TN2 March 19/20

What it’s like to meet your boyfriend on Tinder WORDS BY Charlotte Dunne “Ah, yeah, no, so we met in a club.”

“Was it love at first sight? Did your eyes lock across the room?”

“I mean no, not really, or maybe, I guess…”

“And so, you danced and then found somewhere quiet to chat? Did your two groups of friends get to know each other?”

Little does my granny know it was more love at first swipe than love at first sight. Also, given the deluge of men my lonely drunken self waded through during a couple of nights of Freshers’ Week this year, it was barely even that. I think my family must have some idea that I’m lying to them. Or maybe, they don’t understand how hard it is to meet someone in real life when you’d rather spend your evenings Netflixing in bed with a nice cup of tea than pounding it up in the club (yes - the choice of phrasing here should make it clear that I’m not hip). Arguably, the club is the only place where people under the age of 25 engage in active flirting anymore. I know I certainly wouldn’t feel comfortable wandering up to someone on the street, or across the Arts Block concourse, and only in the pub after I’d had enough drinks to ensure that they wouldn’t understand what I was saying anyway. Plus, after too much drama in my course last year, I decided I really needed to steer clear of anything with anyone who I might have to awkwardly encounter week after week in tutorials. (To the professor who gave us our welcome lecture in first year: you were right, tutorial groups CAN suddenly feel very small when you’ve done something you shouldn’t.)

I decided that the only way I was going to meet someone beyond my circle of friends was through Tinder. I’d been put off the app until a few months ago by the knowledge that, should my family know what I was up to, they’d worry. They live overseas, and perceive Dublin (or of any city which they cannot reach by car or train in two hours) as seamy and potentially harmful to their pride and joy. I infer this from my aforementioned granny giving me an alarm for attacks and made me promise to abstain from all quote unquote ‘casual sex’ whilst abroad.

You now understand why I think they know I’m lying. Clearly, my family has a decent understanding of the attention most young women might be exposed to, and the idea of casual dating. Young women such as myself, are catcalled or eyed up and down every day - an issue facing many of us which I believe deserves more attention, and I think that most of us can remember a time when we’ve been touched up in some way at a club. Anyway, all these experiences, and the encouragement of a friend who’d met her partner on Tinder, made me think that perhaps Tinder wouldn’t be such a bad idea – I mean, how much worse could it really be? My family associates Tinder with a casual hook-up culture. They’re not against technology generally, and my mum has, in her time, used her fair share of online dating sites. Their main concern is my vulnerability. It turns out, their fears were not entirely misguided. Despite producing what I consider a wholesome profile, I awoke the morning after my first swipe session to maybe 20 messages from men looking for sex. Some were easy to spot from a mile off, the undesired: “If you were a bike, I’d ride you,” was a dead giveaway. Others took longer to get to the bottom line; after initially agreeing to meet me for coffee, one man told me that actually, he was only ever free in the evening, but “don’t worry, I’ll buy you wine to make up for it.”