On Swiping Right in the Pandemic

Before the pandemic, I was a Never-Tinder-er. Like my Republican counterparts (a phrase I never thought I’d type), I was convinced that being single was better than falling to such algorithm-sorted depths. Not that Never-Trumpers thought being President-less was better than Trump. They wanted Cancún-setting Ted Cruz, whom Princeton students, myself included, petitioned the university to effectively disown as an alum after his attempts to block the transition of power to Biden. 

But these days, aside from watching paparazzi footage of a sheepish Ted going through security at Cancún airport to return to Texas, I’ve also been scrolling through potential dates on Hinge. Hinge bills itself as “the dating app designed to be deleted”; whether out of satisfaction or boredom remains to be seen.

I resisted dating apps for the classic anti-dating app reasons: discomfort at treating people as two-dimensional options on my screen; evaluating people mainly on one, superficial dimension; basing that judgement on a handful of carefully framed, perfectly lit, likely Facetuned pictures. And participating in that game myself. Uploading the few pictures where the light catches the highlighter on my cheekbones and my skin is clear as fresh honey when I spent most of 2020 in sweatpants and glasses.

Like almost everyone else, the only new people I “met” during lockdown were delivery men, who earn ₹80 ($1.10) to bring me sundaes worth four times the amount. I go downstairs, taking a tissue to press the lift buttons. He hands me the bag. I thank him. I return to my fifteenth-floor apartment. 

It’s a blessing to be young in a pandemic disproportionately fatal for older populations. Yet a small, petulant part of me can’t help feeling that my generation has lost some of the best years of our lives sitting on the couch at home, scraping the spices clumped at the bottom of chips packets. In my head, the twenty-year-olds of earlier generations jump into a convertible and drive to the only pizza place in town, where they sit across each other at teal Formica tables and share ice cream sodas. This white American suburban vision is probably lifted from Back to the Future or Archie comics, and American teenagers of the 70s were likely worrying about the Vietnam draft, but these facts aren’t enough to dispel the fantasy. 

For years I clung to the belief that I would serendipitously meet someone with whom conversation was fun and effortless, around whom time slipped off and drained away. Instead I participate in multiple conversations a day, most of which go like this:

Her: you’re so pretty!

Me: thank you, so are you

Her: thanks ☺

With men:

Him: you’re so pretty!

Me: thank you ☺

In the evenings, I scroll through a rolodex of men who are alternately flexing their abs in the mirror or crushing their teeth into their skulls to make their jawlines jump. I ran out of women on the second day. I match with a few of them. Then I switch apps to Amazon because I need toothpaste. 

Scientists say that love is definitively, overwhelmingly good for us. The benefits of being in a romantic relationship range from less depression to better immune function. Some studies have also found that screen time and social media are bad for mental health. Yet in the pandemic you can’t find love without checking your notifications multiple times a day, unless you already live with your loved one, in which case, congratulations. 

A major reason the average person spends three hours a day on their phone is that social media, which forms the bulk of phone use, is built to exploit the human need for social approval. I feel compelled to check WhatsApp several times a day in a way I don’t with the Wallet app. The urge to check if your friends went out without you or if anyone commented that you’re beautiful is too strong to resist, and Instagram knows it. Partly due to documentaries like Netflix’s The Social Dilemma, there’s increasing awareness about the fact that social media is deliberately addictive because more screen time means more data about consumers collected and sold to third parties for advertising. It feels intuitively unethical that my elemental desire to be liked, to have people I share long-running inside jokes with, should pay for Zucc’s eleventh home. But if capitalising on the human need for society feels wrong, what about companies profiting off users’ yearning to know what e.e. cummings meant when he wrote “i carry your heart with me (i carry it in / my heart)”?

In September last year, nine months into the pandemic, Hinge reported that it expected to triple its revenue in 2020. Tinder expected to make $1.4 billion. Dating app use in general has shot up since the pandemic began. This makes perfect sense but also not. We are, after all, under stay-at-home orders. 

Yet I’m one of the millions of new dating app downloads. Maybe I didn’t need to modernise my idea of love to accept dating apps but look to the past. People in India have been assessing the suitability of a life partner by appraising palm-sized photographs much before Tinder hit the App Store. During the arranged marriage process, young people were shown pictures of eligible spouses who had been screened for caste, class and family respectability. A relative of mine found his son was being constantly harassed by a teacher. When he and his wife scheduled a parent-teacher meeting, he realised the teacher was a woman whose picture he had turned down for marriage. I don’t want to imagine the intimidation that would occur if Tinder notified people when someone swiped left. 

Though Tinder is known mainly for hook-ups, Hinge is supposed to foster more meaningful connections. To make a Hinge profile, you have to upload multiple pictures and answer a few prompts (“The dorkiest thing about me is…”). I often swipe left without reading even the first of these. In just a few weeks, I have become the kind of dating app user who made me stay off these apps in the first place. When I made my profile, I set it to women only despite lingering suspicion that I might be attracted to men as well. The idea of men evaluating my attractiveness made my heart crimp with anxiety, as if the decision of these anonymous men would form a decree on whether I’m good-looking or not. Heterosexual relationships are so heavily scripted that I feel myself slip into a role every time I interact with a man who could conceivably be attracted to me. I hear my voice get higher as I dismiss my achievements, my laugh bubble up at their tired jokes. I hate the sweet pliability of my speech, like a strip of candy I’m trying to shape for a bespoke customer. I don’t even like most of these men.  

But even those filler conversations, light as confetti, are better than nothing. Social connection can’t be poured into a glass; no doctor can quantify how much we need per day. That’s partly why I decided, using my own slippery scale, that I deserved to go to a party last weekend. It was the first one I’ve gone to since I flew home in March 2020. The music was low, the living room mostly empty. I barely danced, which used to take up most of my time at pre-pandemic parties. We sat on lawn chairs in the garden outside and watched a grid of clouds skim the purple sky. 

I live with my immunocompromised grandfather. India was experiencing the start of a devastating second wave at the time. And yet I can’t remember the last time I felt so alive, leaning back in that wicker chair, like a human instead of an image trapped in Hinge’s deck of square cards. 

At the party I met a girl with a steady coolness and hoop earrings so big I could’ve put my wrist through them. She was unperturbed while I laughed and talked a bit too loudly next to her. When she spoke her words were sharply funny, like the dart of a whip. I got her number from a friend and texted her the next day. She responded almost immediately. An entire month of swiping couldn’t give me what I found the first time I went out.  

If this girl had popped up on my Hinge, I would have swiped left. I want to pretend this isn’t true, but it is. She’s heavy-set and my height, with the attraction of being neither taller nor shorter. On Hinge I swipe within seconds, an almost subconscious decision as soon as I register the image. This girl’s attractiveness is the kind I felt, standing under the paper lamp in the porch, watching the dim light glance off those silver hoops. And it just might make me delete Hinge.

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