I am not a dating app girl. If you’ve read any of my other pieces, I’m sure I come off as the person I truly am: a (purposefully) bitchy misandrist who is also a hopeless romantic and is, consequently, in love with every man who is slightly nice to her.
Clearly, online dating does not agree with those traits, as men are facetiously nice online — my being a bitch would likely warrant a non-response.
That being said, last spring break, I downloaded Tinder. I often played with the app on my friend’s phones, just content to swipe and see if any guys I knew around campus were attempting to whore themselves out to the general public. However, as I left the judgment (and potential recognition) of campus, I felt inspired to make my own profile, simply for validation purposes.
With my friend’s encouragement, I curated a fairly cute profile in the backseat of our carpool to Not-Ithaca City, U.S.A. However, I quickly developed a swiping addiction. Match after match, in our moving car, I swiped on a wide variety of men. Most notably, I matched with somewhere around: four West Point boys, three musicians, three junior league hockey players, six Binghamton boys, two men who were way too old for me and to my dismay, two wild Cornell boys.
And this was just from all my swiping during the five-hour car ride. I continued to swipe to a lesser degree while on vacation, and an even lesser degree during the few days I spent at home.
Although getting hot matches was fun, no one told me that not everyone chats with you on Tinder — in fact, matching is half the battle when it comes to validation. Sure, a few beefy, ab-having West Point men thought I was cute enough to swipe right, but only two of them actually thought I was cute enough to say hello. What did that say about me? That I was only attractive if I initiated the conversation? If I acted boldly?
Clearly not, since one of my matches never responded to my first message to him. I’ll admit, opening with “please tell me about your celiac’s journey, it’s 50 percent of the reason I swiped right” was probably not the way to go. Why would he put it in his bio if he didn’t want me to comment on it, though?
Alas, after a week of chats — some good, some worse — I discovered that I didn’t really like any of the guys. Tinder was just something to pass the time, something for my idle hands to play with. All in all, the glorified game of smash or pass that I was playing became boring quite quickly. Even on the car ride back up to campus, swiping just didn’t give me the same thrill that it did the week before.
I disabled discovery mode as soon as we hit Binghamton and deleted the Tinder app the next day. I collected five Snapchats in total from the app, and though none of them are viable love interests, I think they think the same of me. Regardless, I think they’re all cute, so it’s nice to get a snap and just stare at it a little (like a creep).
That being said, my time on Tinder and my apathy toward deleting it made me realize just how content I am with being single. Right now, I don’t have a crush on a guy, and I’m very much at peace with that. Strangely, I also don’t feel the need to get on Tinder and match with Cornell boys just so I know that some guy on this campus is dying to get with me. For the first time in a long time, I don’t feel like I’m lying when I say that I am really, truly happy to be alone.
So, now you know: The true key to accepting singledom (and fast!) is talking to a bunch of boring guys on Tinder and, predictably, getting bored.
You’re welcome.
Virginia Snatch is a student at Cornell Universtiy. Her fortnightly Column The Slip ‘N Slide discusses the art of sex, passion and everything in between.
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