Tinder Diaries

I am not much of a social media person. I love the internet only for Zen pencils, ridiculous memes and online shopping. I do not understand Twitter, I will not succumb to Snapchat and I am on Instagram only for this Vietnamese chap who posts pictures of dog’s snouting using double filters. I am against the concept of online dating, and a final year award-winning thesis of the same backs my sheer detest.

However, when an office colleague ranted about this ‘wonder app’ that lets you hook up with rich-successful-good looking boys (which I believe is an odd combination), I immediately judged her and them, all for being sexually frustrated. She quickly snapped at me saying, “This isn’t meant for you”. You know how the forbidden fruits always pique our curiosity. I sneaked on to Tinder. And, that’s how I opened Pandora’s Box of crazy-town.

For Tinder amateurs: It is an app that matches you with potential love interests in your area. You can log onto the app only through your Facebook account. It’s the only way of validation, making sure people see your Facebook profile pictures, and not deceiving ones of Ryan Gosling. Also, you can see the number of mutual friends you have with the person, so that way you won’t end up in a body bag in somebody’s deep freezer.

Not trying to sound too over-the-top, I mentally deconstructed every boy’s tagline and judged everything about their pictures. If you are interested in a person, you swipe to the right, if not, you swipe to the left. YOLO was soon replaced by YOSO (you only swipe once), because one wrong swipe and you won’t see the boy ever again.

Throwing away my moral compass, I took this swiping business quite seriously. What generated a negative swipe were the following: Men with any kind of alcohol in their pictures. Group photos (That’s a tactic used by ugly men). Model-looking men. Shirtless pictures. Men with tigers (Like, is that a subliminal message of any sort?) Basically, I was looking for a decent guy with fine taste. Trust me, that breed is dying. I did manage to find a handful, swiped to the right, and impatiently waited for Tinder to go bonkers and yell “It’s a match!” For some odd reason, every match legitimised my existence.

Tinder is a new-age addiction. And like all other vices we hide, I didn’t want the world to know that I had succumbed. And so, slyly in my cubicle I kept swiping. On the ride home…some more swiping. Boring family functions led to even more swiping. I got strangely invested in this activity.

I did manage to find two men, who, after much deliberation made it to my WhatsApp. The first one was a pilot who also moonlighted as a musician. It was too good to be true as our conversations deviated more towards sex, his love for California porn-stars and older women. I ran for the hills. The second one was completely dominated by the superego in Freudian terms. He believed in hard work, righteousness and his display pictures on WhatsApp were only family oriented. We were clearly not soul mates.

In the midst of this wild streak, a close friend sent me a screenshot of my profile on Tinder. It accompanied a “What are you doing here?”, and an evil grin that comes when you know you will rant about it to the entire friend circle. I deleted the app.

I was quite disgusted with myself and yet heavily intrigued by the concept of ‘attempting to fall in love’ with a random stranger. To be clear, I didn’t want to meet anyone, because I have been too involved with CSI and I assume everyone is a psychopath. Especially, when it comes to people on the internet.

My verdict is, if you are looking to find true love on a hook-up app, you need to really step back and re-examine all of your life’s choices.