“Did you lose a slipper? Because you’re my Tinderella.” Now, insert a winky face. Tell me this is a joke.
The quote above is a message I received on Tinder, a dating app popular with college students.
I created an account specifically for the purposes of this column. After developing a familiarity with the inner workings of Tinder, I believe I have enough information to bash its nauseating concept to smithereens.
Tinder is creepy, pointless and potentially trashy. It promotes a lazy, superficial dating environment and hook-up culture.
A common argument in Tinder’s defense is that it connects you with people you would never meet otherwise and expands your romantic opportunities.
This argument may be accurate, but at what cost?
Tinder is a simplified application form of online dating sites like eHarmony and OkCupid.
Whereas online dating sites usually aim for older generations, Tinder’s target audience is college students. College students, especially the ones on Tinder, are often looking for fun, casual dates, not committed relationships.
When I casually asked a friend about her experience with Tinder, this is the answer I got:
“I’ve had the drunk first date, the guy-who-coupons first date, the guy who asked for my email and not my number and the guy who wanted our first date to be hypnosis.”
Needless to say, there were no second dates. Tinder may provide quantity, but it leaves out the quality.
Seriously, when was the last time you asked a happy couple where they met, and their response was, “Oh, we met on Tinder!”
Years ago, someone told me you get in what you put out. This is true of Tinder, too. If all you’re doing is swiping left for “I’m not attracted to you” and right for “Hello, good looking,” you’re not putting in much effort.
Yes, the initial “match” when two people both swipe right and mutually like each other can lead to a shallow, flirty conversation and an eventual date, but the initial effort is not there. By the way, swiping right on a photo means someone finds a low quality, 2-by-2-inch photo appealing.
If that doesn’t boost your ego, I don’t know what will.
The lack of initial effort leads to the terrible dates people have after meeting on Tinder. People are not expecting much. Two people merely swiped their phone screen, had a casual, possibly raunchy conversation and then decided to meet for a date. More than likely, one or both parties are just looking to hook up.
Tinder feeds the growth of the stereotypical sleazy, college hook-up scene, and it thrives on a need for instant gratification that has become a hallmark of American culture.
Tinder just opens the door to more instant gratification and infatuation. He’s cute. She’s not. She’s cute. He’s not. Swipe, swipe, swipe. There is nothing meaningful or substantial about liking a picture and sending a witty message to another person that you’ve probably sent many times before to other Tinder users.
The creator of Tinder took the instant gratification of a “like” found on sites like Instagram and combined it with a twisted, simplified form of online dating and birthed a distasteful nightmare.
Tinder generates an awful dating equation full of laziness that will not satisfy any user looking for quality dates or relationships.
Now that I’ve had enough experience with Tinder to write thoughtfully about it, I will be deleting it off my phone permanently.
Here’s to never being called Tinderella again.
Lindsay Alexander is a UF journalism sophomore. Her columns appear on Wednesdays.
[A version of this story ran on page 6 on 9/24/2014]
