I used to think that single people who didn’t use dating apps were somehow superior—that they didn’t need dating apps because they spend all day dodging IRL flirts. Now I know that there are plenty of very lame reasons one might self-disqualify from dating apps. Perhaps your phone is very old, and freezes whenever you try to swipe right—stuck on Jeff, 29, forever. Perhaps you were rejected from Raya and it made you bitter towards the whole concept. Or perhaps your Tinder type sucks.
I became aware of Tinder types after a friend of mine, newly single and on a Tinder rampage, went on bad dates with three Frenchmen in a row. Whenever she came across a Gaspard or a Guillaume she Tinder-flirted like his baguette was the only baguette in the world, only to be totally underwhelmed when they met in person. There’s nothing wrong with the French (besides the obvious)—it’s just that Frenchness is a totally arbitrary criterion for selecting a mate. Mon amie has a Tinder type, and God help her, he is French.
Dating apps have shivved how we think about types. In my parents’ day, when you met people at parties, in the office, or on blind dates, you were a lot more likely to meet the same kind of person over and over. Within that relatively homogeneous group of people, you developed preferences organically, and those preferences congealed into a type. Then we all got Tinder, and suddenly we were meeting wildcards whom we never would have met through friends or work. With dating apps, my type didn’t have to be “men one might meet at R.E.I.” My type could be French people! Or physicists! My type could also be very, very bad.
Nothing about my life suggests that I would interact frequently with banker bros. I actively avoid Equinoxes and bars associated with a college, any place finance types might go. And yet, inexplicably, banker bros are my Tinder type. I had never considered banker bros a romantic option until Tinder, and next to all the dudes who fit my traditional type, the banker bros looked so exotic. Whenever I went a-swiping, I ended up with a horrifying lineup of matches: banker bros in cornflower blue shirts double-fisting at P.J. Clarke’s, banker bros on boats, banker bros doing Tough Mudders. A disproportionate number of my matches were named Mark.
I, too, am someone's bad Tinder type. There are definitely men out there who just can't understand why they keep going for these sharp-witted, cynical blonde editors (of very prestigious magazines) with amazing legs. You'll know when you're someone's bad Tinder type because your initial conversations on the app are like pushing rope. You struggle to think of a clever opening line and end up asking "Are you in Zion in your third picture?" You have nothing in common. You don't find each other funny. You agree to meet up anyway (the pull of the bad Tinder type is strong) and you both realize your error five minutes into your date. You never speak again.
When you meet someone in the wild you have so much more information to help you decide if you’re going to get along with that person. You can tell how confident they are and how tall they are. You can tell whether they have that one ephemeral quality that you can never put your finger on, but which binds all your exes together. Because dating apps limit the clues you get about a person, your criteria become very weird. As a woman swiping on Tinder, my number one criterion is my safety: The most attractive man on Tinder is the one who looks least likely to kill me. I am especially drawn to men wearing fleeces and other non-threatening materials—I bet Harvey Weinstein doesn’t own a fleece. I never ever swipe right on men wearing sunglasses in all their pictures. Once, on Tinder, I came across a man I’d already dated. In real life I knew him to be a gentle, attractive outdoorsman, but I never would have dated him if I’d only been able to judge from his photos. He looked really creepy on Tinder.
We curate our dating app identities the same way we curate all our social media identities: with very little self-awareness. We also curate our types. Whiskey, travel, and laughter-loving woman seeks man who enjoys fishing, money, and the gym. It’s a match made in fake heaven. There are great things about people trying out new types: A recent study found that an increase in online dating corresponds to an increase in interracial marriages. A friend who came out last year told me that she would have felt too shy to flirt with women without dating apps. Sometimes your Tinder type is way better for you than your IRL type.
Sometimes it’s banker bros.
