Tinder is often the butt of every millennials’ self-deprecating joke about dating in 2015. Users of the popular app are mocked and shamed and patronized for their deep-seated desires to swipe on a daily basis. When you see an acquaintance on Tinder you feel embarrassed on their behalf for having to resort to this lowly option to find love, that is before remembering that you’re on there as well. When a colleague strolls up to your desk and says Saw you on Tinder last night your instinct is to immediately vomit in your own mouth. When you match up with a good platonic pal and send them a goofy message that reads Lol DTF?? and they assume you’re being serious you intensely panic, throw your phone at the wall and regret ever having downloaded this monstrous invention in the first place.
You’ve installed and reinstalled it approximately a dozen times and you frequently ask yourself why you even have it at all. You wish you could meet paramours via the cool method, which is of course IRL (in real life). You dream about bumping into the one at a crowded bar and falling madly in love instantly. You picture making eyes at each other across the room at a friend’s house party minutes before making out passionately in the only bathroom in the joint. You fantasize about sitting beside them on the bus and by the end of the ride you’re engaged and pregnant with triplets. It’s the ultimate romantic comedy plot. You encounter them in the flesh, sparks fly, and everything is serene until you both die of old age simultaneously in your sleep.
But, that’s not real life. In real life meeting people is hard, especially in a big city. You go out regularly enough but it’s not like you’re sauntering up to randos on the street and professing your undying like of them. And your friend circle is growing smaller and smaller by the minute. The human persons you do meet are all in relationships or they’re only in town for a day or they’re too busy for anything beyond a one hour romp and a shot of espresso. And as you grow older it becomes even harder to find individuals you’re compatible with because your standards are higher and you don’t tolerate as much bullshit as you used to and people are fucking married and birthing babies every damn hour of the day. They don’t have time to get a pint of beer with you anymore to determine if you like the same kind of television. They’re OCCUPIED.
So, what do you do? Accept your eternal state of loneliness? No! You get on TINDER. It’s the BEST. I know I said all of that stuff off the top about how garbage it is but by the title of this piece you should have known a curveball was coming. Here it is! CURVEBALL TIME. Meeting people IS hard. Romantic comedies AREN’T real. But you know what’s not hard and is real? MOTHERFUCKING TINDER! I repeat. It’s…the…BEST. Why is it the butt of every millennials’ dating joke? Why do we mock and shame and patronize its users? How the hell else are you supposed to get laid these days? Kismet? Fate? Happenstance? Please. This isn’t the 2001 cinematic masterpiece Serendipity. You are not John Cusack and you are not Kate Beckinsale and you are definitely not Jeremy Piven. You’re YOU and I’m ME and both of us would probably enjoy this wonderful (not monstrous) invention if we stopped judging ourselves and quit listening to our Serendipity-loving friends and accepted that this is how a lot of people date in 2015. Via cool technology.
Not convinced? May I remind you again that you are NOT Jeremy Piven. Still skeptical? Okay. Let me put it this way. Here are all of the specific reasons why I like Tinder, in particular, more than any other dating thing and why you should reinstall it for the millionth time RIGHT NOW:
It’s quick and easy and requires very little reading
I was on OKCupid for one day and I found it incredibly convoluted and overwhelming and boring as hell. I know this is not everyone’s experience but it was definitely this girl’s. I don’t have time to read a stranger’s entire biography. I just need a taste of who they are, which is exactly what Tinder provides. You get a handful of photos. You get a couple of lines describing their life. You get your similar interests. You skim through that info in a few minutes and then bam! They’re inside you. Installing the app takes ten seconds. You can scroll through a hundred faces within five minutes. You either like them or nope them. Those are your choices. I would say Tinder is so simple that even my mother could use it. She would first have to figure out how her phone functions but after that it’d be clear sailing for old Mama Beaulieu.
It allows you to meet so many people you wouldn’t have
My god are there thousands of interesting bodies in Toronto and Canada and whatever location you’re reading this from, but you wouldn’t necessarily know that unless some kind of technology exposed you to them. A technology like, oh, I don’t know, TINDER! ANOTHER CURVEBALL COMING AT YA. I went on a date with a girl who’s getting her PhD in Information. How on earth would I have met an Information student without this glorious app? Here’s the answer: I WOULDN’T HAVE. And she was great! And we had sex! And it was also great! So much greatness that I almost missed out on. There are tons of smokin’ hot folks currently living and breathing in your surrounding area and that well will never run dry. One person breaks your heart? There’s plenty more where that jerk came from! It just keeps going and going until Tinder informs you that you’ve run out of likes for the day. But, hey, there’s always TOMORROW! AM I RIGHT FELLOW HORNDOGS?
It’s not a free for all for ignorant entitled dudes
What I hated most about OkCupid was that weird, annoying, perverted men could reach out to me willy nilly without my permission. When I signed up all I uploaded at first was a single image of myself and I instantly got twenty messages from strange dudes who exclusively wanted to orgasm on my boobs which they immediately informed me of. Tinder does not work like that. You have to BOTH like each other before ANYONE can make contact. Matches = chat-ches.
Seeing your mutual Facebook friends is a huge bonus
Scared that you’re going to end up on a date with a couple of Entourage wannabes? Never fear. Your mutual friends are here! They will save you from douchebros and mansplaining and indoor fedoras. I mean, it doesn’t guarantee you won’t end up with a Jeremy Piven-type (yes, another Piven reference but this one’s Entourage based so calm down will you?) but it helps filter out the extreme losers. ˜Cause if someone you like is friends with a person you think you could like chances are you’ll probably end up liking them, not necessarily romantically but you’ll like them as a human being and that’s better than wanting to claw their eyes out.
There are way fewer bugs than the newer apps
This is for the practical lovers out there. I have dabbled in a couple of other apps since I began perusing my phone for sex and I find Tinder to be the most reliable, non-glitchy one out there. This is probably ˜cause it’s been around the longest, has the most money behind it, and the largest amount of users. It’s the Walmart of dating apps and although I’m usually against corporate culture, I’m okay with it when it comes to Tinder. I like my love delivered conveniently and without complication and not crashing my phone.
Well, that’s what I got for now but I could go on and on for hours about my obsession with what I think is the FUTURE and the PRESENT and the PAST AS WELL (it’s been around for like three years) of dating. Ready to reinstall or INSTALL? Come ON. Give it a swipe. You won’t regret it¦ more than a few times. I promise.
