Tindering for Friends? You have a Brain Disease.
Anyone who uses a dating app for the sole purpose of finding friends is a psychopath.
Okay, perhaps psychopath is a little strong, and not quite accurate, but there is something deeply mentally wrong with these people.
As a semi-hermitic introvert who is not fond of crowds, and does not ever go to bars and such, but who wants relationships, sex, intimacy, partnership, the natural resort is using dating apps. Meeting people through dating apps is a numbers game, one that requires inhuman patience. The amount of swiping, reading, writing messages that will often not receive reply can be fruitlessly time-consuming and frustrating. And the experience is made more so by the excess of inscrutable time-wasters on the apps. I’m not talking only of bots, catfishers, and those with severe self-esteem disorders who sign on to apps and post their photos purely with the intent of getting “likes” as a sad yearning for ersatz validation, though each of those is problematic and annoying. What I’m talking about are the people who use apps like Tinder, Bumble, Hinge, OKCupid, and the myriad others I haven’t yet subjected myself to, because they are “just looking for friends.”
I like friends. Friends are great. Everyone should have friends. But this is not the way to go about finding them, you strange, strange person. There are all manner of ways to make friends. I can barely go to work, go grocery shopping, or out walking my dog without deflecting the advances of someone trying to be my friend. Sure, it can be difficult to make friends. Lifestyle, work, and busy schedules can make it difficult to go out and find a buddy to chat with about literature, weather, small-batch artisan home methamphetamine manufacturing, whatever non-sexy things normal people talk about, but dating apps aren’t the way to find those people.
In my swiping and scrolling, I’ve seen profile after profile with blurbs like: “Just here looking for friends.” ; “Already in a relationship, only looking for new friends to hang out with.” ; “Not here for sex, already got that covered, friends only.”
Why would you go on an app meant for “romantic” matchmaking, set up so that users make decisions based primarily on superficial attraction, for the purpose of finding a platonic friend? That is not what the app is for. Why would you think that? What’s wrong with you? You have a brain disease.
Using dating apps for the purpose finding friends is like going into a restaurant and roving from table to table asking diners if they’ve got a cigarette you can bum off them; you’re in the wrong place, doing something weird that you should not be doing, annoying people, and everyone wants you to leave.
Worse than coming across some otherwise attractive, but obviously brain-diseased, person on an app who states they’re only there to make friends, is striking up conversation with someone who makes no disclaimer about what they’re looking for in their profile or in talks, then makes a date with you, and in the course of the date says that they’re not looking for any kind of relationship, that they just wanted a friend to hang out with, thus nullifying the legitimacy of the date. What’s the matter with you? And why did you allow me to pay for your muffin? I’m happy to buy a muffin for an actual friend, but not for some weirdo stranger I’ve only just met and who misled me through the pretense of a date.
If you’re having trouble meeting friends in real life, there are apps and websites that can help you with that, and they’re not Tinder.
Again, this is not an indictment against friendship. Yay, friendship. I don’t like dating people I am not otherwise friends with. I like to start and end relationships as friends. If I don’t like you enough for us to carry decent conversations, I probably won’t stick it out long enough for us to have sex, and I don’t pursue relationships purely for sex. But, what I am looking for, through the use of dating apps, is a friend to have sex with. That’s what they’re for.