Swipe Right

I was most certainly not looking for a relationship when I downloaded Tinder. I was on it for whatever, with no objective outcome. At the time I downloaded it, I was in a long phase of not taking any pictures of myself. This wasn’t intentional, but simply because thinking of myself in that way had faded for a good year. Building my Tinder profile was actually quite a struggle. All I had were photos of places I’d been, my dog, or food. Every photo I did have of myself was old, back when my hair was short. Despite having no intentions on the app, I still wanted to portray myself nicely and accurately—because that’s all dating apps are based on: appearances. There is, in my opinion, no way to get past this. The first thing you see on Tinder are photos of that person—what gets you to scroll down. From there, adding a bio (+30% to your profile rating), disclosing if you drink or smoke weed (+5%), and stating what you're looking for (+5-10%) all help boost your profile in the algorithm. The more complete your profile, the more the app pushes you forward.

So, I started taking selfies, and suddenly every photo of myself seemed not good enough to be the first impression. In the end, two of my pictures didn’t even contain me at all. One was a book I was currently reading, and the other was a photo of my dog looking up at my camera with his white paws crossed. As mediocre as my profile was, it still managed to get me matches—many of which I let dissolve.

Forgetting that these profiles were real people, it all felt like a game. You get a deck of cards (profiles) that you swipe left or right on—left to reject, right to express interest. And when I finally got a match, this is when I left it to the men to start the conversation. This is where many lost me. It was where the guy I’d end up seeing lost me, at first.

The first message sent was always the make-or-break moment. I rejected and unmatched (conveniently, just a button away) with so many based on punctuation errors, being too ballsy, or attempting to make me laugh with a racial joke—usually by a white man whose first photo was either him posing with a dead fish or holding a Corona (neither being better than the other). One wrote me, “Are you Chinese? Because I’m China get into your pants tonight.” Strike one for being ballsy, strike two for the racial joke, and strike three for saying the quiet part out loud. For our generation, not only is the job market at its worst, but it seems the dating market is too.

There were a few I did respond to. It wasn’t because they were uniquely different, but simply that my jaw didn’t drop when reading their message and I didn’t go, “what the fuck.” To anyone reading this, take note: always, when it comes to dating apps (or anywhere, really), a simple “Hey” will be the safest way to initiate a conversation.

Of all my matches, five progressed far enough for me to meet them in real life. Two of them got the “Thanks for tonight/last night/last weekend, but…” message. One just dissolved. One was so awkward that we both silently knew we’d never see each other again. Again, I wasn’t looking for anything myself, but I wasn’t entirely closed off. I was whatever in this playing field. But even after my first four being unsuccessful, I started seeing the whole idea of dating as a pure joke. Everyone else afterward was just another.

––

The thing about Tinder is that it gets old fast. Every conversation feels like a script: where are you from, how’s the weather, what’s your dog’s name, what do you do, oh you’re an English major? Guess I better watch my grammar [nerdyglassesface, winkingface]! Each exchange followed the same tired formula—predictable, impersonal, almost robotic. One topic that never made it into any conversation was politics. You throw in politics, and well, in this country’s current climate, you are certainly setting yourself up to be unmatched.

So, who’s next on the roster? my friend texted me. No one, I responded. I had cleaned out my Tinder, meaning I unmatched with everyone who didn’t make a move and my past matches that fizzled out. It was refreshing to open the app to a cleaned-out space, similar to when you finally get around to cleaning your bedroom.

Tinder really was just a game to me at this point. I’d open it out of boredom, like as if it were Instagram. I was mostly swiping left because seeing random photos of people was amusing enough for me. I was in a quiet era until I had a message in my inbox.

––

After his horrible first message, the guy I’d end up seeing messaged me again two days later. It wasn’t better or worse than the first message. I won’t restate them for the sake of all of us, but interesting… and for sure different is what it was, but it was one where I broke into a character apart from who I really was and actually responded back. I expected nothing more after I sent my response. Trolling… was what I was doing, with no thought that it’d lead to me agreeing to see him.

––

Meeting someone for the first time after only talking online is always a little weird. It’s not scary exactly, but there are definitely nerves. Admittedly, before meeting with anyone, I do my stalking on them for safety reasons. As a woman who’s only 5 ft, I need to make sure this person is (a) real, (b) not a criminal, or (c) not a flat-out weirdo in some alarming way––separate from the way they Tinder talk.

What’s funny is how this kind of behavior—meeting a total stranger off the internet—directly contradicts what we were taught growing up. “Don’t talk to strangers online” used to be a hard rule. Now it’s basically how people meet their future partners. According to a 2021 study published in American Behavioral Scientist, online dating has become so normalized that over half of U.S. adults under 30 have used a dating app, and the stigma around meeting someone online has dramatically declined. At the same time, the study points out that safety concerns haven’t gone away, especially among women, who are still far more likely to approach these interactions cautiously. Makes sense; swiping right doesn’t mean letting your guard down. It just means deciding whether someone gets to exist beyond the screen.

Tinder, and online dating in general, has always felt like this symbolic but very real marker of a cultural shift, which honestly kind of amazes me. And somehow, treating Tinder more like something to observe than fully participate in made the whole thing more tolerable. Almost like I was studying it. That mindset made it more interesting, if anything.

––

The first time this guy and I met each other was when I opened the passenger door to his car—right after being on the phone with him, trying to explain the confusing layout of my dorm building so he could find me.

“We gotta go to Target to grab snacks,” was what he told me after officially saying hello to each other. Alright, I thought. Whatever. Small talk occurred, and the more he spoke, the more appalled I was at how normal he actually was––how comfortable his demeanor made me feel. So different from the first two messages he reached out to me with.

I followed him around Target, and I admit, he was trying his best to get to know me. He had a very gentle energy to him and was kind. And what was I? A brick wall. I’m not sure why, but I was feeling extremely shy, more than usual. He pointed to many snacks, many of which I said I didn’t like. “I thought you were food motivated,” he confronted me. True, I had that written on my bio.

“I’m meal motivated,” I clarified, “not a snacker.”

“You gotta update that then.”

“Yeah, I do.”

––

Two days later, I was eating by myself downtown at Miss Saigon.

I spent the night at his that day. He then dropped me off back at my dorm early the next morning, to which I awkwardly and quickly said thank-you-bye, closed his car door, then rushed to my morning shift I had (I’m terrible at goodbyes).

We hadn’t exchanged any text messages after that, which perhaps the way I left influenced that. But I, with full transparency, kept thinking about him and the night we spent together, that while I was eating my bowl of soup, I thought maybe I should just ask if he’d like to continue seeing each other. So, I sent him a message:

“Would you be down to see each other again? It’s all good if not, just wondering cuz I would.”

This was me trying to stay neutral, play it cool, I thought to myself. I then saw him later that night.

––

About a month in, things felt pretty natural between us. Not serious, not defined, but steady. I actually somewhat felt like my normal self around him. We’d see each other here and there. Something that was different was the straightforwardness of our conversations.

Lying next to him, we had open conversations about dating apps and staying active on them. It was for sure different to hear that stated out loud, but it wasn’t anything I could be frazzled by. By then, I was only seeing him mostly because I did like him and didn’t feel the sense to restart the awful process of finding a match with someone else. There were brief discussions about what made a profile good, what made them bad, what the turn-offs were, etc. Supposedly, my two photos of a book and my dog made my profile fall on the low side. Understandable.

One night, he turned toward me, reminding me he had never seen my Instagram Explore page. I had said no the first two times, because my explore page was corrupted with unusual relationship posts. I didn’t want him to think I was some die-hard romantic. But after weeks of fixing it, I could finally show it to him. So, for fifteen minutes, we scrolled through my reels. I laid next to him, afraid of what might pop up next—something I might not even associate myself with. We chuckled at almost everything we watched. Some made me nervous about how to react, wondering what was too far to laugh at—what counted as his dark sense of humor. But I found him laughing with me, actually more than me. This was how roughly half our time together was spent.

But finally, I told him how ballsy he was the first time messaging me. And finally, he asked me, “What then made you respond to the second message I sent you?” admitting to the strangeness of it. I think I laughed, and light heartedly said I was just messing with him.

––

While there was no grand traditional outcome between us, I’ve come to realize dating apps were never built to promise anything between people. Maybe just to suggest the possibility of a connection. But in the end, it really does fall on us—how we show up, swipe, respond, and decide if someone’s worth knowing beyond the screen.

The truth is I’ll never know what exactly rained down on me to respond that evening. It could’ve just been a moment of randomness, or a break in whatever guard I normally carry. Maybe that’s just how it goes—you meet someone not because you planned it, but because, for whatever reason, you both happened to be open to it in that moment. And what you do with that? Well, that parts on you.