Debate: Tinder

By Jake and Glenn

Tinder, like Plenty Of Fish and Silk Road before it, has revolutionized online dating.  Dispensing with the well thought out religious-based personality matchmaking of sites like EHarmony or the crude religious-based sexual matchmaking of JDate, Tinder allows us to interact while simultaneously embracing both our most base and most romantic natures.  People that in a previous generation would have been consigned to a sanitorium for the rest of their lives can now “swipe right” and enjoy the same thrills of despair and rejection as people without crippling social anxiety.  Today Jake and Glenn return to the debate forum with a long awaited dialogue on online dating app Tinder.  Please don’t “swipe left.”

Jake: After my marriage fell apart like a house of cards or, rather, like the Netflix original program House of Cards, Tinder was the first place I turned to find a date. As a non-drinker, it can be difficult to meet a person to spend time with in a romantic way.  Plus, as a man who is not a rapist, I would never have sex with a drunk person unless they had given me consent while sober. This is why Phi Beta Pi revoked my membership, even after I had paid my dues and purchased 30 togas. Tinder has allowed me to swipe right into dating without having to leave the comfort of my favorite crying chair.

Glenn: I love that there’s an app that allows you to directionally swipe with your obese thumb, but I can’t support Tinder.  Tinder is an app that forces men (and presumably women) to make snap judgments on other people not based on their religion or where they went to college but purely on looks.  For a burn victim like me, this is a harrowing prospect, but I’m also not sure what it says about our society.  A perfectly respectable site like OKCupid, which I’ve used to date several Roma women, was already effective for meeting people.  You answered a few questions, gave a sperm sample, uploaded a shirtless picture and you were ready to go.  It was simple, but detailed enough you could judge on personality too. With Tinder, it’s only one picture that most people will swipe away but the ugliest among us will swipe right into their hearts.

Jake: I have learned several shocking things from Tinder (JFK's involvement in the moon landing, the ending of Princess Diaries 2, and who assassinated Bruiser Brody), but the most shocking thing I have learned is that I am fairly handsome. After being with a closeted lesbian for ten years, this was a truly shocking revelation. Though, the most attractive woman I have went on a date with I met at the comedy club after she had an anxiety attack when Heywood Banks made fun of her for finding his gentle guitar comedy boring. My point is this: Tinder can boost your self esteem based purely on looks.

Glenn: I feel for people with low self-esteem.  Although it’s not an issue I face, I understand the appeal of an app that makes you believe other people think you’re hot.  But what about those who you swipe left for?  The obese, the chronically engaged, the beef eaters?  What of their self esteem?  Recent statistics show that the vast majority of suicides stem from users not getting chosen on Tinder.  “A small price to pay for my own happiness!” you might exclaim while roughly chewing on a delicious roast beef sandwich from Hardee’s.  But most people don’t want any more blood on their hands than what they already have from participating in the meat-industrial complex.

Jake: The only roast beef I will be chewing on, sir, is the kind that sits between a lady’s legs.  This type of lady is the type I will meet on Tinder.  I will swipe right on the app and then swipe my tongue across her glistening pussy.  All of the HPV in the world can’t slow me down.  Yet, as the only writer on this site who has not contracted HPV, I do feel left out.  Tinder is fun.  It’s a game where you swipe people according to whether or not you would want to make love to them.  Then you talk to them and ask them if they’re going to catfish you.  If they say they’re not going to catfish you, you meet up with them and give them oral sex.  Then neither of you ever talk to each other again.  It’s the perfect system.  There’s also a chance that you might get your first kiss and that would be pretty neat-o.

Glenn: I too would like to have my first kiss.  For all the cunnilingus I’ve performed (and, arguably, received) I’ve never actually had that experienced so beautifully dramatized in Drew Barrymore’s hit film Never Been Kissed (1999). My debate opponent previously stated that the best looking human who agreed to a date was from real life, not Tinder.  But what would she have done if she saw you wearing a tuxedo shirt and novelty eyeglasses?  Swiped left, like an Arab man wiping his anus. I used to go on Hot or Not in the early 2000s and rate all the beautiful people as 1s and the ugly people as 10s.  Although I was on the site because pornography didn’t exist, that righteous feeling of righting what god did wrong sustained me through a very dark time.  Let that be a word of warning: the next person who swipes you right may be doing it for the wrong reasons.