It's a Wednesday night and I'm pacing anxiously around the printer in my college computer lab. "Where is my shit!?" After forty-five minutes, it decides to spit out my screenplay and I run out of the lab. Then hunger strikes -- a quick solution presents itself, I decide to get take out at one of the Mexican restaurants at my college. The place is quick serve style, so I walk up, order my four thousand calorie burrito, and wait. I brace myself for a long wait as a good-looking man comes to stand next to me. Yay! Cute-guy, this could be the beginning of my love story, just imagine, "And kids, thats when your dad came up to me and asked me what I ordered, and our lives were never the same again." I anticipated at least a 'hello,' or an 'excuse me,' but alas, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out his cell phone, sorry, iPhone 5. I pull out mine, in anguish. Now, a moment of extreme confusion, how the hell did people avoid awkward situations like this before cell phones were invented? The fabric of our nation lies in community and communication, and I have not once ever had a conversation with a stranger while waiting in a line ever. Nobody talks anymore.
The next night I was preparing for a fun night out with a couple girl friends. So conversation was light and centered on the tales of trashy girls and the new dating scandals/rumors that had begun to permeate their dorm floor.
I was half paying attention when I realized they kept mentioning a name or a thing that sounded odd. "I met him on Tinder," one said then, "Oh, yeah she went on a date with the Tinder guy." I come to consciousness to ask a question, "What or who is Tinder??" The girls stare at me with mouths gaping- nothing foreign to see on a college girl. They continue to explain to me that Tinder is a dating application for smartphones, the founders of the app are college students at USC and UCLA, and in colloquial girl language, "like, everyone's using it."
I grow interested.
The girl to my right opens the app on her phone and shows me how it works: They display Facebook profiles of people in you general area and you can accept or reject them, if you have any matches, you can text or chat with them. Seems like an innocent, hip version of match.com. The girls insist on telling me all the hook ups this app has lead to for them and their friends, and I realize, this is why people don't talk, they have no need to. We have evolved with our technology to the point where we use a cell phone as an extra appendage, and dating has become a passive thing we do from behind a screen. I admit I can be shy when it comes to real-life interaction, and I don't frown upon the swinger lifestyle, but this method of "dating," if you will, seems a bit unattached and frankly, weird. I mean I guess it's a way for cheep college kids to not pay a prostitute, or get drunk in order to have some "fun." If you want to judge it for yourself, or are looking to shag a hot single in your area, go to the app store and get the Tinder app, its free. Happy Lurking, my friends.
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