-com at the ready which makes it all
seem much more bearable. And with the app creating 10 billion matches, it must
be doing something right.
When
I spoke to one Tinder user about her experience with the app she said that she
initially felt “embarrassed but intrigued… I
never set out to find love or even just a fling on the app I was just curious to
see the type of people who used it – typically I expected it to be just a
stream full of fuckboys”. However,
amongst the few “shocking one liners” she had thrown at her such as “you have
lovely blowjob lips” she came across “an absolute angel of a guy” who is now
her boyfriend. See, romance isn’t dead! Another admitted how Tinder had created
“a major confidence increase” when it came to girls and dating as before he
doubted many girls found him attractive “but since matching with girls on the
app I’ve realised that maybe I am attractive in some people’s eyes…
it’s also made me up my game when it comes to good chat as no one wants to
speak to a guy when the most interesting conversation starter he has is ‘Hey’”.
There
is the fear that Tinder is the driving force behind making ‘casual sex’ seem
like a more acceptable thing amongst young people, and perhaps it does make
finding someone to have casual sex with an easier task. But realistically, if
you’re a young person and you want to have sex, you’re going to have sex.
Whether that means getting some serious beer-goggles on a night out and
bringing home whoever will accept your offer, or sleeping with your ex to fill
the void till you find someone new. Tinder doesn’t encourage casual sex; it
just allows you to be more selective when it comes to choosing who you’re going
to have it with and that really can’t be that much of a bad thing.
At
the end of the day, Tinder really doesn’t deserve the Voldemort-esque ‘he who
shall not be named’ stigma that it has. We all use it, whether we just swipe
through out of boredom as we wait for our train or are genuinely looking for
someone to start a relationship with. It’s just another part of our ever
evolving lives in this media-addicted world. We just have to learn how to keep
the romance flowing and stay human in a world where everything is seemingly
trying to take that away.
How
to stay safe on tinder –
- Check out their social media pages - do their Instagram photos match those on their Tinder account?
- Meet in a public place on your first date and don’t do anything you’re not comfortable with.
- Ensure someone knows where you’re going and who with. Create a code word to text your friend to let them know if you’re safe or not.
- If anyone sends you offensive, threatening or inappropriate messages report them straight away.
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