I asked what she meant by the word “experimental.”
Emma lowered her voice. “I want you to tell us the truth about Tinder.”
The truth? Was that the experimental part?
If so, the “truth” was that Emma worked for a magazine that celebrated sex and dating and mating and being a woman. And part of being a woman is being caught up in the industrial-romance complex where it’s encouraged to believe in true love and romance and getting married and having babies and a far-off happy ending. This fantasy is sold in a million different ways, from reality TV to lingerie to nose-hair clippers. We buy romance and goddamn if it doesn’t make us feel better.
Which meant chances were Emma wanted the same old, same old—a story about how online dating had its ups and downs but was mediated by a happy ending. Meaning someone gets married.
On the other hand, even I’d heard the rap about this notorious Tinder app, which wasn’t even supposed to be for dating but for “hookups” only—a vague term that could indicate anything from lying next to each other on the bed watching Netflix to having down-and-dirty sex in a bathroom stall. It all sounded unpleasant: the guys were horrible, they sent dick pics, they never looked like their photos, they lied about everything, they’d hook up and never text you again. I’d been told the women were only judged on their looks and that guys would meet up with a woman and spend the whole time on their phones looking for other hookups. On and on it went, ending with: the guys only want blow jobs.
I don’t think so.
“Please?” Emma begged.
“But why?” I said.
“Because,” she lowered her voice. “I have friends . . . and Tinder is ruining their lives. And you’ve got to help them.”
I wasn’t sure I could. It had been a very long time since I’d done a piece of “journalism.” But I still remembered one rule: Go in with an open mind. Don’t decide what the story is before you write it.
“But what if Tinder turns out to be good? What if I like it?” I asked.
Emma emitted a short, harsh laugh and hung up.
I downloaded the Tinder app and clicked on the icon.
It’s All About Money!
The first thing I realized is that while Tinder is ostensibly about sex, it’s actually about money. In order to use Tinder, I immediately got snookered into agreeing to pay ninety-nine dollars a year for the rest of my life. That made me irritated. It meant when this damn Tinder experiment was over, I’d have to figure out a way to unsubscribe to Tinder, lest they keep charging me.
And then there was the Facebook link. I don’t keep up with Facebook so by default it logged on to some ancient account and suddenly one of my photos appeared. Taken about ten years ago, of course. And there was my mini profile, which contained my first name and, yes, my age.
Already this was going wrong. Tinder is supposed to be a hookup app. Who wants to hook up with a fiftysomething-year-old?
Exactly two men, it seemed. Both of whom were smokers in their sixties.
This was not going to work. Being an old coot myself, I really didn’t want to hook up with another old coot. What was new about that?
I examined my profile more closely and discovered that Tinder had automatically adjusted the settings for the age range of men it guessed I would be interested in. Meaning men aged fifty-five to seventy.
This made me angry as well. It was sexist for Tinder to assume that a middle-aged woman would only want to date what the app considered age-appropriate men.
To get even with Tinder, I reset my age range from twenty-two to thirty-eight.
Suddenly, everything changed. This age group was where the action was. Especially in the twenty-two to twenty-eight category.
I called up Kitty. “I can’t even get through this swiping thing. Are you supposed to attract all these guys? Who knew so many young guys were interested in hooking up with women old enough to be their mother?”
And what the hell was I supposed to do next?
Naturally, no one my age had any damn clue. They knew no more than I did, except what I’d already heard: Tinder was a hookup app where women met guys, gave them blow jobs, and never saw them again.
The photographs of these prospective oral sex recipients were on playing cards, apparently underscoring the idea that this was nothing more than a game designed to keep users on the app for as long as possible.
I began hitting the Like button. Every time I did, some gimcrackery came up on top of my screen informing me that I had “matched.” Yay. This was actually fun. It was even exciting. I was matching, whatever that meant.
A few seconds later, I understood. I could get messages.