A week in the life of a Tinder user

The little ding caused my heart to skip a beat. I tried throwing my iPod across the room, hoping to escape the sound. What makes this sound so scary? Am I in the middle of a zombie apocalypse trying to stay alive?

Nope, I have a profile on Tinder, and that dinging sound, is the sound of someone clicking the little heart button that says, “Hey, I think you’re cute. Let’s talk.”

Tinder, otherwise known as the college “dating app” allows you to browse through potential mates’ profiles, set to your age and sexual orientation preferences. With a variety of button options, you can either go back to, like, super like, or say no to each person’s profile.

I was actually pretty skeptical of this experiment, but decided to give it a try, because why not. With the subject of dating as my beat here at the Statesman, I figured it was time to immerse myself in college culture, and …dating (cue scary music). Within the first day, I had oh, maybe five matches. I was kind of busy, and didn’t have much time to “scroll” through a bunch of profiles looking for someone I might actually like.

By the second day, I had over twenty matches, and out of those twenty, only about eight had messaged me. That night, I also had a date set for the next day. I had slight anxiety over the whole thing. I haven’t dated in quite a while. I’ve had some experiences that have hindered my dating experience, and I could barely think that I would be going on a date with someone I barely knew so soon after meeting him. Luckily I calmed down a little bit after we started texting. He was a really friendly guy, which made meeting up with him for the date a lot easier than I had originally thought it would be.

We enjoyed a lovely early evening dinner, and seemed to have quite a bit more in common than I thought. My journal entry that night read, “Went on a nice date with a really fun guy. _________ (insert name here) was really friendly, and made it clear that he wanted to be friends with me, and maybe go on a second date with me if I felt that would be appropriate. Conversation flowed really well, we brought up our families, and where we fit, and why we chose to come to Utah State. We even made a common connection of my best friend, who is currently serving in the same mission that he (my date) served in. We also discovered we are in one of the same classes, and decided to make a study group for our tests. What a great date. Smiles all around.”

But seriously though. That date was probably one of the best dates I have had in a while, considering it was my second one in three months. The next couple days were rather uneventful in the world of Tinder. I guess guys actually are “going on adventures,” which is a common interest stated in their profiles, instead of just posting, looking for a girl to go on an adventure with, and not actually taking initiative for that adventure to actually happen.  

I matched with another person who made the connection with me from his mission, because he served in the same area my relatives live in. We talked for a while, and our conversation seemed to be going well. This happened around the same time I made four other matches.

After the initial hellos, my ipod had a silent lull to it for a good two days. I see several messages pop up, with several different names, day after day. Most are the same guys that messaged me the day before, and the day before that, and the day before that. I’ve still only gone on one date, after a week and five days. There hardly seems to be any implication at all that anything will progress any further than simply messaging. And I’m actually kind of okay with that.

This leads me to wonder. Why is it that people choose to have Tinder, when nothing ever really happens?

— kortni.marie.wells@aggiemail.usu.edu