Swipe Life
Lust, Love, Loners and Liars
Grand Theft Auto V is paused on the TV, though the whirring hum of the PS4’s fan still reverberates throughout the room. Wayne’s set up is perfect, he declares. His TV, connected to the PS4, is perched atop his drawer at the foot of his bed and angled slightly for the perfect viewing experience. He has a three-foot teddy bear and an excessive amount of pillows, which he explains come in handy to prop himself and guests upright against the back wall when watching movies. His work desk is adjacent to the head of his bed, and the left drawer underneath it is stocked with Magnum condoms.
(I am still unconvinced that they fit him, at least correctly).
“You’ve got to make them feel loved,” he says. “Pretend like you actually care for them, like theres something special about you and her. Play the boyfriend card.”
In other words, Wayne is saying… lie.
In the quest for romance — or in this case just a quick shag — millennials are turning to the world of online dating for help. Replaced by late night “you up?” texts and “Netflix n’ chill” sessions (which are now commonly accepted as “dates”), the idea of taking a girl out mini-golfing or to a movie is a thing of the past.
The 21st century has been deemed the age of information. While the creation of the Internet has allowed us to acquire and share information more readily, it has taken away from one of the most fun parts of relationships. Getting to know one another. Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter have allowed millennials to review and scrutinize every aspect of a potential partner before even meeting them.
How should they feel about Colin Kaepernick taking a knee during the national anthem? Prefer Star Trek over Star Wars? Or, god forbid, clap when the airplane lands!? Millennials can now know well beforehand not only what they’re getting themselves into, but how they should tailor themselves preemptively before going on any embarrassing dates.
Perhaps it’s a case of watching too many How I Met Your Mother reruns, but I’ve always romanticized the idea of a semi-awkward first date. I like to think that jumping headfirst into situations where I’m most likely going to fall flat on my face builds character. And if not, will at least make for some funny stories later on. However, in the world of modern dating, where one’s information is readily available to almost everyone, everything is planned and pre-meditated.
Standing at nearly 6' tall, Wayne is the epitome of a modern male ideal. His closely shaved undercut exposes his jar-shaped head and ridiculously good jawline (I’m almost jealous). The top then fades out to a few inches of sandy blonde hair which he neatly tucks to one side. His nose, straight and thin, rests between his most extraordinary asset — pale, stone-blue eyes.
Much like his bedroom setup, Wayne has put tremendous thought into his online dating profile. As we swipe through his six carefully chosen photos — most of which are at least two years old and contain no trace of a shirt — he explains the purpose each one serves. In one picture, he’s dressed as a shirtless mermaid complete with a seashell bra and all.
“Dude, I swear, like 60 percent of girls comment on my shirtless mermaid picture,” he says.
In addition to his misleading photos, Wayne’s biography alludes to the notion that he’s looking for something more than just a hookup. His profile reads: Now accepting bae applications. I will destroy you in swimming, corn hole (the bean bag game!), and in bed.
Wayne says he doesn’t feel like it’s wrong to deceive girls, or that he’s actually being deceptive, really. “Girls nowadays know exactly what guys want on Tinder,” he says. “Yea, I play the boyfriend card. But that’s because they want intimacy.”
Wayne claims online dating is a two-way street. He gets what he wants, and in return, he gives the girls what they want. Although the intimacy may be fabricated, he says it is real in the moment. “I’m always happy to keep meeting and smashing,” he says, “until they want something more.”
Deception, although at times unintentional, seems to happen on both ends of the spectrum.
Leah’s eyes wince in pain as she recalls her memories of the first time she met her bae in person. We’re talking up on Franklin Hill and it’s supposedly spring in LA, but it’s damp and cloudy and I’m freezing my ass off, but Leah’s story is too good to interrupt. I was expecting to hear the same thing I’d heard from most of the other girls I had interviewed: terrible first dates, men are pigs, the occasional story of abuse… but this was different.
“I was so embarrassed,” she says. “I kept my head in the trash can, even though it smelled like puke. Everyone at the airport was looking at me.”
Butterflies had gotten the best of Leah as she anxiously waited at the gates of San Francisco International Airport (SFO) for the arrival of flight FI 863, inbound from Reykjavík, Iceland. This would be the first time Leah and Kida, the young lady she’d been communicating with for the past three months, would meet in person.
Upon hearing Iceland, my mind constructs an image of fair-skin, blonde hair, and baby blue eyes. I imagine Kida as some sort of Nordic Wonder Woman.
With light brown hair and an oval-shaped face, and standing just 5'5", Kida doesn’t fit the mold of a Norse goddess. Her large circular glasses and smooth dark olive skin seem to glow and radiate in the sun. One would never imagine she lives in a country where the sun doesn’t shine for six months of the year… And she doesn’t. Turns out, Kida’s originally from Thailand.
The pair met on OkCupid, a popular dating app more commonly used by Gen-X’ers rather than millennials. Weeks before they matched online, Kida was on holiday in Los Angeles, and thus had her location set there.
The duo hit it off right away, exchanging dozens of messages and pictures every day for about two weeks before Kida confessed the truth, she was living and studying in Iceland. “We had chemistry right away. And I knew so much about her just from her bio,” Leah explains. “I wasn’t mad that she spoofed her location. I loved her. If anything, it was good luck.”
The two have now been “together” for two and a half years, although they’ve seen each other only three times. I say “together” as Leah claims its semi-monogamous (whatever that means), and has been on the rocks for a while.
Leah heads to Iceland for a month this summer. “Its either gonna make us or break us,” she says. “The relationship just moved so fast, and I need to know if there is an end goal in sight.”
Coming into this project, I had my prejudices about online dating apps. Tinder, POF, Bumble… to me, the realm of online dating was nothing more than a clusterfuck of horny teenage boys fishing for girls who were looking for something real. Essentially, a game of cat and mouse. While there’s obviously a lot of that going on, there’s more to it.
The realm of online dating — though it has its segments of lonely and lustful users — is filled with unique people and all their complexities. The world has changed. Today, more than 40 percent of U.S couples meet online, over five million messages are sent every day on Tinder, and online dating is responsible for 17 percent of U.S marriages. The world of online dating is only going to grow. But has it made dating better?
While the notion of hooking up at a bar has its stigma, who’s to say online dating isn’t worse? The use of sorting algorithms, seeing multiple photos, and matching people with like-minded suitors is supposed to allow people to know more about each other sooner. But with the ability to copy and paste the same pick-up line to hundreds of girls, select only the best photos of yourself, and judge people within seconds of seeing them; online dating can do the opposite.
Perhaps there’s an underlying reason, or I’m just a hopeless romantic who wants a cute story, but the thought of meeting someone online does not appeal to me. In a life already so overrun by data measurements and algorithms, love may be the one thing that isn’t quantifiable.
Although the sayings “opposites attract” and “two birds of a feather flock together” are both true, it only goes to show how relationships can be and are extremely different. While these dating apps can provide a sea of similar (or different) potential suitors, there will always be some innate, unquantifiable reason as to why it may or may not work out.
To those of you like me, as we tirelessly wait to meet the “one,” I leave you with a line from my favorite Michael Bublé song that always seems to get me through…
“I just haven’t met you yet.”
