In my last column, I told you guys I was celebrating one year of “Swipe Right” by playing matchmaker over Tinder for my friend Kaitlyn. Here are some things I’ve learned.
1.) People don’t forget it’s you.
When your whole brand is Tinder-related and you’re likely the only hijabi most people in the area have ever seen and most definitely the only one they’ve seen on Tinder, they tend to remember you. Already, I’ve had one person ask if he’s going to end up in another Tinder article and another complain that he doesn’t want to meet Kaitlyn because he’s still waiting on his date with me. He was promptly unmatched. I’ve had people swipe just because they want to end up in an article. It would appear that masochism and desperation go hand in hand.
2.) Matchmaking is awkward, no matter the platform.
Midway through our horrible social experiment, Kaitlyn stumbled across another route to her soulmate. She airdropped chicken nugget pictures to everyone within range. Though I doubt this will become standard and accepted practice any time in the near future, it’s been an admirable effort with surprisingly fruitful results when it works. When it doesn’t work… Well. Being rejected is bad; having your nuggets rejected is downright heartbreaking.
3.) Sometimes, in spite of your best intentions and desire to find your friend her soulmate, your horrible personality comes through.
There’s a level of trust and confidence here that I’m not entirely comfortable with, if I’m being honest. I have mentioned, time and time again, that the love plot in my novel just kind of falls through – there is no resolution there. I know next to nothing about love; I know even less about good relationships. To make matters worse, I’m boring and easily irritated. It’s only a matter of time, then, that those less-than-welcoming personality traits shine through and obliterate Kaitlyn’s chances with Hattiesburg’s male population.
4.) Playing with people’s lives, no matter how humorously, is probably still not a great thing to do.
If I were to pick an Austen novel to best represent my college years, it’d be “Emma.” For you non-literary folk unfamiliar with this masterpiece, the movie “Clueless” is a modern film adaptation. Basically, a girl thinks she’s good at matchmaking, proceeds to ruin others’ lives, ruins her own, and yet somehow ends up with the boy by the end of the story. Replace the boy at the end with a mozzarella stick and you’ll understand why I say Austen had human disasters like me in mind while she wrote this story.
