One thing I’ve grown to dislike about social media is the way in which it alters our perception of what makes something important. When we are offered only a few bits of information, for example on somebody’s online profile, it skews how we perceive something, or someone. Yet, if we had the opportunity to meet someone in person to learn all the things we know instantly from an online profile, we would likely form a different impression and make different decisions.
One night I was out with some friends. At some point in the evening the conversation turned to dating and Tinder. A couple people at the table were using the app. I was curious to try it. One of the guys was nice enough to let me make some decisions on his behalf.
Tinder is a popular online dating app that makes picking a potential mate like a game. Users create a profile by loading up pictures and sometimes write something small about themselves or what they are looking for. The user selects a proximity range and is then offered a profile of their preferred gender which s/he must accept (swipe right) or reject (swipe left) to get to the next profile.
While perusing the profiles and swiping I was really surprised how judgmental and critical I became based on a handful of pictures and a few sentences of text. For example, one woman had terrible grammar in her profile description. To me that was an immediate left swipe. My personal feeling about people who can’t take the time to proofread their online profiles is that they are not worth my time.
However, if I really hit it off with a man I met in person and then sent me a message with a few mistakes, I would probably be more forgiving. Whereas if the messages happened in a digital environment before meeting it would likely result in instant rejection.
The man who let me swipe for him told me he instantly rejected women who didn’t have at least two profile pictures. This is yet another example of how we place great emphasis and weight on small things to make decisions. I also wonder how the volume of available options impacts our criteria. Maybe if we had less options on dating apps we might be more generous towards people with bad grammar or only one profile picture.
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