Tinder Social: or, The Downside to Having Hot Friends
I’ve discussed this before: I’m not bad-looking. Previously, I’ve conceptualized this as a ‘Survivor Hamburger’ situation, but maybe it’s better summarized in gifs from Broad City (as is literally everything about being in your 20s in New York):
I’m cute, but… you get it. Meanwhile, I have legitimately hot friends. The kind of hot where you can be mean to dudes in bars and they ask for your number, instead of calling you an angry lesbian and storming off. Or yelling that you voted for Trump and storming off. I piss off Democrats and Republicans alike! (Sometimes, it’s even an accident.)
Often, my hot, well-meaning friends (or even normal-looking friends who have been in relationships for 400 years, which is almost worse) will try to give me advice that just ain’t gonna work. Tinder Social is one of those things.
What happens on Tinder Social (in my experience, with straight people, your mileage may vary, etc etc etc) is this: two groups of people match. The hottest guy, who has never experienced real life because he is a hot man in America (#yesallmen) (damn, this got political) will either implicitly or explicitly call ‘dibs’ on the hottest girl.
- Explicitly looks like this: a message reading ‘Dibs on ___!’ (which, gross).
- Implicitly looks like simply sending a message that only engages one member of the party (in a group message. C’mon, bro).
At a speed that scientists are currently studying because it breaks the laws of physics, the rest of the pairings shake out until eventually, there is one girl left. This is not a complicated feeling to empathize with: think ‘picking teams for dodgeball’. There’s a last pick. You are aware that they are being picked last. They are aware that they are being picked last. They are not, at that point, jazzed to get out there and dodge some balls. They would like to go enjoy another activity, which, given that they were picked last, is probably solitary and sedentary, like reading or model trains.
Tinder Social makes me want to take up model trains. Or just continue doing single-girl activities forever, like being aggressive about my career and scrolling though my Instagram Explore page. That’s why there was a point where I started flat-out refusing to do Tinder Social — it really wasn’t worth how it made me feel.
Sure, this is life, and if you go out to a bar there’s just as much of a possibility that everyone will pair off until it seems like two people are ‘left’ for each other regardless of their actual compatibility — but the online component of Tinder Social makes the process much faster, less subtle and definitely less fun.
That’s why I’m getting uglier friends.
Week Seven continues…
