Do you remember the movie “What woman wants?” on which Mel Gibson could read the minds of women and used this power for his own interests? Except from cinematographic aspects I remember that it impressed many people with the idea of knowing what others want or don’t. Fortunately this technology hasn’t arrived yet but there is the technology, which allows you to know what others think about you and let them know what you think, only if you want to know and if their thoughts about you are positive.
Nowadays that is called Tinder. Tinder is the popular dating app where you see list of people nearby and choose the ones that you would like to meet. If they think as you than perfect you have a match and app notifies this match and even encourages you to send the first message. If they don’t choose you, know that you haven’t been chosen but they have no idea about you wanted them or not.
Actually it is not the first app that works with the same idea of secrecy, couple of months ago a Facebook App “Bang Your Friends” launched (Now its called Down). It was the same idea but you can only chose in between your Facebook friends which I found pretty dangerous because of a possible pressure in couples to use the app for seeing the dangerous friends of your partner.
When I heard about the app, I decided to download it to take a look and thanks to my writer friend Kerem Gunes, I had chance to think deeper about it’s functions and the meanings of interaction paradigms which create that specific feelings on people. Than out conversation started:
Eray: First you have to sign up with your Facebook account and they mention, “Nothing will be posted on your timeline”. So you don’t have to worry about your friends, who may judge you about using it. Later on you may see your friends there as they may see you too, but it will be your little secret since you share the same sin.
Kerem: You using the word “sin” is real interesting. I thought the same thing about myself when I downloaded Tinder, that I was crossing a border that I couldn’t help myself from crossing. That I was a sinner. But than I though the same thing you did, that everybody else who was on Tinder was like me too, that we were a horny and superficial family of losers who were looking for easy love, which doesn’t exist. But than my ex-girlfriend sent me a message saying that one of her friends told her that I was on Tinder, and I felt like Joaquin Phoenix in the film “Her”, when he meets with his ex-girlfriend for lunch and admits that he is in love with a computer system. Being a sinner feels good only until you realize that you are not a religious person, that you are too free to sin. So I deleted Tinder. But I did meet a few girls before.
Eray: After signing in, you immediately see your first candidate with a picture. There are two ways to decide, either you can click on the heart button if you liked or cross button if you didn’t, or even easier you can swipe right for saying liked or left for nope. It means after a while you can find yourself swiping bunch of people as ‘liked’ or ‘nope’ according to impression that they give you with a single image. Or else, if you want to make a more “serious” decision you may click on the image to see couple of more images, who are your common friends and your common interests (according to Facebook likes).
Kerem: The whole swiping thing was horrible to me. It reminded me of Nazi’s at the entrances of concentration camps, using just their hands to decide who works and who gets gassed. I preferred to tap my hand on the heart button when I liked somebody, it felt much more human. As for who I liked, I have to admit that I didn’t dislike anybody. (Well, that’s a lie. I did “nope” people, but not as many as my other friends.) I just wanted to meet people, hear new stories, fucking was not my ultimate goal, because I knew that maybe some of the girls I would not get along with but be good friends, and they would introduce me to their own friends and vice versa. It also felt good seeing some girls were fans of a Facebook page that I had co-founded, BookSerf. Or seeing that some girls liked writers that I liked, it made me happy.
Eray: Let’s say you have a match, than you get a notification with a suggestion that encourages to you to write. I think it’s a little big deal who will write first and it creates matches without communication, and to keep Tinder using by people they push you to be the one who sends the first message (they even says there is nothing wrong to be first). And after my first swipe session I have some matches but no messages. So I guess it is also a game for ego satisfaction, feeling of being liked and wanted. Meaning people are not dying for quick date or sex.
Kerem: I have a close friend who lives in New York. She uses Tinder a lot, and says she meets very cool people with it. The culture in America is more open to meeting strangers and having sex, but in İstanbul I feel that we still have a while until the one night digital hook-up is common. I talked to a lot of girls, but they seemed to be hesitant about using Tinder, wasting their own time and mine. I guess ego satisfaction is definetly a reason girls use Tinder, but my own theory is: Boredom. So many girls in İstanbul are bored with their lives that they play with Tinder like a cat plays with a mouse; slowly, mercilessly and without focus. By using Tinder for a short time, I was reminded that a strong work and social life is the answer to a good life, and you may call me conservative, but however attractive sex without love sounds (because with love comes a new past and a new future) it is very boring.
So at the end I am not planning to use it further and deleted the app. But I realized that, as first expression, the app feels creepy and for those who are with lack of self confidence and lack of courage to try finding matches in “real” life (well hard to say it is not real but it is another long discussion) with traditional methods but than the feeling of choosing people without any fear of rejection (because you don’t remember the ones you had liked and didn’t get any response in between bunch of people and there is no list for it), and being wanted or liked gives you a different joy and you start to forget about the doubts you have as: “Why should I need it?”, “Am I a looser?”, “But judging people with a picture or at most with some pages liked on Facebook is not fair” and most importantly “How can I tell my children that I met their mom/dad with an app” and you just start to enjoy it. Well about the last doubt, I hope it stays and we wont tell to our children “In our time we used to meet people on apps not like you do it with…”
