Let’s talk about Tinder. The wildly popular app has fostered more booty calls and regret than has ever been achieved by a single form of technology, and yet everyone has been on it.
Everyone has their strategy: he can’t be holding anything dead, he shouldn’t pose with girls who are prettier than you and if he’s posing with his mom it’s an immediate swipe left (which has its own psychological implications that are for another column). No one is saying these heavily biased algorithms provide results, but they are certainly adhered to.
You finally sift through all the snapbacks and mirror selfies and find someone appealing. You swipe right and that swirly font pops up right before your eyes. It’s a Match!
Don’t lie, you’re smiling. This is validation. Someone you find attractive found your profile picture unobjectionable. Then you’re faced with two options: Send him a message or keep playing.
Keep playing. Nine times out of 10 you choose to keep playing. Here’s the truest piece of evidence: we aren’t looking for a match, we’re playing a game of validation. Granted, sometimes we take our prizes home for what we’ll call a further display of validation, but this isn’t a dating app. This is just a game.
It’s so easy to fall into the rhythm of swiping right and left and let that black screen feel like the attention we all desire in real life. All we want is that quick burst of self-esteem and to move on.
But what this app and others like it do is simple: it lets us live out scenarios with no real consequences, similar to the purpose of video games. As humans we have the innate desire to do things and meet people and all technology like this does is give us an excuse not to actually do those things. Then we lay awake wondering why we feel so unfulfilled.
We aren’t meant to interact, let alone fall in love, through pictures and pixels. Close the app and open up to the people around you, that’s where you’ll find a connection.