Tinder. It has the infamous reputation for late night hook ups and the new place to find casual sex, with the few souls genuinely looking for a swipe into a real relationship. I’ve yet to hear someone tell me “we met on Tinder” without a look of pleased shame, promptly before never mentioning said person ever again.
To say I was interested in the legendary app was well,
wrong. I found it repulsive, judging on what someone could hastily write in a
bio coupled with a few chosen Facebook photos didn’t appeal me. I’d rather bump
into someone that would lead to coffee, or a cheeky smile leading to a
dangerous number of drinks and a lot of laughing. Romcom at heart? Maybe.
Naïve? I don’t think so. My lack of participate in dating apps wasn’t stopping
me from meeting guys, but rather not having a buffet of options to sieve
through one afternoon. It seemed tempting however, to experiment with an
app I’d swore never to install. Would I corrupt myself? Could this lead to a
swiping left addiction? God, would I go back to Scotland with Tinder happily
installed in my phone, leading to men around me popping up from my school days,
a barrage of poorly constructed pick up lines and a puke-inducing number of
winky faces? The thought made me shudder in the English heat.
I found myself pressing on the GET button in the app store
as I shuttled back to my flat, after a bottle and a half of wine consumed and
an evening in a 1920’s French restaurant, with my best friend cackling
encouragement in to my ear. She chose my photos with meticulous care as I created
the bio. I simply wrote “24 hours on London’s Tinder. Tell me a story or secret
you can’t tell anyone else” and started to swipe. And swipe. Aaaaaand swipe.
Every other moment my phone would let out a delighted beep
to let me know I had a match with someone I’d only swiped a few minutes before.
It seemed as far forward London was with dating apps, there were still a few
active members on Tinder. The response was overwhelming and sickeningly
pleasing. I ended up getting a few interesting stories between the cheesy pick
up lines, stale hellos and sexually loaded queries of WHY I would want a story
from them *wink wink nudge nudge*.
First was St Clair*, a French graduate who had come to
London looking for adventure and ended up falling for his co worker. His taken co worker. As he told me how much
he was hurting and how beautiful this girl was, I felt overwhelming relief that
someone wasn’t coming on to me for once. I was getting somewhere with my search
for secret stories. He stuttered slightly with English but the intense love was
definitely French. The story was brutal, beautiful and something I hadn’t
expected to get. He was utterly in love and keen to spill.
“Does she know?” I dared to ask.
“She’s kissed me” he replied sadly.
I spent the next
hour stammering out replies to other responses as I took part in an Agony Aunt
Hour for poor St Clair, working through the its and buts of his complicated
situation. She was in a relationship with another co-worker and had made no
indication to leaving him for our French lover, but had kissed him in an office
party a few weeks ago. Drunken mistake? For sure. Slightly 500 Days of Summer?
Completely. St Clair was in the first
100 days or so of his Summer experience.
Next was Sam*, a Pete
Doherty claiming lookalike with an obvious cigarette addiction and a cheeky
smile. His open message was funny enough to make me smile and his replies were
even better.
“What makes a good story?” he’d asked after a while.
“Something that contains strong emotion,” I told him.
“Why do I feel like you’re part of a story and not the
listener?”
“Who says I’ve not got stories of my own?” I quirked back.
“Alright. So let me be the listener for you. Fuck my
stories, they aren’t as interesting as a girl giving herself a Tinder time
limit.”
I grinned, “that
isn’t what I’m requesting here Sam.”
“I know.” He replied easily. “But let’s trade.”
And with that, we
traded stories like they were Pokemon cards, warily at first until he was
confession to drinking more than he was earning and I was sighing over life
complications. London may be a big city with seeming endless
possibilities, but Sam was feeling the pinch of Rich Versus Poor having to
cater for large-scale celebrity events and never receiving a grateful thanks.
The first few times were excusable, but after the thirtieth celeb bash, he was
feeling himself fraying.
“It’s like they
can’t see me,” he moaned. “I’m a f*cking human being, be polite to me, be
decent for f*ck sake.”
Rich didn’t buy
manners and in the public sphere of waiting, a kind word or a warm smile can
make the next 4 hours of a shift be eased more than a quick drink of something
strong.
“I’m as disposable
as their bloody napkins” he commented forlornly. “It feels so pathetic.”
And it was here it hit me how much pressure London presses down on the struggling and the unsure. Connections help make the successful and without them, one can feel like they’re drowning in missed opportunities. Sam came here for his music, something that was an art to him. The closest he’s gotten to showing his creativity is making paper swans out of napkins, only for them to be destroyed a few moments later by a drunken celebrity.
We ended on a sombre note as my Tinder time limit came to an
end, and it felt like losing a friend. I had spent on and off 24 hours
experiencing London’s Tinder and my agony aunt session was done. I had been a
blank page in a diary people could scribble on if they were so willing, and
after too many advances and too little tales of happiness I uninstalled the app
with a sigh of relief.
People hold a lot of secrets and a lot of worry; very few were ready to open up but once they did, it was like letting water run out of a dam. We all have things we don’t want to share with those we’re close to for variety of reasons; be it fear, embarrassment or the inability to vocalise how much we may have mucked up. Men held more secrets and emotions than one could perceive them to, and I have a notion that even in London, the idea of masculinity is still fragile and prominent than ever. Feeling an ease with your fashion choices doesn’t really mean emotions are ready to be bared for those to see.
People hold a lot of secrets and a lot of worry; very few were ready to open up but once they did, it was like letting water run out of a dam. We all have things we don’t want to share with those we’re close to for variety of reasons; be it fear, embarrassment or the inability to vocalise how much we may have mucked up. Men held more secrets and emotions than one could perceive them to, and I have a notion that even in London, the idea of masculinity is still fragile and prominent than ever. Feeling an ease with your fashion choices doesn’t really mean emotions are ready to be bared for those to see.
Lou x