Tinderview #7 — Rafael
Rafael, 42, is a victim of racial profiling at airports.
Rafael walked right by me as he entered the coffee shop. I thought it was him when he walked in, but didn’t want to be the guy who calls out someone’s name, only for them to look at you like you’re an idiot. We exchanged glances as he walked by and he didn’t say anything, making me second guess myself.
As he left my line-of-sight, I sent him a message on Tinder to let him know where I was sitting.
He circled back around and we exchanged greetings.
One of the big things that drew me to Rafael was his age. At 42, he was older than the typical Tinder demographic. I looked at Tinder as an app for men and women in their mid-20’s so I wondered what he was able to discover, being older than most on the app.
Recorder on.
He started by telling me that he’s been on Tinder for two years.
“I originally resisted, but I ended up going to a conference and everyone was talking about their Tinder profile,” he said. “I guess I joined out of peer pressure.”
He told me that the people at the conference were around his age. “At the time, I was living in New York. In New York, there are a lot of people in their 40’s on the app.”
Like others before him, Rafael reiterated to me that Tinder is more of a serious dating app in the gay community. He told me that dating in New York can be tough and that he was hoping Tinder would lead to more dating opportunities. “You would think that the large pool would work for you, but it can actually work against you sometimes,” he said.
Unfortunately, Rafael hasn’t had much success on the app in terms of dating.
“I’ve been on maybe five dates in the two years. And most of them have not been good.”
Rafael told me that he gets a lot of matches because he does a lot of right swiping, but it just hasn’t translated to many dates. When I asked why he thought that was, he said, “most people just don’t respond after a match.”
I’ve noticed the same thing when it comes to my matches. At the time of this writing, I have 168 matches on the app. If I had to guess, I’d say that 20 of them responded to my initial message. I just spent one minute swiping and picked up another five matches. I’ll be lucky if one of them responds to my initial message, asking to set up an interview.
“I have found that many people, especially younger people, don’t even count it as a form of communication,” said Rafael. “It can be very disrespectful. I feel like there’s no common courtesy. Since it’s so impersonal, it makes it easy for people to discard you.”
All of this led to an interesting discussion about Tinder analytics.
I wondered why Tinder doesn’t keep track of those who don’t send messages and potentially kick them off the app. Rafael believes that they won’t do it because that’s kicking off potential income, which makes sense. But even if Tinder doesn’t weed them out and make their profile inactive, why not give other users the option to see stats?
Rafael told me that an app called Scruff allows you to see the stats on a profile and, through research, I learned that Bumble causes matches to disappear if they don’t respond in 24 hours. Why Tinder hasn’t adopted a similar plan is a bit confusing to me.
It might be more time-consuming to click on a profile and see how often they respond to their matches, but in the long run, it would save users a bit of anxiety. If I were using the app for dating purposes, I would be more hopeful when getting a match. If I don’t hear from that match within a day or so, I would start to worry that my opening message sucked or that she disappeared and I need to call the cops. If I could see that she has 100 matches and has only messaged two of them, I would be less concerned and quicker to move on.
Stats would help eliminate something I’m going to call “hopeful headaches,” which are the headaches attached to being hopeful that you’ll get a response from a match.
Tinder does offer a Tinder Plus feature, which allows you to see who has already liked you, boosts your profile, gives you unlimited swipes, and more. But as Rafael said, “I think it would be more interesting if they give you stats. What’s the use in buying Tinder Plus if people still don’t respond to you?”
We talked about other improvements Tinder could make, which mainly amounted to us agreeing that the notification system can be improved. Before the latest update, sometimes I would get a notification, but when I opened the app, there was no message. This led to me having to remember who sent the notification and then message them saying, “I got a notification saying you sent me a message, but the message isn’t showing up.” Since the last update, my notifications have stopped entirely, forcing me to check the app more regularly.
Rafael ended our Tinder discussion by saying that he did meet a gentlemen who he went on a few dates with, but it fizzled out because of the amount of travel he does.
“A lot of people are turned off by my profile, saying, ‘how can you have a relationship when you travel so much?’ I tell them that I would stay in town more if I had a reason. I have a lot of opportunities to travel and I like to take advantage of them.”
I asked about his job and how he’s able to travel so much. He told me that he owns his own consultancy that specializes in brand management for international travel brands. He’s also a writer with his own column in a gay luxury/lifestyle magazine in Europe.
“I talk to the readers about the perks of having a travel concierge. I started a new brand with the editor of the magazine. It’s a dedicated concierge service to the readers. I address a lot of different issues and talk about the added value of having a travel concierge.”
Rafael explained to me that part of his job was to visit different hotels and tours to figure out how they can promote those things. He said that he’s been working with a National Tourism Organization on community tours.
“It’s where you engage local communities with a large portion of the revenue going back into the community. So, you’ll do things like learn how to make sticky rice, where you’ll go to a village, hang out with a family, and they’ll teach you how to make sticky rice. And the money goes to them. Or you learn the importance of an ox cart. I love the idea, but not everything is going to appeal to everyone.
I found another one where you visit a silk factory and then shop afterwards or you go to an art gallery and engage with local artists.”
I asked Rafael about traveling so much, wondering if he found it to be a hassle. He admitted that traveling is a hassle, but for him, it goes beyond what most of us have to deal with.
“The worst part is the airport. Since I have a beard, I get profiled a lot.”
This was surprising to me. He didn’t look like someone who I imagine gets profiled, but I guess it shows that if you’re brown and bearded, that’s the only look you need. I wondered if it was just the American airports that profiled Rafael, but he said that it’s everywhere.
“Everywhere I go, they think I’m from a different place. I flew in from Paris to London after a bomb had gone off in a tube and they all thought that I was a French Arab in London. In Paris, they think I’m Spanish or North African. If they think I’m North African, they pull me to the side. If I’m in the Middle East, I get the opposite. The problem they have there is that local people try to bring in things that they shouldn’t. There’s a lot of medication that is over the counter for us, which locals try to sneak in. They didn’t believe me that I wasn’t Emirate. They kept speaking to me in Arabic and they searched me. I went to Turkey and people are curious because I look Turkish, but I dress different. So they want to know why my English accent is so good. They think that I’m Turkish German, that I grew up in Germany, but I was a sell out because I didn’t know my Turkish culture.”
I wondered if he ever got used to constantly being “randomly” searched or questioned at airports. He told me that the most frustrating part is that they always go through his suitcase.
“I don’t lock it anymore. I bought an expensive set of Tumi luggage with the TSA lock. And they break it. They say it’s random, but it’s not. I used to work with an airline. The airline personnel pick people. It’s not an algorithm like they say on the news. That’s why they write something on your ticket when they print it out. Certain letters or symbols that change every day.”
He told me the story of when he was flying to Zurich from New York with his friend, who is white. “He was in front of me, then me, then two ladies who were from Africa,” he said. “They let him go through and then they searched me and the two ladies.”
Rafael felt almost resigned to the fact that he knows he’s going to get stopped at every airport he goes to. I felt bad that anyone has to go through this, but especially someone who travels as much as he does.
“I just go to the airport early,” he said. “I get the extra searches and I just have to figure it into my time.”
I asked Rafael what his life was like growing up and from his answer, it was obvious why he got into the travel business.
“I grew up on the border of Texas, where Trump wants to build a wall. My family moved here when I was 13 and I hated it. Two years later, I lived in Brazil as an exchange student.”
He continued by saying that every time he came back to America, he was almost immediately ready to leave. I wondered if he would stay in America if it weren’t for his parents and he quickly said no.
“I’ve been slowly brainwashing my parents to move.”
He said he’s been helping his parents look at places in Mexico to give them “more bang for their buck.” I started to think that Rafael just wanted out of America and was willing to move at all costs, but he said that he loves New York, he’s just looking for other investments because New York is so expensive.
This led me to ask him about the DACA situation and Donald Trump working to rescind the policy. He said he has mixed feelings because of the animosity towards immigrants prevalent in the town where he grew up. “I’m pro-immigrant, but I understand that there are laws.
At the end of the day, it is very racist. I was watching Kelly & Ryan this morning and a white Canadian actor was talking about how he worked under the table. Nobody would tell him anything. Statistics show that it’s the Canadians and Western Europeans coming in and taking the white collar jobs. But they don’t call Canadians that are here illegally an ‘illegal alien.’ They reserve that for the brown people.”
We ended by chatting for a bit about racist cops, the work ethic of millennials, respecting the time and situations of others, and working from home. Maybe I’ll create a spin off called Tinderview Leftovers with those conversations.
I left the store feeling good about our conversation. The Tinder Analytics discussion was fun, but hearing how he was constantly targeted at airports angered me.I have read plenty of stories about racial profiling at airports, but to hear first hand accounts really makes you take notice of what people go through.
I wish Rafael luck on his upcoming travels.
