Mayank Shekhar: Love me Tinder, love me true

Tinder makes one introspect on whatrsquos a dealbreaker in dating PicGetty ImagesLike you Irsquom in a relationship with my phone Except my situation is a lot more literal Over the past few months of navigating on Tinder currently the worldrsquos most addictive timepass for single people mdash swiping leftright to random picture postcards on the cellphone mdash I have gone from being a complete stranger to someone making a match befriending sharing intimate thoughts getting even closer developing comfort level to gradually an ever widshyening communication gap minor upheavals in the relationship and finally a breakupThis without even having ever met the person Maybe because there was just no time to meet or perhaps even less inclination from either endHave dating apps wholly redefined rules of human contact Have they liberated us from the burden of intshyense relationships mdash possessiveness being the flipside of love mdash and potential heartbreak Too soon to tellHerersquos what itrsquos done for me Vastly expanded my circle of female acquaintances mdash from highschool teacher owner of a hosiery products company flight attendant real estate agenthellip Theyrsquore all out there oddly willing to share lifersquos experiences with a person who isnrsquot too sure is even a proper journalistWhatrsquos changed Have women just become more open to sharing space with unknown men if itrsquos within a socially distant yet sufficiently close corner of a cellphone Possibly This is a new privilege especially for the Indian man God knows hersquos lived under the shroud of a really bad reppress often clubbed together en mass as the creep mdash the stranger who tactlessly expresses his sexual desire to a woman on the street at a barhouseparty on the train by the busstopYeah that stranger is danger Women have rightly exercised precaution shunning him and the few lsquogood menrsquo as a result preferring to remain secure in the company of family and friends from school college or the professional network Even chatrooms of the early Internet mdash the precursor to Tinder mdash were chiefly populated by men some of whom even pretended to be womenSure my experience with Tinder has been an interesting mix Irsquove pissed off one person for sure mdash in Lucknow asking the girl ldquoWoah frickin eh women in Lucknow also on Tinderrdquo Khatam Irsquove been surprised by sudden spike in the looks department while swiping in Ludhiana The women showing up on my screen were from Lahore which is only 160 kilometres away so much for banning Pakistani artistesThen there was this woman who within a minute of a match on a lark in the dead of the night showed up at my apartment door only to reveal that she wasnrsquot the picture Irsquod seen on the app turning this into a bizarre blind date with me halfwishing I was blind in the first placeFrivolities aside Tinder makes one seriously introspect on whatrsquos a dealbreaker in dating And I donrsquot mean this by way of colour caste religion etc One would like to believe the evolved of the species are past that already okay thatrsquos another conversation I mean it more along the lines of mdash drinkernondrinker morning personnight personAnd well this moment of epiphany that occurs as they all do while I am stoned in Banaras imagining a replica of the Eiffel Tower lit in pink which actually turns out to be true near Assi ghat and my phone beeps The girl who I could have met for a bit in Delhi on my way back writes ldquoHey you remember the car accident Irsquod told you aboutrdquo ldquoOf courserdquo ldquoI didnrsquot tell you this but since wersquore meeting I lost my legs in that crashrdquo My heart sinks I begin to reexamine my conscience There is silence on the screen And then she writes ldquoI was kiddingrdquo Irsquom sorry This is not a jokeBesides several floozies and a couple of psychos and married men that theyrsquove accidentally encountered my female friendsrsquo experiences on Tinder oscillate between ldquoItrsquos funrdquo to ldquotoo laboriousrdquo None of their lsquoTinder relationshipsrsquo last beyond a month tops Sensing an inherent flaw in an app thatrsquos designed like a slotmachine with people playing to win and then going back to swipe more rather than message and settle on the person that matched Hinge Tinderrsquos main rival recently revamped its platform to make it more about peoplersquos personalities rather than looks Judging someone on personality over physical features is also a judgment by the wayI donrsquot know how many people go to Hinge Herersquos what they donrsquot get about Tinder Itrsquos not about building intense relations Itrsquos about validation God knows how many men and Irsquom sure women seek that all their life And then therersquos this gent I meet at the party bragging about how he swipes left to all the hot women on the app Theyrsquove rejected me forever This is my power I reject them Dodo she doesnrsquot knowMayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture He tweets mayankw14 Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycom