Pat Benatar said Love is a battlefield. I disagree.
Love is one of the only socially accepted forms of madness. Dating however, that’s the real battlefield.
Casualties fall on both sides, blood is drawn, you assume the role of both the victim and assailant. All is fair in love and war (someone important once said) well I disagree, neither love nor war is fair, I’m sure that quote is so much deeper than I’m able to understand but my views on both love and war are less than romantic.
I date a lot, a victim of my own generation, a genuine child of the revolution (the social media revolution) I date people met mostly through dating apps, like tinder, or plenty of fish (POF). Gone are the days of blind dates, and meeting people through mutual friends. I’m not saying that you can’t find relationships the ‘old fashioned way’ it’s just that it’s becoming increasingly less frequent. We’ve become desensitised, sex is now at the forefront of our mind when it comes to dating, tinder an app intended to meet like minded singletons is in it’s very nature a catalogue for potential sexual partners. You create an account through your facebook, upload your five best photos and then BOOM! You’re out there, in the cyber world of dating, people flick through profiles and if they like the look of you then they swipe right (right for yes left for no) meanwhile you scrawl through the hundreds of profiles trying to find someone that catches your attention. All of this is based on physical appearance, yes theres a short bio, I think 500 characters, but in my experience people don’t bother reading that. Almost on autopilot we just swipe away, left, left, left, left, the occasional right swipe for the hot one using their holiday snap to show off that beach body blended with a perfect tan and the hint that they’re well travelled, or fun!
Then it happens, a beam of light stretches from the sky down onto your phone as the notification pops up “congratulations you have a new match”. This for the tinder virgins is when you have swiped right (yes) to a person and they’ve said yes to you too. So you have the match, you both find one another attractive you’ve had a look through their photos and deemed them acceptable, but what now?
Imagine you’re at a bar, or a club and you see someone you find attractive, and lets pretend for a second you’re one of those freaks of nature with the confidence to approach them. So you walk over introduce yourself and offer to buy them a drink? Within seconds of talking you can already read each others body language, you easily pick up on social cues of humour, it either flows naturally or it doesn’t. But this way at least you both know if you’re comfortable and enjoying the situation. Tinder lacks that human component, even the wittiest chat up line is wasted because you don’t experience their reaction, there is no way to know how well or how badly you’re received. Sometimes the conversation flows quite naturally and you both enjoy typing to one another, but there’s still the awkward moment of explaining that the last smart arsed remark you made was just a ‘joke’ there’s still a moment of silence in the conversation as you wait for a response or try to think of one.
Anyway like I said I date a lot, and I’m an avid tinder user. I swipe when I’m bored, I swipe when I’m horny, drunk, sober, at work, at uni, on the bus, when I wake up, before I go to sleep. It’s bloody addictive (maybe I’m just chasing that sweet first ‘match’ high) and I can honestly say I’ve enjoyed using it, and enjoyed meeting the people I’ve met through it. But that brings me back to the original point of this post, the dating world is a horrible, intimidating environment. One that no person should travel lightly, if you’re just looking for sex, fantastic, but your date might not be.
So I’ve decided I’m going to begin documenting my future dating experiences whilst also looking back on some past ones, mostly awkward and in hindsight quite funny but with the odd one or two stories that are quite sweet memories I actually enjoy revisiting. Hopefully I’m not alone in the experiences I’m about to share.
The Black Book 