#also fiddling with selfie angle pictures on this size is fun

[pas-si-fleur]

Girlfriends :)

[sublimeexistence]

What if your dad’s on Tinder?

Falling somewhere between the purgatory that is the week inbetween Christmas and the New Year in combination with my status as the eternally taken member of the group got me thinking of dating sites and the dynamic they hold.

It is now considered that 50 million people have used dating apps at some point in the last year. I, however, have not found myself swiping right for over 3 years. So I wonder; What is it like to chat people up online these days and are the guys like? 

My indisputably scientific interest in the matter prompted me to download Tinder, much to my boyfriend’s ignorance. Having an unlimited array of available men at my fingertips did feel a lot like online shopping. The app gives an initial first look at the eligible bachelor and should it lead to further intrigue into their character it allows a short biography, mostly comprised by sexual innuendos and an odd passion for pizza. Not that there’s anything sexy about pizza, however.

A definite drawback to my endeavor was the wear off of the initial enthusiasm to boredom quicker than expected. Not wanting to chat with anyone, mostly due to the app’s reputation and my previous experience using it, but also due to feeling a little uncomfortable using a dating app whilst in a relationship, I started fiddling with the settings.

My initial preferences had been men in their early 20s. Having discovered the slider, however, opened up a world of possibility. After spending another 10 minutes looking at beautiful young women and a staggering amount of couples looking for a third party I got bored once more.

This time,I thought, let’s try older. So it turns out that men aged 40 and over in my area that seek to find true love or more probably ‘friends and fun’, as they put it, were in abundance. Women that age, on the other hand, were 0. Turns out your mum isn’t really interested in getting laid at her age.

Dad, however, was a different story. Looking through the middle aged catalogue of South Manchester’s Tinder had to offer was extremely cliched and very dad like. Men as old as 65 looking for women ‘sized 8 to 10 to start a small family in Barbados’ when clearly typing from the indoors of a Stockport semi detached. 

It was pretty much exactly what you would expect; middle aged men looking to get lucky reliant on their photos of family holidays in Thailand and formal photos clearly used in a company or institution’s website. The older men, on the other hand, offered the most humorous profiles. It’s exactly what you’d picture your father’s Tinder profile would be; Old photos from their 30s and a variety of blurry, shaky, 2007 camera phone selfies in dirty mirrors or shirtless photos half of which showcased more of the bathroom than the belly flab.

Sitting across my boyfriend writing this, I wonder; Is this the destiny of average hot guys in the end, or will men eventually figure out their angles, Ryland Adams style?