Tinder? I Barely Know Her! (Literally)

My Brief & Terrible Journey Into Online Dating.

Like most 20-somethings who spend 60% of their time online, I feel as if I am constantly being barraged by posts and photos from my friends in relationships. I suppose my sour attitude comes from jealousy? or perhaps it is just contempt…maybe a healthy mix of both? But whatever it is, I know I always become discouraged and depressed being alone. But sometimes all it takes is one reminder to realize that sometimes this isn’t so bad and that “reminder” is called Tinder.

When I first downloaded Tinder I was hopeful and excited like an 8 year old boy on Christmas morning tearing through the wrapping hoping to find the gift of his dreams. During the 3 months I used it most frequently I had about 170 matches, which I honestly do not know if that is a lot or not. I only talked to girls who I liked based off what they said in their profiles because I guess it felt like somewhere to start. Out of my 34 conversations I got 5 phone numbers and went on 3 dates with 2 separate girls. I find when you meet girls in real life a simple “hi” works wonders but on this app that is the technology equivalent of Satan you have to try and stand out from the hundreds of other lonely douches trying to do the exact same thing you are.

We’ll call the first girl Ashley, thats not her name its just the first I thought of. I messaged Ashley about a place in Toronto that I noticed in one of her photos, this made things easy because it was a coffee shop and I could easily transition between mentioning the coffee shop and asking her if she wants to go get coffee with me there. We met up later that week and had coffee, she goes to one of the Universities in Toronto and studies Philosophy. The conversation was dull and neither of us were very good at asking each other interesting questions about what it was we liked. She was very pretty and kind as far as I could tell. It wasn’t until she brought up vaccines leading to autism and irreversible diseases that I felt like I needed to escape. What was just a bad date quickly turned into a train wreck. It was one of those situations where someone begins to explain something ya know? so you just sort nod politely and smile and at first what they’re saying isn’t so bad but then it starts being bad but you’re still smiling and nodding. And in your head you’re just like “why am I still smiling and nodding my head oh God please no.” Safe to say we did not go on another date or text much after that.

The second girl we’ll call her…Yolanda??? (I don’t know) She actually messaged me first on the app, she just opened with a simple “hi how are you?” and the conversation went from there. We didn’t actually exchange information for about a week, mostly we just talked on the app and then eventually decided to switch over to texting. Yolanda was very confident in herself, she was confident in how she looked, what she said and what she did and it was very attractive to me. First we grabbed coffee at the same place I took Ashely actually because hey why not, good coffee is good coffee right? The first date went really well, we got coffee and then went to the waterfront and sat on a bench because as she said “If were out in public you can’t murder me” she had a somewhat dark sense of humour that wasn’t so much that it scared me but just enough I couldn’t help but laugh. I had a fun time, I walked her back to her apartment gave her a kiss good night and then went home. We texted a little while longer until our schedules were free enough that we could meet up again, this time we decided to go for drinks. She took me to a bar in Kensington market I had never heard of before. The date was good, lots of laughing and lots of playful flirtation with the alcohol coursing through our veins. After 4 drinks each we walked back to her apartment where she told me she thought I was too nice to date but if I wanted to go inside and just mess around with no feelings attached to anything she’d be into it. Most guys I guess would have gone inside but I declined because I guess it wasn’t where I wanted it to go. I went home sort of sad because she seemed like the type of girl I could see myself dating, I got over it fast though.

About a week later I deleted the app, it felt like I was trying to make my life all about dating. Constantly being shot down or just being ghosted can certainly be sort of discouraging. So maybe for now this is best, being like this isn’t so bad and all it took was getting back out there again to prove it to me. Maybe there are better apps than tinder, but it certainly feels like this whole online dating thing is rather overrated. That was the quick story I thought I’d share for this weeks assignment, hopefully it gave some sort of insight into online dating if you’ve never done it or hopefully you could have a laugh at my expense either way, thanks for reading!!

Evan Palangio