Try a little Tinder-ness

"Hey ;)"

"Hi!!!"

You see that exchange right there? The exchange with a total of 10 characters including emoticons and exclamation points? Those 10 characters are the impetus to your burgeoning Klonopin addiction and eventual descent into madness stemming from the mindfuck permeating singletons everywhere.  Welcome to Tinder kids.

 I'll spare you the minute details of how this works but suffice it to say you feel like your sifting through the Sadaam Hussain playing deck.  And actually you just might be. Pretty sure a terrorist or two is cruisin' the site looking for easy American females to beard them for their sinister plots. We dumb asses mistake their actual beards for a unique brand of hipster and swipe to the right accepting the proposal lurking within those big brown eyes visored under unibrows. See, that's the thing. Tinder is purely based on looks. Four looks and a tagline to be exact. What's a tagline?  A tagline should be a phrase or two that gives a sneak preview of your personality but from what I've seen men are either egregiously illiterate or figure just posting their height will distract from the essence of Drakkar Noir emanating from the swirl patterns saturating their tight tees. I've seen taglines with twitter handles, websites, long ass paragraphs about their philosophies of life, and my personal favorite, the motivational speech. "There is no time like the present!" "Be the change you want to see in the world!"Aww that's so inspirational!  So much so it inspires me to change my screen by deleting your face. I know I sound like a shit of a lady but if I'm going to engage in mindfuck it needs to be worth it. As for the women I have no idea what they use for taglines. What do they use? Measurements? Credit Scores? Quinoa recipes?


I'll start by admitting I've had some moderate success on Tinder. Of course I base success on whether or not I find myself in a catfish situation where the man I've been in conversation with turns out to be my mother hoping this experience teaches me to love myself. I'm convinced catfishing is the STD of online dating because the only way to know you've got it for sure is to see it up close and personal. Catfishing also serves a different purpose. It has become the only acceptable answer to the dreaded fade away.  "Gurrrl.... he don't want to meet you face to face cause he's a fat les-bee-an with nasty club feet livin' in Pomona. That guy be a blind bitch to not want to meet your gorgeous self!!!" Clearly. The paranoia surrounding the possibility of succumbing to a catfish scenario or worse being the accused catfisher is  so prevalent any slight alteration to a photo can be considered a rouse. This fear prompts the strictest scrutiny of one's photos. In my case I freaked because some of my photos are Instagram filtered. In practice, filters help airbrush the moroseness out of your face through lighting making the image itself a photographic representation of a Wilco song. In other words you look artsy fartsy and less like the "Tan Mom" doppelgänger starring back at you in the mirror when you wake up.  My friends were all you be cray when I told them my reservations so I've left them on my profile page. If a guy is all up in arms because my skin doesn't have "Valencia" undertones then I apologize in advance for the discrepancy.

When you do get a match on Tinder (they aren't all backup dancers)  it's an instant self esteem booster. Huzzah! A guy didn't take a dump on my filtered face! Yay! NO. No yay. Not even close to yay because once you match the mindfuck takes flight and it all starts with the technological advancement known as text. Here's the universal truth: texting is the WORST form of communication there is for online dating. Period. Did I say worst? I meant to say so fundamentally wrong it makes chewing a man's face off while on bath salts a nice way to spend the afternoon. Tinder also blows; it taunts you into texting by insinuating your life partner is just a smiley face away.  Both sexes will back me up here. Texting is incredibly convenient but also patently deceiving because it grossly exaggerates a fleeting connection. And by connection I'm talking about the discovery of a similar appreciation for guacamole. That's how it quickly gets out of hand."Wait, you feeling avocados? Unreal dawg! I feel avocados. Fucking crazy!" Next text: "So hey, tell me about your disintegrating relationship with your father". Herein lies the problem. Consistently texting back and forth gets you through the surface shit and commonalities real fast. Naturally the only way to keep the car running is to delve deeper. Pretty soon you feel like you should start paying your match for their analytical and psychological advice. In one night of furious textual exchange you've exposed your dreams, divulged your fears, and virtually held their hand as they go through a crisis of faith. This stage can go for days if neither party has the balls to set up a meet and greet. This is where I've held camp for awhile now. Camp dick in his box. Because his dick is not in my box. (Ay-o. Rated X bitches!)

Inevitably this game of chicken ends in one of two ways. You either tell yourself bygones and go buy a sheet cake or you send the unadvised and dreaded double text. The double text is when you try and restart a dead conversation by sending another text as a reminder that is meant to say: "Bonjour match! Are we doing this or not cause I'm going to cancel my wax appointment if this is a no-go, " but translates in their mind to: "I'm just a girl. Standing in front of a boy. Asking him to love her."  I'd wager a woman would rather become the middle link in a human centipede then have their text be interpreted as such. They would also rather be subjected to Katherine Heigl movies every night for life then dare send a double text if they perceive themselves as entering phase one of a fadeaway.

Speaking of fadeaways, I don't personally subscribe to it. It's quite maddening really as I imagine it is for every recipient of such tactic. Unfortunately no one is immune to the fadeway and it seems to occur with the most promising of matches. Why is that? You are left wondering what the hell you said to turn them off. Was it because you said you're a fan of desserts and skipped yesterday's Pilates? Was it because you asked about their day?" This unknown reason ends up being the ONLY thing you think about. At work someone will ask you for a report and you snap and say, "I am going to DIE ALONE...report is on your desk." Of course a rational person would acknowledge this is Tinder. No one owes you anything. And this is worth repeating, it's TINDER. Besides, there could be a myriad of reasons why someone quits you. The problem is we as humans with, let's be honest, a pre-disposition towards self-involvement, tend to fill the question mark with our worst projections of ourselves making it all about you and your inefficiencies when in reality it's probably them or if not them the CIA covert mission that has him incommunicado. He'll come back around? Right?!? Enter week 2 of Joni Mitchell's "Both Sides Now" on repeat.  Look, I am in no position to judge how people choose to crush someone's last chance at intimacy but as my sister-in-law says, "It's nice to be nice." I'm actually a total douche and would prefer to shove that phrase up the anus of my enemy however telling someone, "Not going to work" is just the right thing to do. For peace of mind alone. Looking at both genders here. I've had to be honest and it's not pleasant in the slightest but as they say the truth shall set you free...free to feel like a boss when you're boning someone else without guilt. I've resigned myself to the fact that men believe the women on Tinder are there to find true love (as if that path necessitates four photos of a shirtless man posing with tigers and children of indiscernible relation with a tagline simply saying "yolo") and therefore tread lightly for fear of offending our sensibilities. Looks left..then right...what century is this?

The fadeaway is annoying but nothing compared to actually meeting the person and having an amazing time and then realizing later he logged back onto Tinder roughly fifteen minutes after you guys hugged it out in front of a coffee shop. Probably to peruse for looser women. You just want to punch a wall and scream, "What the HELL! I'm a total whore too!!! I was just playing it cool!" Do people know you can do that? Am I just exposing one of Tinder's long held secrets? Yeah, you can see the last time a match logged on when you click on their profile. Of course the irony is you're also on Tinder perusing which is why you were able to find such incriminating information in the first place. I'm telling you this is a total mindfuck. For this particular situation I had to make a Motown playlist on Spotify to get me through that bullshit.

Bottom line is I've had good experiences, i.e made friends, and bad experiences, a guy lied about his age and name and possibly his occupation. It's the yin and yang of this battlefield called love (and I use the term "love" loosely). Tinder just seems to exacerbate this yin and yang by making you more suspicious than UN weapons instructors in Iran. Who's up for playing the game, split my uranium!  (Euphamism!)  This app is not for the faint of heart which is why I've toyed more than once with the idea of deleting my profile (nope. Still up there). Seeing a winky face in any text is giving me post traumatic stress and I don't want to have to give up my emojis.  I've been convinced for a long time that Tinder is my penance for making fun of babies. For every baby I've ever mocked I get a male mindfuck. What karma doesn't understand though is that these babies were cross-eyed! My eventual hope is Tinder becomes the myspace of online dating and falls into oblivion and a new trend starts, arranged marriages. Or maybe this is ALL just a Reflektor.  Until that time I'm just going to have to link this essay as response to the next "Hey ;)" and pray my Klonopin prescription is ready for pick-up.