A Study In Modern Love: Week 1 On Tinder

Thesis: Beginnings are always the most fun part.

Despite how universal it seems to be, and how prevalent it is in society, there doesn’t seem to be an exact science on love. Well, I guess there’s psychology. And maybe other… sciences. But who has time for that? You don’t want lengthy and verbose explanations about why you feel the way you feel. You want screenshots, and something to laugh at. You want to see what happens when an idiot is given Tinder. Enter: me.

To debut what is hopefully going to be a fruitful on-going article series, I ventured forth past my comfort zone, what Joseph Campbell calls ‘crossing the threshold’, and made myself a Tinder account. The results? Laughable. Or so I’ve been told. Right from the get go, I gunned to make it clear that I knew my limits.

Getting used to the mechanics and how things worked went relatively smoothly. I’ll admit it, there were some minor hiccups. And after a while, some rules had to be set in place:

i. Swipe left for anyone with a dog filter selfie.

ii. Swipe left for anyone with ‘Closer’ as their Spotify anthem.

iii. Swipe left for anyone with a cliché ‘omg im so quirky’ line about food, napping, etc. Bonus points for any mentions about chicken nuggets.

After a few, shall we say, borderline red-hot matches, I had to add another one:

iv. Swipe left for anyone with more than three common friends.

As unscientific as I am, I did recognise a need for the other person to not know me for a clean and controlled experimental design. What kills me is this will probably be the extent I use the social research component of my university degree. You get what you pay for, I guess. As you may have guessed, this eliminated a lot of candidates. I’m talking five yes’ for ever fifty nopes. But after a little patience, a maybe a breaking or two of the rules, I got some matches.

The verdict? This shit is tiring. While there is a lot of initial excitement of meeting someone new, and seemingly endless possibilities being laid before you, having to reintroduce yourself and establish who you are over and over again to this volume is exhausting. Six matches in, the allure of the new began to fade, and felt more like the obligatory conversation you try to sustain with your Uber driver while dinging off your nut. So yes, beginnings hold some of the most fun. You just never really consider the amount of energy you put into painting your own portrait to a stranger, and working every detail of your life in some favourable light. Multiply that by ten in the span of a few days and you get something rather draining.

Catch you next week. Maybe.

Ex-oh.

Gossip Garry

by Garry Lu