For many years I possessed an acute phobia of Tinder. It freaked me out to think about strange boiz in strange places looking at pictures of me on a phone screen and then deciding whether or not they thought I was attractive enough to send a dumb, drunken message to late on a Thursday night (or, if I was lucky, a well-placed GIF).
But for some inexplicable reason, I felt that it was part of my duty as a millennial woman to swipe my thumbs furiously across the screen of my phone. So I started small. Baby steps, ya know? I went on a trip to Scotland, and decided that my foray into international travel would also be my foray into Tinder. There was some level of separation between me and these international men that made me feel weirdly safe in my swiping, but when I got back to the 401, I was relieved to delete the app.
Over the summer, I decided it was time to give Tinder another chance. Tinder at home was difficult because I live between cornfields (another Rib lady describes here the town over from mine, practically an urban metropolis with ten times the population size of the cow pasture town in which I actually live). This rural isolation created two problems: First, 40% of the guys I saw on Tinder were people whom I knew—boys I’d gone to school with from first grade through middle school, boys whom I used to eat pizza off of animal-face paper plates with. The other major issue was that I had to up my radius to fifty miles and still ran out of profiles to swipe through within a few days. Needless to say, this Tinder experience was disappointing and weirdly took me back to the days of playing foursquare and reciting the pledge of allegiance, which was confusing to say the least. I deleted the app again and gave up on dating apps altogether.
Until now. Back at school, I had lost faith in the power of face-to-face interaction. No one wanted to court me; I wasn’t just bumping casually into potential suitors in the Ratty or CVS. The chance of meeting a single boy romantically interested in me seemed smaller than that of a Brown University snow day, and my heart was beginning to feel just as cold. And so, with great hesitation, I once again downloaded Tinder from the App Store.
It was weird at first. I kid you not, the top five guys in my messages are named: Brandon, Brendan, Brendan, Bradford, and Belmont. I also matched with Wilson, the volleyball from Cast Away. He messaged me “Volley and chill babe?” Then I got pretty good at Tinder. I perfected witty responses, I cracked jokes, I roasted guys without them even realizing it. I asked Wilson from Cast Away how he swipes with no thumbs, but he never responded. I matched with some people. I matched with some people from Brown. This is what I most feared: matching with a person at Brown and then seeing them, you know, IRL. I was terrified of this moment. What would I do? What would I say??
Then, it happened. I had matched with this guy, let’s call him Brendan. I was surprised that we matched: I’ve found it rare to actually match with guys from Brown, probably because everyone is just as scared about coming face-to-face with a human whom you’ve decided you like based on four grainy photos and a bio that reads something like “looking to meet new people, 6’2”.” But we had matched and I knew it was only a matter of time before a random sighting would occur.
Let’s set the scene, shall we? It was a Tuesday evening, roughly 5PM. I was hurrying from my dorm to club field hockey practice, and therefore wearing very ~cute and flirty~ athletic gear, including my sneakers, which are actually men’s, and the literal equivalent of an oversized burlap sack-dress for your feet. I was carrying one of those drawstring backpacks that made me look and feel like a sixth grade boy on a field trip to Sturbridge Village, ready with a sack lunch, a bottle of water, and $20 his parents had given him for the gift shop.
I pushed open the door of my dorm and there was Brendan, walking before me out toward Thayer Street. We made eye contact. He was smiling (not at me. He was chatting with a friend). I was thinking OMG we matched on Tinder do you realize we matched on Tinder this is fine this is not weird this is over now goodbye. And with that, Brendan had disappeared into the distance and I was late for practice.
All-in-all: it was not that weird! We both pretended like we hadn’t matched on Tinder and avoided any form of interaction. I guess I can cross “run into Tinder match” off my list of acute phobias.
Will I remain active on Tinder? I don’t know. I’m rapidly losing faith in the app, just as I lost faith in the possibility of a real-life meet-cute long ago. But for now, the app will stay in my phone. After all, I’m holding out for that reply from Cast Away Wilson.
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