On Dating Apps and Peter Pan
Imagine a world in which you are forced to choose a mate based only on a picture and a short description of how the person perceives him or herself. Further, this is not a candid photo capturing the person’s true aura. It is a picture chosen by the person, likely taken by the person, and not even guaranteed to be of the person.
Enter Tinder.
I had Tinder for years. As well as Hinge. And Bumble. All to no avail. But then again, I did get some fantastic stories out of it all.
By far the most enjoyable step of the process was the swiping. In college I used to love to unwind at the Student Rec Center after a long day of classes by swiping on the elliptical. I’d put in my headphones and turn up the resistance and could go for ages, getting in my cardio and my superficial judging all at one time. Left, left, left, right. Match! A Kanye song, a 50 song, a Wayne song, a match! And because we were on a university campus, all of the students more or less within the appropriate age range, it wasn’t uncommon to come across a potential match that you recognized, or even knew! Hell, he could be walking across the gym as you were, at that moment, swiping his face. What a concept.
Once in a while you might take a chance and swipe right on someone from class or even a friend from the frat next door. If it’s a match, consider it serendipity. No one even had to work up the nerve to ask the other out. Tinder did the work for you.
But there is always a flip side. Consider a scenario in which you swipe right on a seemingly perfect man (or woman) and it’s a match. Fabulous. You have never seen this person around campus but you chat for a week or two and decide to meet up for drinks at a bar. You cannot wait. You meet up, he’s cute (though inevitably approximately 2–3 inches shorter than his profile stated), and you start to chat. Soon you conclude that you have never encountered anyone this obnoxious in all of your 20 years of life. This is nightmare material. You survive for as long as you can but are finally forced to text your roommate to call with an “emergency”. You leave in a flurry and plan to never see this pesky vermin again as long as you live!
The following week is the start of the new semester. He is in your history class and he got a gym membership at the student Rec. He liked you. You are trapped.
Thankfully, the issue of post-date inescapability is fairly specific to university campuses and small towns. Dating in the city is a less risky endeavor, as the chances of ever seeing someone again after a bad date are low, especially if you want them to be. But despite this small saving grace, adult Tindering in the real world can be just as terrifying as doing it in college, and probably even more so. Allow me to share my story.
After graduating college, I moved to Marin County, the suburban area just north of the Golden Gate, to work as a tutor for wealthy white children. I should note that the San Francisco Bay Area is a notoriously difficult place to date, at least for women seeking men. While a number of postulates have been put forth over time as to why this is, the most commonly accepted theory is known as “Peter Pan Syndrome.”
The idea is that handsome, charismatic men ranging from their mid-20s to 40s tend to make loads of money working in Silicon Valley startups, go out four nights a week, maintain a diet of Whisky Sodas and cocaine, and sleep with an average of two new girls per week. It’s a lifestyle. And unsurprisingly, there are exactly zero incentives to give up this lifestyle and settle down.
You’re probably thinking that certainly not ALL of the eligible men in the San Francisco Bay Area fit this description, and you’re right. It’s just the normal, handsome, charismatic ones. Luckily, I did get to go on plenty of abnormal dates with abnormal men.
The Surfer/Bartender comes to mind. One night I was out with my roommate, my ride or die, who had introduced me to the San Francisco party scene. We were at a trendy Irish pub in North Beach where I noticed the handsome man behind the bar and decided to chat him up. In a moment of naivety, I wrote my number on a napkin for my to deliver and we left. I didn’t expect anything to come of it, but low and behold, he called! Everything seemed to be going great until the second date, when he told me that while he was out on the ocean that morning, he could hear the gulls squawking my name. (Insert bird voice) “Maddy! Maddy!” I learned a very important lesson from this experience. If you like the bar, if you would like to someday return to the bar, don’t date the bartender.
Then there was the race car driver I found on Tinder. Seeing as it was his profession, I agreed to let him pick me up for dinner. When he pulled up, I was surprised to see he had his large dog along for the ride. I sat shotgun. The dog sat on me.
There was a karate instructor who loved to talk about karate. He took me to Indian food, ordered dinner for me, ordered us water, and told me all about his last Tinder date, on which he’d showed up to the girl’s house after chatting with her for weeks to find that the girl was a in fact a man who claimed that he had “seemed gay” and “figured he wouldn’t mind”.
Over the years, there were a lot of men that I didn’t call back. And a of assholes that didn’t call me back. I’m a stronger person for it all. And, what you have to remember is that eventually the right person does come along! Granted, that right person may be your employee, and you may almost lose your job, but that is a story for another day.
The moral of this story is that dating apps should be structured more like Yelp, where third parties are responsible for choosing the photos and anyone is welcome to leave an honest review reflecting their own dating experiences with the person in question. In a world of Peter Pans, we Wendys have got to look out for one another if there is ever hope of someday escaping Neverland and growing up.
