After hearing a lot about the
phone application for some time, I was eventually swayed into trying
Tinder. For those unfamiliar with it, Tinder is a cell phone app in
which users “like” or “dislike” (also known as “swiping
right” or “swiping left”) on fellow users. The users are not
informed that the other person has “liked” them until they
“match”, at which point the two users may engage in a text
messaging equivalency conversation. It's an exceptionally simple
premise and that's largely why the app has been an overwhelming
success—user bios are limited to 500 or fewer characters and thus
the process of “liking” users is highly informal and casual;
there is no fear of feeling embarrassed to “like” somebody who is
well out of your league because they have to like you back before
they would ever know; there are no parameters for what a Tinder
interaction entails. Purportedly, the app is used for hookups—being
1. A gentleman and 2. Not the hottest guy on the app, I know nothing
of this. The app is definitely used for dating. But the app can also
be used for casual conversation and meeting new people. And I've met
some pretty cool people in my relatively brief time on the app,
people whose correspondence I will not share, because that's tacky
and I consider my correspondence with other people to be private.
This post is about a marginalized
group—the Tinder bot. While many Tinder users are people just like
me—bored folks with smartphones who are approaching dating in quite
easily the laziest way on the planet—others are not people at all,
but rather automated computerized programs. But these people, who
aren't people, are people too. And here are some treasured
interactions I've had with these “people”.
Carrol
Carrol was an early interaction for me, and she typified most of the traits I learned to love in my Tinder bots--her pictures are fairly obvious glamour shot type pictures, she has a first name I associate mostly with old people, and for some reason she asks a question. "I want to have sex with strangers who are also skilled and very intimate in bed?" I'm Ron Burgundy?
Sharon
I'm really not that much of a grammatical stickler, but one should really be better at it than this.
Patricia
I have to give Patricia two things. One, she never unmatched me. This conversation is still technically ongoing. Most of the bots talk about how they want to sleep with you and then unmatch, which...maybe I don't understand women very well. But two, she sent this message several hours after we matched. Normally, the bots strike fairly quickly--within a few minutes often. But Patricia, who appeared to be a spambot from the beginning, lingered so long that I started to think "Wait, is she NOT a spambot? Since when do I talk to actual humans on here? How do I do this? What's my name? What do I like to do? How do I...oh wait, she's one of the superfluous question mark ones, never mind, we're good here. NOTHING TO SEE HERE FOLKS!"
Delores
First of all, yes, I really wanted to go the Seinfeld route with the name Delores, but obviously she wasn't going to get the reference. Not because women don't know Seinfeld episodes, but because this is way too old person of a name to be real. I was very confident right away that she was a spambot, but even if she wasn't, this felt like a flattering thing to say to a woman. So I rolled with it. Sometimes, this experiment got boring. There aren't quite as many spambots as I would like. Sometimes, you have to sift through a bunch of actual people to find them. And yes, I was more likely to swipe right on people I suspected were fake.
Vina
I think this was a good question.
Francesca
I will go further in depth on this later, but I've noticed a lot of spambots are 9 miles away from me. Maybe the St. Louis center of operations gravitates around one specific location that happens to be nine miles away from me. So this made me more inclined to swipe right on Francesca. But, frankly, she looked like she was about 12 years old, so I wasn't actually interested. But, this had good spambot potential, so I decided to stalk the Instagram account she referenced in her bio.
I don't think this is Francesca. I think this is somebody named Naomi. Anyway, we matched but she unmatched before I ever got the chance to be redirected to a website that required my credit card information.
Allyson
This con seems much more plausible than the hookup-based ones. After all, who doesn't want a safe Tinder experience? The whole thing can seem overwhelming and scary and, like, you don't want to end up hitting it off with somebody and then you meet them and they aren't who you thought they were. And if you check out the website, which you totally should, they make some good points. Also, they ask for your credit card information. You know, to verify you are an adult. This seems like a reasonable thing.
This different person, from yesterday, actually presented this spam pretty well. But my response I think is integral here. What, was she going to meet me right away? Didn't want to talk a little bit first?
Ruth
So I didn't realize Ruth was a spambot at first. At "Whassup ?", I had a suspicion, but even then I wasn't sure so I played it semi-cool (by sounding like a dork, but that's just my nature anyway). Her dog did look cool though.
Margie
Margie was a nice looking girl but I just didn't KNOW if we were compatible in bed just yet! I think this is a fair thing to request.
Colleen
You notice something here? No, not the arm tattoos. No, not that her Instagram appears to be for a person named Emily Andersen. Nine miles. Colleen is nine miles away. What a wild coincidence. I better ask about this.
Judith
The first two lines read like Mad Libs. "Vuh-lay-dee-yuh." Valadia? Also, @titsablaze is a fantastic Instagram name, even though searches indicate that Judith as pictured above probably does not own said account. I worry about the "420 friendly" listers not because I have a strong ethical objection to people smoking pot but because I don't want to have to listen to a bunch of Phish, but hey, she says no hookups. Doesn't sound like a spambot to me.
Don't do drugs, you will lose all of your memory and inhibitions
Daniela
.
Daniela has a nice smile. She's apparently religious and isn't looking for a hookup and has realistic Tinder goals--meet new people. And hey, she listed a (real) university which she attends. Oh, and we matched! Awesome. Hey, I just noticed something weird--doesn't it seem like a college athlete would be back at school by now? If she really attends a school in southeastern Tennessee, how is she, um, 9 miles away?
I felt weird with the "Hi!" But I wanted to match her enthusiasm. She seemed nice.
She unmatched me. If she doesn't like ice cream, it wasn't really meant to be anyway.
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