Tinder shaming
Why isn’t it embarrassing to get to know each other through an app?
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In 2020 people will still be red when they tell how they met and say “Tinder”. What nonsense, our author thinks.
by Viola Kaiser
Recently in our kitchen: friends, a couple in love, are visiting. The seven year old child asks: “Are you in love? How do you actually know each other?” Both blushed at the same time. And I wonder why actually. It’s not about the first question, which may not have been clarified and which embarrasses both of them. It’s about the fact that they didn’t meet in the office, at a party or through friends, but through a dating app: Tinder.
Every relationship doesn’t have to start like a bad RomCom
I don’t understand, however, why people are still a little embarrassed about it. I don’t even understand this Tinder shaming. Don’t 98 percent of all couples get to know each other through some apps these days? By the way, I’m not saying because I’m a huge Tinder fan. On the contrary, I don’t know anything about it, I’ve been married for ten years. Which doesn’t have to be a reason not to be familiar with dating apps, but in my case it is.
It is also very clear to me that many people who tinder are not only married, but are also just looking for adventure or quick sex. However, in my opinion, that doesn’t make the relationship between the couples who fell in love on Tinder any worse than, for example, those of people who met while skating in New York. There is no rule whatsoever that says that getting to know each other that doesn’t look like a bad US RomCom is a less than optimal start for love.
Quite apart from the fact that swiping is just the beginning of the beginning. After that, of course, love at first sight can follow. After all, it happens in “real” life. There can still be dates that are much better than one that was agreed on at the copier with the new colleague in the office. Seriously: People who have Tinder on their cell phones have to meet and get to know each other. And sometimes you work in an office full of women, but you are looking for a man, you have children at home who want to be looked after, and in the supermarket you only find other buyers who are looking for toilet paper and not the love of their lives. Besides, isn’t it just as fate as the photo of the dream guy appears on the display as the real guy at the cheese or bar counter?
Who wants to sit in smoke-filled bars and hope that love will come by?
For that reason alone, Tinder is great and should not be associated with any otherwise usually unnecessary feeling such as shame. Who wants to sit in smoke-filled bars – which is difficult or even impossible at the moment – and hope that great love will ride by on a white horse? The same goes for supermarkets, offices and bus stops. That’s clear. The good thing at the moment is perhaps that, instead of meeting quickly, you first make a phone call, zoom in or Skypt, before you meet at a distance and thus possibly get to know each other better than would have been the case without Corona. At the same time, you can simply filter out frogs faster and don’t have to kiss them unnecessarily first.
At least I want to hear all of the Tinder stories, the good and the bad. I know more of the positive ones anyway. By the way: The fact that I got to know my husband without the help of any app is probably only due to the fact that the app didn’t even exist at the time. But if it were different, I would tell everyone – with pride instead of shame.