Rachel Levy, Staff Writer

I heard that people just look for sex on Tinder, so I set out to see if it is true.  Short answer: it is. I gave into the new social trend of online dating to see what people do on these sites.  No, I did not sign up for eHarmony or Match.com (who needs real, long lasting relationships anyway?) I chose the hit it and quit it site: Tinder.

When you don’t have it – and you hear about it – it sounds far fetched. Let’s be real, sex is fun, but an app just to get it is a little crazy.  To get sex, guys use a lot of corny pickup lines, unwanted nudes, and creepy compliments. So what actually happened during my three days on Tinder?  I got 257 matches (go me) and about a hundred new messages.  I had a slight freak out when it listed me as 21, so my bio became “Plot twist I’m actually 19.”  

When I got questions about why I am on Tinder, I told them I came on to write to article.  When I asked guys, “Why Tinder?” A random Sean told me, “A friend hooked up with a girl from college,” so he decided to try it out.  Another guy I matched with, Andrew, said, “Well, I was bored and it’s fun talking to new people.”  There are a lot of the easy-going guys like Andrew that are just talkative people and want to talk and a lot more that have the same mindset as Sean and just want a quick hookup.

But then there were the few that thought aggression was the way into girl’s pants.  One guy for instance, called me gorgeous. I said, “I know.”  Apparently some guys don’t like confidence in a girl because, that made him call me ugly (boy, have you seen me?).  My response: tell him I’m perfect and too good for him.  He took that as his queue to talk about his penis size and what he would do to me with it.  I called him out, there’s no way someone is packing a fourteen-inch.  So I responded with something arrogant about how I’m perfect, and he took that as sending me messages about what he wanted to do to me.  I told him to stop and I wanted nothing to do with him, but he kept on going.  

I always see posts on Tumblr about guys being too aggressive with girls on social media and this was my first encounter with that aggression.  I figured I would come across the occasional SU student during my experience on Tinder but there are many, many, and many of you Shenandoah students on the site. Sports teams and conservatory “kids” were the biggest contenders.  I tried not to swipe right for the SU students but there were the few that I was either dared to swipe right for or it was just too tempting not to swipe right.  

It was interesting to see who I matched with on campus.  There were the guys I had class with but never actually spoken a word to, but we still matched.  There were my friends that I didn’t even know had Tinder.  And then there were the people I’ve never even seen before in my life (sorry conservatory kids, never met any of you but some of you are real cute).  It’s strange to find all these people walking around on the same campus essentially rating you and others based on your appearance in the five pictures you choose for your profile.  All this person knows about you is your looks.

My Tinder experience was three of my most interesting days in Winchester.  I didn’t meet up with anyone, but the act of talking with people in town and even on campus was fun and a confidence booster.  To even know there are that many people in tiny Winchester on Tinder makes you think, is this the future of dating?  What happened to meeting someone in class or at the coffee shop or finding a nice hookup at a party?  Social media and smartphones and filters are changing the game; if it is for the better or worse, well, we’ll soon find out.