The Tinder Chronicles
Online dating was never a thing I was going to do. My reasoning for that decision looked like this.
a) Aren't dating sites notorious for 50-year-old creepers who disguise themselves as attractive 27-year-olds? No thanks. I'm really not into the creeper sort.
b) My parents always warned me not to talk to strangers. Online dating encourages not only talking to strangers but actually meeting them.
c) Ain't no way I'm marrying a man and having to tell people for the rest of my life, "We met on Match.com...."
Despite the fact that my best friend actually found her own non-creeper through an LDS dating site and married him, I was still skeptical. Besides, I've always been able to generate enough dates for myself without a dating website. Nope. The Charmer was definitely not EVER going to try online dating.
But then there was this app called Tinder.
Just for the record, I'm pretty sure I swore off Tinder along with the rest of the online dating sites. I mean, seriously? To me, Tinder seemed to scream, Let's judge people based on their eye color and shirtless pics. Surely Tinder was only for super shallow people who didn't go on dates because they spent all their time lifting weights at VASA.
Well, about two months ago I returned from living in China for a year and a half. And I made a Tinder account.
Sigh.
I don't really know why I made one. I guess it just intrigued me. My favorite mission companion and her sister both had Tinders. My ex-boyfriend/now-just-a-good-friend was a Tinderer. People were apparently getting married using the thing. So, a couple days before coming back to Provo for some job training, I gave into peer pressure and chose 6 pictures of me that looked good (but not too good. Still trying to avoid creepers here.)
After writing a mostly cliche bio about "enjoying traveling and eating", I only had to swipe through three or four people before realizing that Portland was definitely not the place for a good Mormon girl to be using Tinder. I turned off the "discovery" option and decided to wait until my feet had hit the holy soil of Utah before turning it back on.
Fast forward a couple days. I was riding the Frontrunner down to Provo where I would meet up with my mission companion when I suddenly remembered that my pocket held the key to meeting my eternal companion. I looked around and sheepishly pulled out my phone, then clicked on the Tinder flame. I turned on Discovery. I looked through a few profiles and swiped left on all of them because I was too nervous to actually swipe right.
I put my phone away, silently mocking myself at the silliness of the whole thing. The Charmer on Tinder. Who would have guessed?
About 10 minutes later, my phone buzzed. I pulled it out and my eyes grew wide in horror as Tinder informed me that "someone had superliked me!" A superlike? What the heck is that? I gingerly opened the app and was presented with a profile of someone that did not look like he would be my type, but even worse....he looked FAMILIAR.
I stared at his picture. I could have sworn he had been in one of my BYU wards. I looked at our mutual friends. Oh no, he had DEFINITELY been in that ward.
Thus, I was presented with
Tinder Dilemma #1: Should I swipe right because I know him? Maybe he only superliked me because he wanted to say "hey, remember me?" Would it be totally rude of me to swipe left if, in fact, he DID just want to catch up about our good old Glenhood ward? I mean, surely he wouldn't have just superliked me out of the blue, right? RIGHT?
Tinder Dilemma #1: Should I swipe right because I know him? Maybe he only superliked me because he wanted to say "hey, remember me?" Would it be totally rude of me to swipe left if, in fact, he DID just want to catch up about our good old Glenhood ward? I mean, surely he wouldn't have just superliked me out of the blue, right? RIGHT?
Ten minutes in and oh, I hated superlikes already. (I have this awful guilty conscious that flares up when it's afraid I'm going to hurt someone's feelings.)
So, I did what any cautious novice Tinderer would do: I ignored the like. I didn't swipe right. I didn't swipe left. Instead, I took a screenshot and sent it to my best friend to ask her if this guy had, in fact, been in our ward.
She responded affirmatively.
And then she made a joke about me being on Tinder.
(She has a lot of nerve, since she DID find her man on a dating website after all)
In the end, readers, I swiped right out of politeness. I swiped right on the chance that SuperLiker was going to respond with, Hey, long time no talk! How have you been?
He didn't. Turns out he had absolutely no recollection of ever being in a ward with me, even when I pointed it out. No, he had liked me on the basis of my good-not-too-good pictures and the fact that I like to travel and eat. And now I was stuck talking to a guy with a self-proclaimed "dad bod" who specialized in pickup lines and awkward GIFs.
Welcome to Tinder.
--The Charmer
4 comments:
Is his name Jeff? haha
I've considered Tinder, but my roommate keeps having terrible experiences with it, so idk.
Anonymous: Wow, I just got called out. Dang it. Haha!
AMG: Are we talking awkward experiences or like serial killer experiences? I know there are plenty of weirdos on there but I haven't had any bad experiences yet. I just put up a post with a few more of my Tindering incidents. I tried it again recently and have gone on a few more Tinder dates, but still nothing too crazy. Everyone's been normal. Go with your gut, I guess!
haha i only know because i've seen him on tinder too. That dad bod...lol
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