tinder

Since that night, I would think back to that moment and feel ashamed that I didn’t insist louder or stop sooner, but at the same time, should I have had to? 

I’d been joking for some time that my Berkeley goggles were in the mail, but the truth of the matter was that after four months of school, I still hadn’t acclimated to the general populous who gravitated towards the Holy Trifecta of Hinge, Bumble and Tinder in Alameda County.

After a lifetime of friendship and three years of dating, you get to know someone pretty well and stop thinking about all the nuances between the sheets. So, I had yet to learn how foreign it would be to actually hook up with someone different.

I have never been a huge fan of dating apps. In fact, I had sworn off of them several months ago, after another relationship with someone I had met online had dramatically imploded.

It’s an embarrassing and dangerous place; we've all had moments where we were thinking with our dicks instead of our brain.

Before coming to Berkeley , I had kissed more girls than guys, and if we’re being honest, that ratio hasn’t changed much since. Kissing your friends is normal, or so 17-year-old me thought. Kisses are silly and meaningless, which has allowed my closeted self to kiss basically every single girl I’m close to, from dorm friends to sorority sisters. 

This summer, my imagination has arrived, like the truncating tick of a Technicolor pinwheel, at the following isosceles triangle: I want a man to play me in a naked game of chess.

Soon enough, I fell into the never ending cycle of swiping, chatting and unmatching because I was addicted to words of affection from 24-year-old men that knew absolutely nothing about me. 

So, growing up with hearing only horror stories — and now hearing only the fairy tales — begs the question in my mind: Are dating apps really that bad?