The high-tech future is already in our smartphone screens slowly moving us to the reality of “Black Mirror.” If you remember, in this tv-series people met each other in an online app that could find a 99.9% match for anyone. Could you find your soulmate by just uploading a dating app to your phone today?
Bright Side will tell you a story of someone who has been trying to answer this question using the most popular dating app — Tinder.
Hi everyone! My name is Julia and I use Tinder. This sounds like an AA meeting introduction, and it partially is that.
So my Tinder story started several years ago. 2 of my friends already used the app and I heard so many funny stories from them that I also wanted to use this thing. And yes, I wanted to meet someone for a serious relationship, not just for a couple of dates.
And somehow, after my first attempt, I found what I was looking for: the first guy I met became my boyfriend.
But life is not a fairytale, and after a long relationship we ended things. And this was the moment when I really started using Tinder. So last year was officially a dating year [laughing]. I have come to certain conclusions and now I have my own funny stories that I want to tell you about.
Most of the time, I was invited to get coffee or go on a walk. Watching a movie is a scenario for the second date because you can’t really talk in the theater. If you are invited to a nightclub or to a party, this is a signal that they don’t want a serious relationship. This mostly means that a person is looking for any companion for an event. Once I invited a guy to a musical festival in order to not be alone with him and check him out in a safe place.
But once, I had a very unusual date: I agreed to meet with a guy downtown. He made a good impression on me right away. We greeted each other and he took me to a football game but we never went on any more dates.
At one point, I met a guy who was on vacation in Spain. He had several photos on his profile: in one of them I couldn’t see his face, and on the other he was sitting in a chair with his legs crossed. I didn’t see any catch and based on texts, I thought that he was an interesting man. And he didn’t just text me, once he sent me flowers and even got 2 tickets (for me and my friend) to a really cool festival I hadn’t even dreamed of going to.
When he returned we agreed to meet each other. He politely picked me up even though he lived on the other side of the city. I went outside but couldn’t find him. And he was saying on the phone, “I’m here! Next to the red car!”
And then, I saw a guy who was barely as tall as my shoulder. At the moment I had that feeling (you have it very often when you meet Tinder users) when you want to hit rewind, but you have to go forward because he saw you and you saw him. I started walking toward him, talking to my friend in my thoughts, imagining how I would tell this story to her sitting in the kitchen. I also thought that maybe it wasn’t a total disaster yet and we drove downtown. But during the entire evening he spoke in a very quiet and monotonous voice about his passion for history and his dog. His voice became a little louder only when he said the words “my Cadillac,” which happened pretty often. And when he started talking about ancient Poland, I wanted to kill myself. Right inside the Cadillac.
There is an inexplicable thing about dating: just as soon as you see a person, you already know with 100% certainty if you will communicate with them or not. Even if they look like the man of your dreams, in some cases, you already know that you have no future. I tried to change my own opinion about this, but my instinct won over and over again.
It actually happened to me once with a seemingly perfect guy. He was handsome, he traveled a lot, he told interesting stories about his job, and he had a great way of thinking: he talked about ecological problems, he sent documentaries to me, and so on. And on Tinder, people rarely talk about anything but their own lives. The only problem was that he posted a photo of himself with no shirt on. And these photos indicate only one thing: this person is looking for a one night stand. Intuitively I understood that but my mind kept telling me, “Look at him! He is so interesting. What if he’s not like that?”
As it turned out, he was in Rome when we were actively texting. And when he arrived back home he texted me (I was at the movie theater at that moment) and told me that he was going to get rid of the tattoo of his ex-wife’s initials. The entire movie theater heard me laugh. I just couldn’t stop.
But in fact, the situation was much more depressing: the guy couldn’t forget about his ex and he was doing everything he could to stay busy with work, sports, traveling, documentaries, checking out her photos, and, of course, Tinder.
Most of my dates were singular meetings. There was only one guy that I met 3 times, but then he returned to the US to study at a music academy in New Orleans. I learned a lot about the US culture, music, and traveling. Tinder can teach us a lot of things.
Just a little bit of advice on Tinder ethics: If both parties think that the date was a failure, you basically just forget each other after you say “Okay, I’ll text you.” If you didn’t like a guy, you just ignore his messages. Yes it’s ugly, but it’s better than telling someone directly that you didn’t like them at all.
There was only one time when I really thought the guy was “the one” but he never invited me on a second date. Our paths ended up crossing later, but not in the way I wanted.
I had gone to the movies with my gay friend and we were in a line for popcorn when I noticed “the one” coming toward me. We saw each other, smiled, and nodded at each other. He then ran into the hall. Please note: there were about 20 theaters in this venue. My friend and I had gone to see some art movie and we bought the introvert seats: on the side of the first row.
Can you imagine? We went into the theater and “the one” was sitting right next to me. He had this terrible, humiliating smile on his face like “She still goes on dates.” In the end, my friend ate almost the entire bucket of popcorn because I literally couldn’t eat — that’s how awkward I felt.
If a guy texts you something like, “Hey! You’re beautiful” you think, “OK. Boring. Next!” And then you get a message like, “You have such cute freckles...” and you think, “Okay, this is something interesting.” But these non-trivial messages are not a guarantee that this is an interesting person. Even if you text someone yourself, it doesn’t mean you’ve found a good guy. By the way up until a certain point I never texted anyone myself, and then I thought, why not? After 15 terrible dates, I finally realized that I had to do something about it.
For example, once I texted a really nice guy myself. Then one day when I was eating at a cafe he texted me that he was driving nearby and he could stop and say hi. We met each other and right when I was telling him I was a dentist, he jumped up and told me that he had just come from the dentist. He started showing me pictures of his new dental filling. That’s a good start, don’t you think? He asked me what I thought. I looked at the pictures and said that, ideally, they could have made the tooth look a little more anatomical but in general it looked very good. And he said, “So, they ruined my tooth?!” This was the moment when I realized he was a hypochondriac.
As a result, he spent an hour telling me about his tooth. He only stopped because he had plans to go to the movies with his friends. So he left and I went home. One hour later, I got a message. I thought it would be a “thank you” or something like that. But it was a question, “Can I eat and drink with a bad dental filling?”
After that, he texted me about his teeth several times. The last message I got from him said that he didn’t want to live with all these problems...
After several months, I went to a movie theater that is not the most popular one in our city. There was a drunk guy and his girlfriend who kept telling him “No, not now!” There were very few people in the theater and they ran out several times and kept coming back in. At one point he kicked my seat, I turned back to glare at him and it was the guy with the tooth! And it was super awkward again.
Once I texted a guy who looked like the ideal guy, that my grandmother might approve of: he was intelligent, worked as a designer, and his profile picture showed him wearing a shirt with a cat in his hands. He lived nearby and invited me to his place. I thought he looked very safe, so I agreed.
But here’s what happened: we were sitting at his place, with the cat, and this my-grandmother-might-like-him guy started telling me that he cheated on his ex-girlfriend with the guy next door. So, I was there thinking, “Wow! This is a great date. What if he is the one?” and he tells me this! He didn’t stop there, he told me that he liked it but he was feeling guilty. I kept a poker face, but the whole time I was thinking “Whaaat?!”
So, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s impossible to understand what kind of person is behind a profile picture: no matter how many dates you’ve had before. People are too weird.
I didn’t come to the happiest conclusion but I still don’t regret all the time I spent on Tinder. First of all, I have a lot of friends and acquaintances from this and we regularly communicate online. Second, I’ve learned a lot about the culture of other countries, because among the people I met there were many guys who traveled a lot. Some of them even sent me lists of must-see places in cities that really helped me later on. I learned a lot about other professions, hobbies, cuisines, and spent my time in an interesting way. It’s definitely better than just sitting at home. So everyone who spends their evenings watching TV or lying in bed should go and make a Tinder account!
The only reason why I still have Tinder on my phone is for when I’m traveling. It’s an easy way to meet a local person, learn about the culture from a totally different side, go to a local party, and see interesting places that you wouldn’t normally see in a regular travel guide.
But when I’m home, I don’t use the app. I would like to have the same feelings I had after my first Tinder relationship, but I never got to and I never will, because I always hoped to find a better option. So now Tinder is a chapter in the book of my life that I will not return to.
Dear readers, you are interesting — tell us about yourselves! Maybe you were a volunteer at a nursing home, lived in Bangladesh, worked at a Michelin star restaurant in Paris, or you just have a story about why it’s so important to meet your relatives at the airport! Write to us about this and send it to news@adme.ru, put “My story” in the subject line.