So, why Tinder? As I had mentioned, a friend told me about Tinder. She said a friend of hers had used it in New York and met a very nice man that she had been dating for a few months. I did my research and read the reviews. As with anything, there were positive and negative opinions. Which do you want to hear first?
Okay, let’s do negatives (at least, negatives for me) first because we know already by the foreshadowing that this story has a happy ending. Technically it would be a “happy present” as the story is still continuing. Anyway, I digress. One of the negatives for me was that Tinder really was set up to be a hook up site. I wondered if all guys on it would just be looking for a booty call? Another negative for me was that it was a phone app so I worried if it was safe. Would weirdos be able to have my phone number?
On the positive side, it was free when I signed up. I hear they now charge a fee if you want unlimited “likes” or swipes. Another positive was that it was always available since it was on my phone. I could check my phone to see if anyone new had “liked” me or if there was anyone new that I didn’t see when I checked just 30 minutes before! It was like speed dating on my phone, whenever I wanted! Another positive was that it was really easy to set up. You sign up, set up a few parameters such as gender preference, age range, and maximum distance (it had a 90 mile radius limit when I signed up).
You had to be decisive when playing, or searching. You were not allowed to pass and come back to someone later. It was either yes or no, swipe left or right. You couldn’t see the next person until you made a decision on the one that popped up. You can get into the rhythm of swiping pretty fast but that is when mistakes can happen. There were a couple “oops” where I accidentally swiped the wrong way, approving of someone I didn’t really mean to or discarding someone who might have had potential. That’s when I decided to stop swiping and start clicking the “heart” or the “X”.
The biggest plus for me was that no one could contact me unless there was a mutual “like” by both parties. This made me so happy! No emails from people two decades outside my desired age range. Now, that did not mean you couldn’t be catfished by someone who posts fake pics and stats. Usually you can figure it out once you start a dialogue. I’ll tell you about my catfish experience in a future post.
I developed my own grading system for trying to sort through the potentials in hopes of avoiding wasting any time. For example, it was an automatic “X” if the pics were all blurry or from 100 yards away. That made me wonder what they were hiding. “X” if there were multiple people in all the pics – which one am I talking to? “X” if the profile pic was a cartoon character or sports logo. That made me think that either they were ashamed of what they looked like or they were obsessed with what they were using as their profile pic. “X” if the pics were obviously old looking at things such as clothing and hairstyles which were out of date, furniture, carpet, or TVs in the pics were dated, etc. I called those types of pic the “10 years and 20 pounds ago” pics. It was not an automatic “X” for pics with exotic animals, caught fish, shot deer, etc unless that was the theme in every pic. These were similar issues that occurred with e-harmony and match.com but the difference was that with Tinder I had more control over who could message me and there were no time-wasting questionnaires!!! Just like the fairy tales, one must sort through a lot of frogs to find a prince. Stay tuned for the “ribbiting” details. (Cue frog noises)
Finding French Charming 