Tinderview #9 — Amanda

Amanda, 23, has encountered real life ghosts.

I was immediately attracted to Amanda’s profile. Instead of being straight forward and buttoned up like the majority of profiles that I’ve had the pleasure of talking to, hers was weird, confusing, and funny all at the same time. I wasn’t quite sure who I was about to talk to, but I knew she would be interesting.

She walked right past me after entering the coffee shop. I called her name to get her attention and let her know where I was sitting, but she blew me off with a quick “wait” without looking in my direction. She sounded tired and angry.

“This isn’t going to go well,” I thought to myself.

After grabbing a drink of water, she circled back to where I was sitting and introduced herself. She apologized for walking right by me, saying she was desperate to wet her mouth.

Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad.

Recorder on.

Amanda started by telling me that she joined Tinder 2–3 years ago, but ended up in a long term relationship shortly after signing up. She recently returned to the app about four months ago. She was initially looking for any type of relationship, whether it was something more serious or just friendship. But now she uses the app for “companionship and entertainment.”

She sounded frustrated as she told me that she gets ghosted quite often from people on the app. She said that she’s hung out with plenty of people off the app, but that they’ll stop responding to her texts after a hangout session or two. She told me about one person who she exchanged Steam and Discord information with, who she knows was online based on his profile, but who still ignored her texts.

“It really sucks,” said Amanda. “It makes you question yourself like, ‘what did I do?’ But the thing that keeps me sane is that, it’s probably them.”

We discussed whether or not people are maybe afraid of being in a serious relationship through Tinder because so many people are still apprehensive about saying that they’ve met their significant other through a dating app, especially Tinder. I told her that I didn’t see the big deal, saying that I met my wife through Match. She thought that was cool and said she met her longterm boyfriend through “an ideal mate thread online where you post your stats, have a bio and draw like a little doodle of yourself.”

This took us back into the topic of ghosting and how, while it’s easier to meet people nowadays through dating apps, it’s also easier to reject people. If you want to stop talking to someone without a reason or explanation, instead of facing them, all you have to do is press a button. Or, in the case of ghosting, withholding the press a button.

I asked if she’s been on any interesting dates. Women typically have more first dates than men through online dating, so I wasn’t surprised to hear that Amanda had a couple of fun Tinder dating stories.

“I went kayaking with one guy. First time I met him. As soon as we got out there, he starts talking about some really morbid stuff. He told me how like he was afraid of water because someone close to him had committed suicide by walking into a lake. RIGHT WHEN WE’RE IN THE MIDDLE OF A LAKE!” she exclaimed with a laugh.

“Another time, some rapper was playing and I got in there for free because the guy I was with happened to know him. (The guy) worked at a sneaker store and the rapper was there three or four days prior buying sneakers.”

She recalled that the rapper was Joey Bada$$, which made me a little jealous.

And, while she didn’t meet him, Amanda did inform me that she right-swiped on a Richard Spencer profile. “I right-swipe on interesting people. I didn’t know who he was. He just seemed interesting,” she said. For those that don’t know, Spencer is a white supremacist who probably left swiped on Amanda.

I told her that having an interesting profile was one of the things that drew me to her. She thanked me and said that she put “little dog whistles” in her profile to attract people that she may like. Something like that made me appreciate her profile more because it shows a level of thought and creativity that most on Tinder don’t have when creating their profile.

In wrapping up the Tinder portion, Amanda reiterated that she enjoys the app because of all the interesting people and how she becomes a part of their life.

“Regardless of how short I’m intersecting at that person’s life, I still get to see a slice of their life.”

Then she told me the tale of Mr. Surprise.

“There was this guy that ghosted me. A week later, he messages me and is like, ‘come over.’ I told him no. ‘One, you ghosted me. Two, you know I have two jobs. You think I have free time to just pop over there? You’re an hour away. No.’ That conversation repeated for five days.

Eventually, he would say really weird stuff like, ‘come over. I have a surprise for you.’ I remember thinking, ‘that’s really creepy.’ Then he started asking if I’ve been seeing or talking to other guys. It was very intense and stupid and I could tell that he just wanted me to come over for his ego. Then, at the end, he insulted me.”

Form an orderly line, ladies.

I thought I was only getting a story about someone interesting, but Amanda had more and I was all ears.

“I was hanging out with my co-workers and I didn’t want to drive home because we had been smoking and stuff, but I didn’t want to stay there, so we just got on Tinder. Someone sent me a message asking to hang out and I agreed, but told them that I needed to stay the night (at their place). We started doing the ‘Tinder Tango’ but he was having hardware issues. I asked him ‘what’s up?’ and he told me that his girlfriend cheated on him a month ago. I was like, damn, for that to affect him enough to not be able to have sex with a stranger. That’s not good. So I asked, ‘Hey, wanna go smoke some pot and feel better?’ But I didn’t ask him if he smoked a lot. He had just taken a puff and for a second he was good, but then he said he didn’t feel good. It reminded me of that scene from Split where he’s like huffing and turning into craziness.”

In the middle of telling this story, Amanda recalled another story from the app and immediately went into it.

“Me and my co-worker are on Tinder together so we like, gossip and stuff about it. One day, I showed her this profile and she immediately screamed because she had made a date with him the following night.”

I asked how that turned out and Amanda said that the guy turned out to be too much of a narcissist. “He was telling stories about how he was in boarding school and there was this girl who liked him so much that she was cutting herself and had to be admitted.

He would just tell me about all his Tinder dates. He said he met like three or four girls off Tinder and they were just super boring or way too hairy. I was like, ‘I’m in the car with you right now, why can’t we have a conversation about things that are not your previous experiences with other people?’”

Rule number one of Tinder dating: Don’t talk about your other Tinder dates.

The good news for Amanda’s co-worker is that the guy canceled their scheduled date. Although, maybe that’s bad news. It would have been fun to hear about the guy talking about his date with Amanda to her co-worker without knowing the two are friends.

Like previous Tinderviewee Bexley, Amanda takes screen shots of profiles. Here are a few that she sent me:

As Amanda tried to think of more stories, I steered the conversation towards learning more about her. While telling one story, she mentioned that she was an esthetician. I didn’t know what that was. “Not a lot people do by that name,” she said with a laugh. “I do waxing, skin care, and make-up.”

I wondered if it’s weird to wax the genitals of others. She told me that the first time she learned how to do a Brazilian was in a class. “It was at like 8:45 in the morning. I walked into the room and everyone is already on the table and spreading things apart to get waxed. After that initial five minutes, at 8:45 on some September morning, I’m so used to it.”

She went on to say that in her line of work, you start to realize how much people hate themselves. She talked about people wanting this removed and that covered up and this turned into how even brides, on the day of their wedding, just wanted to change everything about themselves.

I speculated that it could be more about image standards portrayed in America, but Amanda seemed sure that it had more to do with a lack of confidence, at least in certain cases. “You can just tell. Some, maybe it’s for the image, but others I’m like, ‘I hope they feel ok because I did their service today.’ I don’t like enabling that service that makes them feel ok, but I hope they feel ok.”

I figured she had more stories about interesting clients, but didn’t press the issue too much as I wasn’t sure how much she could say. Amanda ensured me that she’s not HIPAA and that things were fine as long as she doesn’t use names. She told me about one client who has a brain tumor.

“The first time I saw her, she had huge self harm scars on her arm. Four months later, I found out she had a brain tumor and that she had done that to herself because the tumor causes her temper to get really bad, to the point where she would do something like that.”

Being diagnosed with depression, I understood how your brain can basically tell you, “Things are great. Let’s make them shitty now” without a reason. The good news for this lady is that she’s with someone who understands her condition and has gone out of his way to support her and help her make the rest of her life.

To remain on a morbid topic, I asked Amanda about her car accident. She told me that she dozed off and flipped her car. The accident occurred around 10 AM. Working two jobs, Amanda drives roughly 1,000 miles a week. I wondered if she had gotten enough sleep and she said she did. “My theory is that I was just super bored and I overcorrected,” she said.

The accident left Amanda with a broken left leg and a torn ACL, PCL, and LCL in her right leg.

To make matters worse for her; while she was on bed rest, her boyfriend of two years broke up with her.

“At first, I thought he ended the relationship because he didn’t want to deal with who she was going to become once she got healthy. I thought he was realizing that his life was going to change and that he wasn’t ready to take care of someone who may have trouble walking or moving for long stretches of time.” While I respected that he knew he wasn’t ready for something like that, I also thought he was an asshole for not waiting until she was at least off bed-rest.

But then, Amanda cleared up the situation for me.

“His whole thing was, he wants me to improve myself.” Amanda referenced that the ex-boyfriend, who lives in England, wants her to stop vaping, smoking, and slow down with work. She visited him days before her accident and that’s when he found that she had been lying to him for six months about vaping. “I told him I quit, which I did for a little bit, but I picked it back up and didn’t say anything about it. He ended up finding out, not from my mouth, but from an empty vape bottle.”

She said that she carried a huge amount of guilt and that she was “happy he broke up with me over it because he’s not someone who is going to put up with my shit because he thinks I’m cute.”

After hearing his reasoning, I understood things better. Him breaking up with her had less to do with her potential future dealing with chronic pain and more to do with her lying and how she was living her life prior to the accident.

She went on to say, “If I make improvements in my life, quit vaping and did less pot, I could probably get back with him. But I’m stubborn when people tell me to do something because they think it’s good for me. I need to realize it’s good for me and acknowledge it.”

Even though I’m sure we could have talked for at least another hour, we ended our conversation there.

With the recorder off, I told her that I was ready to hate this interview after she walked in and blew past me, but that I’m glad my first impression was 100 percent wrong. Throughout our interview, I found that we had similar personalities and that we could probably be good friends until I decide to ghost her.