Madison Shumway
Staff Writer
Tinder, a location-based social app often associated more with hookups than long-term relationships, crops up often in millennial think pieces and college conversations.
Alice*, a first-year ISU student, knows friends with successful Tinder relationships and even marriages, but a bad experience turned her away from taking the app seriously.
She downloaded the app last year as a joke, she said. When she matched with Jordan, an avid video gamer from out of state, the two talked for a few days before she made the jump.
“He wasn’t even very cute, but he was kind of nice, I guess,” Alice said. “He wanted to meet up, but I hadn’t met anyone from Tinder, ever.”
Alice was nervous. Her friends encouraged a meet-up, and she asked Jordan to come to a movie with a group of her friends.
She liked him enough to ask him to Star Wars: The Force Awakens, this time with her brother and cousins. Midway through the film, she received an unpleasant surprise.
“He literally just stuck his hand down my shirt,” Alice said. “He just reached over and stuck his hand down my shirt. I got mad at him, and we never talked again.”
Though Alice’s brother and cousins didn’t notice, she wondered who would have the nerve to feel her up right next to her bulky male relatives.
“I had imagined that when I got in a situation like that, I would stand up and slap him,” she said. “But I was so shocked that I just pulled it out of my shirt and looked forward the whole rest of the movie.”
After the Star Wars debacle, Alice deleted the app until just this month, when her roommates decided to have some fun with it. Her goal isn’t to find a relationship, she said, and she rarely replies to messages.
When she does, she usually gets the match’s Snapchat username and looks at their story on occasion.
She’ll swipe right if she finds the person cute and the bio funny, Alice said. She suggested sending a simple hello instead of a cheesy pick-up line.
“The attention can be fun,” she admitted. “People saying that they think you’re cute and stuff sometimes builds confidence, but then there’s those ones that say gross stuff to you.”
After her movie date gone awry, Alice has steered clear of Tinder meet-ups. She said to avoid a similar experience, users should meet in a public setting or with others.
“Try to meet up with a group of friends and do something that’s not like sitting watching a movie in a dark room,” she advised. “Go out and actually do something fun like bowling or ice skating where you’re not in a situation where they could just be awkward.”
Alternately, Ethan*, an Idaho Falls native, has had a mix of Tinder experiences. Since downloading the app, he’s gone on four bad dates, two good dates, and one very good date, he said.
“[I got Tinder] to improve my social skills,” Ethan said. “I hadn’t been on a date in a very long time, was in a new place, and thought I could knock out two birds with one stone and find a friend and practice speaking to new people.”
Four of Ethan’s dates were in Las Vegas, and he said moving back to Idaho has made the app a little boring. He thinks the city’s much bigger population makes for a wider Tinder demographic, while girls in Idaho tend to be more “vanilla.”
Ethan said he likes to think he’s not overly focused on looks, and tends to swipe right on girls who have interesting bios. He nearly always messages first.
“My experience is that 90 percent of girls will not message first,” he said.
As far as advice, he shared a warning.
“Expect nothing,” Ethan said. “At least in my case, there’s only a handful of people that will fit even a friend role. The more serious you take it, the more upset you’ll be at a lack of results.”
*Names changed to protect student identity.
