An essay on the author’s “Tinder decade” — ten years spent swiping, dating, ghosting, getting ghosted, and considering how the app shapes lives:
I learned to be buoyant in the face of disappointment. So many of these dates were just people plucked out of a random void and returned to that void after. The memory of their rejection couldn’t last if they didn’t. Plus there was always another message, another hit, another Jay to distract me. If there were long-term effects from this creeping sensation of disposability, I didn’t pay any attention.
Instead, I was like a laboratory: both scientist and experiment, learning what parts of my personality worked on another person. I learned to dress as someone who dated but wasn’t obviously on a date: no dresses, minimal makeup, casual shoes, “accidental” cleavage. I could intuit when the conversation had landed on the right frisson point to offer my number and on the inside joke that would carry us from text to in-person meeting. I had a handful of bars I could rely on for lighting that suited me, music that made me seem knowledgeable, and a repartee with the bartender in case the date was bad. I kept mental notes about what worked. I threw out the Madewell jeans I was wearing when the dude excused himself, talked on the phone for an hour, and came back with a halfhearted excuse about an elevator emergency in the building he managed. It was certainly the jeans’ fault he was setting up his next date while on our date. Every nonstarter was a chance for self-improvement.
