A tale of 600 Tinder matches and two dates in 14 days
As someone who has not been in her first real relationship until the not-so-ripe age of 23, I know what it’s like to be single on Valentine’s Day.
I’m not even a big Valentine’s Day person, but it can be hard not to be acutely aware of your singleness when every couple in your life feels compelled to flaunt their love in your face on this one day.
So when February came knocking and Valentine’s Day merely 14 days away, I felt the need to put myself back on the dating scene and well , because sometimes it is good to just leave the house.
Rather than going the old fashioned way, I decided to join Tinder, the dating app, hoping my profile picture and deep bio would help catch a date.
Good thing, the app allows users to create a simple profile, featuring a few photos and a brief bio.
Users can then browse through nearby singletons and swipe either right or left to show their interest, or lack of, respectively.
In just a few days, I had already bagged 600 matches and a few dates. When two users swipe right on each other, then it’s a match and they can begin messaging.
Eventually, if things go well, the next step is a real life meet up; the Tinder date.
Most people’s bio were either too deep for such a superficial platform, they really didn’t tell me anything about them or most just felt compelled to stipulate they weren’t looking for ‘hook ups’.
I was mainly swiping out of boredom, focusing solely on people’s first image and simply for an ego boost.
I enjoyed the fact that somebody had matched with me, it was like them saying they found me attractive and lets be honest -who doesn’t want that, even if it is superficial?
I managed to settle on several dates. There was a 29-year-old Pete, whose bio read ‘madly in love with Kenya and in search of a relationship that can develop into something more meaningful.
I long for mixed babies’. I did not know mixed babies are fetishised these days, but Pete got me at ‘searching for something more meaningful’ plus his favourite TV sitcom is the Big Bang Theory.
After texting for a while I hoped it would be fun having a conversation with him for a few hours.
Meeting Pete was less exciting than I had imagined perhaps, because I seem to make up my mind very quickly on how the date will go or because he was self-centred, talking about himself and had a hard time eating with his mouth shut.
Then there was 30-year-old Dickon, whose profile indicated he was less than a half a mile from my place.
His profile picture was chiseled cheeks; lean, but slightly muscled just like Idris Elba. Skip forward one hour later I agreed to meet him at a restaurant for a Sunday brunch.
Long story short I had been catfished, the guy across the table from me was far from the chiseled cheek boned man.
I excused myself citing something came up before things went south. I haven’t replied to his many texts yet.
Although I haven’t been successful in getting a Valentine’s date or any other date for that matter, you could get lucky.
Just be deliberate about searching for something real and discover who you truly have a connection with. Maybe that special someone is already there?
