Thoughts on Tinder.

Yesterday I deleted Tinder again. But this time I'm certain its for good.

After 2 months of being inactive, I clicked on my Tinder app to see what I missed. After 10mins of swiping swiping swiping and replying msgs, I started to question my intentions. like, whT am I doing? I could be watching Bobs Burgers. And suddenly I realised: Tinder is not for me. It is an absolute waste of time. I mentally made a list of reasons why I myself or other people would possibly use it.

1. To make friends/ meet new people.
2. Because they're lonely/empty, to search for companionship.
3. To find love. *cues: WE FOUND LOVE IN A HOPELESS PLACE*
4. To make conversation because they are so fucking bored. 
5. Ego boosts.
6. For fun. 

I shall begin to elaborate. But please note that these are all my own opinions and thoughts based on my own experiences.

 

1) TO MEET NEW PEOPLE 

You meet ALL KINDS of people on tinder. Some married men, some in a relationship but JUST looking to make more friends, some single, some balding. I've been single for the past 4 months so this is all very new to me. New and exciting! I get to meet new people whoohoo! I start swiping, pew pew pew pew, left, right left right. Guys talk to me, say nice things...its a very nice feeling...INITIALLY. Met some arty farty guys, talked about modern art talked about Picasso...met some guitarists, talked about 21st Century music, discussed Romantics...I'm like, wow, this is great, I can have so many conversations to discuss so many things and ideas. 

But after a while, they start to reveal themselves as empty people. Empty as in, not mentally empty...some of them are very smart and successful people, but emotionally....they have a gaping hole in their hearts that they need someone to fill. Do I want to be a filler?! Hell no. And do I need someone to fill me? WAIT WHAT??? Why do u need that when you have books and shows like Bobs Burgers and things to do like painting or cycling or travelling. Which leads me to point number 2. 

2) THE SEARCH FOR COMPANIONSHIP

It really surprised me as to how many people can't stand being alone, and its so scary because its like a drug...or a plug. Yknow in Japanese theres this word called kotodama, which are spirits that live inside a word and gives it special power. To me, the kotodama of alone feels like a leaking bag of water...like a cell shrinking or something. They're leaking and they need a plug to stop it, or for someone to re-fill them up. 

so, imagine this: having a very normal text conversations and suddenly "my ex used to like this." Like, whuuuuuuut? I don't care!? But ok, lets see where he wants to go with this. "Yknow the funny thing is, you have the same style as my ex". WHUT. and proceeds to say how she broke his heart and blablabla. I mean, I would love to care...but really, I don't. I would not allow myself to be the Aunt Agony to random guys I meet on Tinder like wtf, I'd rather light a candle and watch the wax melt therapeutically on a porcelain plate whilst listening to Clean Bandits.

And then theres this other kind...totally nice guy, funny, charming. So he's like "hey would you like to go to this concert with me?" and i'm single right!? So yeah sure ok lets go. Classical music lets go. And then after talking more, I began to realise that all his friends are attached, he basically had no one. I mean, HE SAID SO HIMSELF. And it feels like we're only hanging because I happened to be available, and if I'm not...then ok lets go back to tinder and find someone else to hang with. 

I mean, theres really nothing wrong hooking up on Tinder. Meeting guys/girls and going on dates...whatever makes you happy right? Thats if both parties feel the same way, like "oh I totally want to date you but lets be clear that I'm totally seeing like 100 other people, so you have to compete for my time and lets look at my calendar, shall we schedule for a date again like 2 weeks from now at 12pm on a wednesday? Starbucks? (because we're totally hipster?) " and then maybe thats ok. But most of the time its not like that, there are people who are realllyyyyyyyyyy searching for love and CANNOT accept that there are other people other then them. POINT 3. 

3) WE FOUND LOVE IN A HOPELESS PLACE. 

OMG. This is more scary than a shrinking cell or a leaking water bag. This is a fucking parasite. THEY CANT LIVE BY THEMSELVES. They need a host to attach onto, and most of the time...the host gets rid of them, right!? DESHOU!??! 

Imagine you're in a happy land, all creatures are friendly and kawaii and everything is just happy. You're strolling in a beautiful japanese garden and then a cute fluffy caterpillar lands on your arm for some strange reason. Remember, this is a happy land...all creatures are friendly so you don't freak out, you stroke it and say "aww so cute, what is your name" and the caterpillar looks at you with beautiful eyes and says "my name is Ichiko desu. Please continue to stroke my back, no one has done this for me in such a long time, you make me happy. I am so happy to meet you desu." and the caterpillar continues to look so cute and adorable so you continue to make it happy and you continue to walk about talking to Ichiko San. You have found a friend! And then!! You see a fat cat!! You want to play with the cat because YOU LOVE FAT CATS. And suddenly, Ichiko San starts to wiggle on your arm a lot to get your attention as it says "hey! I'm here! talk to me! play with me!"

Even though its HappyLand, your skin starts to feel irritated. So naturally, you proceed to want to put Ichiko San down on the ground and say "stop! you're hurting me!" because at this point now, your skin is fucking burning. But Ichiko San says NO! as it releases spikes into your skin to latch onto you as it screams "I NEVER WANT TO LET YOU GO". You are now in pain, so you look at Fat Cat and all it can do is meow and purrrrr and look pretty and it really doesn't give a shit about you. And you turn back to look at Ichiko San as its getting bigger and bigger because its sucking your blood, so you grab a rock from a nearby koi pond to smash Ichiko San. Ichiko San dies and you really need to see a doctor because obviously Ichiko San is poisonous as hell. But before you leave, you turn to grab Fat Cat but Fat Cat is not there anymore. Camera pans 360 degrees around you as you shout "NOOOOooooooOOOO. " as the sun in Happy Land sets in the background.

*credits roll:*

Ichiko- played by psycho girl/boy 

Human- played by kind hearted normal humans

Fat Cat- played by Tee. (Hehe, meow~ burp~)  

Btw, I digress a little. Yknow I have all these kinda stories in my head all the time, like you can be eating an ice cream and I can think of a story for that as well. But when I type them out on whatsapp to send to my friends they'll just go like "tee, why am i not surprised. You're so weird". My mom doesn't even reply. Which leads me to point 4.

4) I AM SO BORED, WHO SHALL I TALK TO.

Not gonna lie. The whole point of having a blog is to document real REAL feelings and thoughts/ opinions. After breaking up, I struggled a little with this question. I love texting, I love sharing ideas and opinions, and I used to text over the smallest thing like and tell him everything even like if I just farted or "omg! I just saw a snail eating a banana!!! " and I don't care if it doesn't lead to a conversation I JUST WANT TO TYPE AND TELL SOMEONE. 

So for awhile, I kept texting my mother. And she picked up on "omg!".  Now whenever I tell her something like "mommyyyyyy, i'm so hungry, I haven't eaten yet :( :( " and she'll be like "OMG!" and i'd be like 0_0. 

So if you ask me why did I even download Tinder in the first place, here's your answer: I think Tinder served a conversational purpose for me. I could say the most darnest and lamest thing and I wont care whether they judged me or not. So a typical tinder conversation for me would go like: 

Guy: "hey hows your day"

Tee: " hey it was great! hey anyway, what do you think about customised suicide? Like, I just had this thought about it the other day, not that I want to kill myself but if there is such a thing because we live in such a time that everything can be customised so what do u think? Do u think people want to customise like the soundtrack of their death."

Guy: "HUh? What? Oh anyway, I went to the gym today." 

which leads me to point number 5.

5) EGO BOOSTS 

Guys and girls both love ego boosts. Right? Maybe you don't, but I'm positive that everyone enjoys that once in awhile. But theres a difference between getting your ego boosted AND being extremely insecure. Do you play mario karts? Or actually, recently I've started playing this game with baby abram on the iPad called angry birds racing or sth. Basically its like the angry birds characters in cars and instead of flying and hitting things, now they race. SO theres this feature called power up, which you press when you just need a little bit more to win, or maybe you're already winning, you just wanna WiN moRE.

So I had this opponent, that had a very lousy car (didn't play that long so didn't collect as many coins as me.), and he/she kept clicking the power up button but it wont make a difference because you are still slow! He/she need to collect more coins to zhng their car first. But me, I AM SO PROUD OF MY ANGRY BIRD, it keeps winning races. And even though I was already winning, I appreciated that power up so that I could go even faster and WiN MoREEEE. whoohoo. 

Same as Tinder I guess. 

I know of a couple who both use tinder for this exact purpose. They use each other's Tinder accounts to swipe random people and then feel good when they swipe them back and then laugh about it. Which is kinda of a lame reason to use tinder, but I've a lot of friends who use it for this very reason. For Fun. Which leads me to my final point.

6) FOR FUN

I went to vietnam last year with a group of close friends and over lunch they were like "TEE, LEND ME YOUR PHONE. oooo you have tinder! LET ME PLAY" So I'm like "play!? whats there to play on tinder" and I just learnt that friends just use friends phone to swipe random hot or not people...for fun! I found it fun for a couple of reasons too. I used it to make decisions. 

Like for example: Feeling hungry on a monday night, what should I eat. Macs? KFC? MOS Burger? Wendys? I CANT DECIDE. HELP ME.

*logs onto Tinder*

Tee: "hey. macs, kfc mos burger or wendys. pick one." 

Guy1: " macs."

Tee: "hey. macs, kfc mos burger or wendys. pick one.

Guy2: "Yoshinoya."

Tee: " mmm. ok i like you" 

ITS SO EASY TO MAKE DECISIONS NOW. Just ask a random fella. 

But anyway so here's my conclusion: Yesterday was my first time logging in after 2 months. I deleted it for good. I realised that while there were fun conversations, they don't last. Even people I meet on Tinder, they don't last! Some I get bored of and maybe vice versa because theres this element of "next, next, next" like...Ok this doesn't work out, ok next, ok next, ok next...and its ENDLESS because you CAN meet a lot of people on tinder. its like a spiral. A bad one. Which is something I don't really want to encourage. Instead, I want to take time to foster current friendships with REAL friends and REAL people that are already in my life and make an effort to and vice versa! 

And for sure, I don't imagine meeting my future partner over Tinder, although that being said there ARE some people who find their supposed soul mates on Tinder. which is kinda like....whuuuutttttt. But then again, remember Ichiko San? Maybe if he didn't die or latched onto someone, he would have found a colony of other Ichikos. And they can mate and continue to give birth to more Ichikos, and that would really be a fucking nightmare, but they're happy! So, good for them!! As long as Ichiko stays the fuck away from the human race and humans continue to love Fat Cats. :)