Bumping into a Tinder match is terrifying

Tinder is still going strong, but the struggle still remains whether it can be classified as “real life” or not.

For girls like myself with over 600 matches (no biggie), the chances of actually encountering these boys in real life are ever present and, quite frankly, it gives me the fear.

In the early days of Tinder, in November 2013, a bouncer approached me outside a popular city centre hotspot. He (correctly) declared outright that we were matches (why did I like a 29-year-old bouncer??).

I was terrified by my first brush with the realities of Tinder so, whilst quickly denying any knowledge of the app, I ran away into the night. What a relief.

Progressing into January I was still nonchalantly playing the Tinder game, speaking to a few catches but with little intention to carry things further (i.e. never see these people in real life).

That’s when one evening I was confidently striding across the library and spotted a hot young thing out of the corner of my eye. Before my brain could even send any form of message to my mouth, I screeched “TINDER” with an accusing, pointed finger in this poor boy’s face, leading to a few minutes of awkward chit-chat and little conversation since. Well played, girl.

My most recent awkward Tinder encounter involves a guy I trolled so much that he blocked me, only to chance upon him a few weeks later with a friend who, as it turns out, had once kicked him out of bed in the middle of the night. We all politely kept our heads down.

Yet it seems that we aren’t all as unfortunate as me when it comes to meeting a Tinder-boy. A  certain (anonymous) friend of mine once met up with a boy from Tinder, only for him to write the majority of an essay for her, and then both go their separate ways never to meet again. Very well played, indeed.

But the underlining moral of the story here is that Tinder is not real life. Never should a male or female attempt to make contact with a tinderling, as they just aren’t real people who you should consider face to face contact.

Truer love could be found on the ground floor of Institute five minutes before closing. The hay-days of Tinder are over and we should all just go back to poking our crushes on Facebook like its 2010.