Tinder is a Tool of Misery Buddhism and Big Mouth on Pandemic

tinder is a tool of misery

BY ROSE DIXON-CAMPBELL

When I imagine the apps on my phone as tangible real-life phenomena, dating apps always appear in my mind’s eye as the digital Wild West. I get more dick pics on Instagram (please stop) and more spammers and scammers in my emails and yet dating apps, specifically Tinder, seem like the final frontier for civility and etiquette. There is something animalistic and mindless about the endless swiping. After some time on that app, it comes to feel less like a social platform where you can interact with other humans in a very specific context, and more like a game wherein the pictures you see are merely avatars to be rated with either a × or a .

It was this mechanic which made Tinder so popular in the first place. You only know when someone likes you, not when they don’t. On Tinder you do not have to directly live through rejection as you would in real life, nor do you have to reject people to their faces and deal with their disappointment thereafter. The messiness of face to face interaction, the adrenaline, the awkwardness, and the giddy flirtation has all been sanitised in this swiping mechanic.

In this way dating apps have divorced us from the very basic and instinctual feeling of attraction. Tinder has distilled our biological impulses and desires into a swiping game within an app which is perfectly calibrated to maximise the misery of its users and thus the profits of its owners. On Tinder and other such dating apps you become alienated from that intuitive sense of connection you feel to someone who seems like a suitable mate.

While the majority of dating app users report that what they are most looking for is a longterm relationship, Tinder users specifically desire hookups and casual/short-term dating. The trend, therefore, is wanting an offline connection. The unfortunate reality of our wants in this case is that more than half of dating app users have not had a one night stand out of their swiping. Dating apps are increasingly being used for procrastination and confidence boosting.

The procrastination element is obvious: switch off your brain, tap through pictures and at the end make a simple yes/no choice with no immediate consequences. This ‘confidence boosting’ however requires some further examination, particularly in an article in which I am alleging widespread misery.

We have always known that it is validating anda boost to one’s self-esteem to go home with someone who you think is hot (“If I can get them to come to bed with me, I must be good looking myself”). Since Tinder shows you who has matched with you, theoretically who finds you attractive, you can bypass that pesky middle step of actually hooking up with the person, and skip right to the shallow self-validation we’re all secretly desperate for (“I’m hot enough that I could sleep with them if I wanted to”).

On its face this doesn’t seem too bad. We can all get a casual self-esteem boost without exposing ourselves to possible wounds to the ego or the anxiety of ordinary social interaction. However, building people’s confidence and boosting the self-esteem of users doesn’t pay the bills for millionaire dating app executives. They line their pockets with your misery and desperation. Why else would you pay for a subscription to Tinder Gold if you were not already insecure about the quantity/ quality of your matches? Why else would you pay to ‘boost’ your profile, or survey people who already ‘like’ you if you weren’t feeling some sort of desperation to meet people who can validate you?

The unfortunate reality is that paying your way in these primarily heterosexual dating apps will never overcome the massive gender imbalances which create toxic experiences for women and isolate men. In locations such as the UK, men outnumber women 9:1 on Tinder, and even apps preferred by female users (such as Bumble) can never attract a consistent 1:1 ratio of men to women. All online dating communities are a sausage fest wherein women are subjected to an inundation of messages, often sexual harassment. This is done on the basis of shallow and materialistic evaluations of their pictures only (male Tinder users report pictures as the most decisive feature of a profile, whereas female users prefer the biography section). Meanwhile, the majority of the male user base faces radio silence which drives desperate and miserable men to equally desperate and miserable conclusions about themselves, society, and their entitlement to women.

I’m not saying Tinder is the root of evil for all societal ills. Being rejected on Tinder is definitely not the only social failing which drives people to become incels and femcels - the digital space it has created for dating is not entirely new in Australia. In the early 19th century Australian women were outnumbered by men 2:1 in metropolitan areas and even more so out in the bush. As a result, they enjoyed their pick of the lot. They had ‘better’ marriage prospects than their British counterparts, got married younger and with more urgency.

The online dating space is not that comparable to colonial Australia, however, and we are certainly not seeing Tinder users being more likely to settle down in sustainable relationships. Maybe this is because men and women have greater prospects these days and thus don’t have to marry ASAP in order to be considered successful. Or maybe it’s because if you’re sad, single, and desperate for validation you’re more likely to pay for an app which was never designed to work for you.

What’s the alternative? Go outside. Touch grass. Breathe fresh air. Participate in life and meet people the old fashioned way. Yes, it’s scary but that’s what makes it worth it.