So you’ve spent 15,000 hours swiping through the stank jungle that is Tinder, hoping to chance upon the gurrrl of your dreams. Good for you, putting all that hard work in! Look at you go! You’re not succeeding at Tinder unless your thumb has been worn to a nubbin.
There’s also the relatively new dating app, HER, catering to female-identifying humans who like each other. It works much the same way. The app presents to you a veritable buffet of nearby women and you get to pick and choose who you wanna bang, based on what they look like.
A lot of Sydney queers have been forced to flee from their natural habitats due to the changing landscape of the city’s nightlife. Changing cultural and social attitudes around homos have also helped to blur the once clearly segregated gay and straight worlds. This means y’all are tucked away, cruising through your phones. That’s all good, but in my experience, hook-up apps promise way more than they deliver. Except Grindr, but that’s an exception we won’t delve into.
The number one complaint I hear from women who use these apps: “We matched, but why is nobody saying anything? Why is nobody talking?”
Well. These apps are like games. You see something you like, so you swipe. If they like you back and it’s a match, you get a sweet sweet hit of dopamine come dribbling out of your brain – success!
If you keep swiping, somebody else might like you too; then you get that cute dopamine rush again.
Now, you could stop to enjoy this match, maybe chat her up, say hi or something – or you could continue chasing the dragon. If you keep swiping, somebody else might like you too; then you get that cute dopamine rush again. Who the hell needs to talk to somebody when you’ve got the most perfect slot-machine-esque trap in the world keeping you swiping rather than typing?
The reality is we’re always wondering what’s around the corner. It seems to be a natural curiosity we’ve all got. Contentment can wait, so long as we have the means to discover perhaps a greater pleasure, just a few swipes away.
Connecting with people takes work, and when we’ve got the convenience of these apps, even the barest communication seems like a tonne of effort. It might get you to ask yourself why you use these things in the first place. I’m sure most like the idea of meeting someone with minimal bullshit and maximum return; the problem comes from our stupid monkey brain being too distracted by the method to, y’know, make the most of it.
So you’ve matched with the Mega Babe (what I call the chick who disrupts your brain activity long enough to get you to stop swiping and consider typing), more babin’ than all the other babes you’ve matched with. You decide this is the one. This is the person you’ll say hi to. So you do. Chances are she says nothing back. Or maybe you’ll get the awful, awkward, back and forth “heys” and “sups” with nothing more happening.
It could be that this Mega Babe is doing what just you were doing before – swiping cruelly, mercilessly, shattering your self-esteem with her non-committal “yeah not much wbu?” before disappearing forever. Maybe you haven’t stopped her clock, so she’s still prowling around, validated by her million silent matches, urged on by the promise of her own Mega Babe.
Seriously though, these apps are designed to be used repeatedly – they’ll always titillate you with the promise of someone hotter, of someone smarter and more suited to you. You might never get there, though, because that same mechanism also doesn’t allow you to stop long enough to find out.
This Week
On Wednesday May 24, the State Parliament of New South Wales is hosting the GLORIAs awards night. Now in their eighth year, the GLORIAs shine a light on outrageous, ridiculous and ignorant comments made about our LGBTI citizens every day. Join Penny Sharpe and a special guest host for a night of fun and fabulousness. Tickets are available now.
On Saturday May 27, get down to the Imperial Hotel in Erskineville for a queer full venue takeover. Girlthing and Boything in partnership with Vivid Music are presenting Painting With Lights, an interactive paint party featuring local and interstate artists. Girlthing will be partying in the basement with FlexMami, The Magda Szubanskis, Willo, Mowgli May and Girlthing DJs with live performances from Venus Vamp and more. Meanwhile, Boything will be in the Cabaret Room, featuring Wonky Disko Orchestra, Hidden City, Troy Beman and Dunny Minogue with a live performance from Marzi Panne and Josie Baker plus more.
Also on Saturday May 27 and back by popular demand, Glitta Supernova brings her award-winning show, Body Map, to Giant Dwarf in Redfern. With psychedelic, satirical, personal and political storytelling, Body Map is a deep dive across the consumer bordered planet and into our inner being.
