Noah Williams

Liberal Studies Major

Illustration by Alex Serrano

The body next to you stirs as the chime of a phone stirs you from fitful sleep. Alone in the silence now, you recall the myriad of poor choices that have put you here: the cheap Italian restaurant in Westbrook, thinly veiled conversation, virile reptilian lust, laziness, and an all consuming moral blackout.

Head pounding and heart sinking, you look about the strange room. A family picture of strangers stares back at you from the wall, silently examining your naked body. The floor is strewn with clothing, stained bed sheets, and prophylactic wrappers (if you’re lucky). A sweet mixture of sweat and personal lubricant permeates the room, and you avoid touching things with your sticky hands.

There is no darker place to find oneself alone than the far reaches of the “Tinder-
sphere.”

For those of you who don’t know, Tinder is a “dating app” compatible with most smart phones that allows a user to create a six picture, 500 word profile to entice other users to either swipe right (I like you and think you’re cool!), or swipe left (I don’t like you, and think you’re weird). If you both swipe right on someone’s picture, and they swipe right on your picture, you are matched, and then observe a heavy awkward silence until someone makes the first move.

Tinder is scorned by almost all who use it, as a shallow and superficial way to engage in anonymous sex, but it is one of the most popular ways for college-aged adults to find partners.

Now, there is nothing wrong with copious of anonymous sex if that’s what you’re in the market for, but Tinder is becoming one of the primary ways that luckless lovers interact with other single people. For the tamer variety of Tinder goers the constant propositioning can be tiresome and frustrating, as they sort through the flesh hunters in search of someone looking for more than sex.

Tinder has been known to lead to several other negative side effects in users including regret, unprotected sex and subsequent venereal diseases, awkward interactions, adultery, self loathing, low standards, illicit drug use, over consumption of alcohol, bruising and bite marks, extreme fatigue, and in rare cases death or serious injury.

All too often hook up culture and its most well known perversion, Tinder, lead to the experiences like the one mentioned at the beginning of this article. You match, you attempt a half hearted date, you fornicate, sometimes someone ends up crying right in the middle of the act, and spend the rest of the night curled into a ball on opposite sides of the bed.

Somewhere along the line it seems that we have forgotten how to navigate intimate romantic relationships with people. Generationally (those of us in our 20s or early 30s) we cannot seem to admit our squeamishness surrounding intimacy, and face the sometimes-ugly consequences of our own choices.

Yet, as humans we are drawn to other people, and it seems now that we are trying to fill this intimate void with emotionless anonymous sex. Tinder perpetuates this lonely insatiable hunger for interaction that so many of struggle to define in a healthy way.

Tinder with care reader, and beware the void which may consume you as you search for companionship amongst the flesh hunters. If you are looking for encounters of the casual variety, then you’ve found your spot, but practice moderation if you can. If you’re looking for something more serious in your life then an exchange of bodily fluids, then perhaps you may want to look elsewhere. Remember, many people outside of dating apps who are romantic and sexual beings too, and equally as excited as yourself to leave the filthy, semen stained corners of the TinderSphere.