I have stopped writing here and am publishing over at Fountain Pen. You can subscribe there to follow along:
I met Anna atop a toilet seat. You see, I met Anna on Tinder, when I was atop a toilet seat. Anna was the first girl I ever met atop a toilet seat.
She was a Swedish girl who stood a self-reported five-foot-five. She had cold crystal blue eyes and blonde hair that fell in waves past her shoulders. Evidently, she had been surfing—though she was still learning—and liked dogs. She also seemed to like tight black dresses that emphasized her dimensions.
I was an Indian-American boy who stood a slightly fabricated five-foot-eleven. I had bright green eyes and brown hair that curled above my ears. Evidently, I had several friends and liked dogs. I also liked tight black dresses and attractive Swedish girls, but I only implicitly revealed this information.
Likely, it became explicit soon after, although I cannot remember exactly what I said to her because I felt nothing when I said it. However, I do remember that our conversation was both brief and curt: some chatter and then a sporadic series of “where are you?”s.
§
Two hours later, we were together. I met her by Union Square’s subway steps on a warm October night. She had her phone in her hand and was wearing a tight black dress and black boots that came up to her knees.
“I thought you would be taller,” she said.
“Thanks,” I replied.
We walked five blocks to an apartment party. She had a few drinks and I had more. Ninety minutes later, we took an Uber Pool in the direction of my apartment. To the ire of our driver, she refused to stop fiddling with his music. Three or four times, he scolded her when passion prompted her to turn up Avicii’s latest radio hit.
“There are other people in the car,” he said.
But Anna really could not help it. Eventually, he gave in and all of us—her up front, me in the back with a couple who did not care for Anna’s fidgety fingers—drove up Tenth Avenue listening to electronic hit after electronic hit.
Upstairs, everything proceeded quickly along the expected lines. Once we reached the end of them, I took out a book of TS Eliot poems I had recently purchased. I read her The Waste Land while she checked the quality of her manicure and tried to discern the exact white of my walls (eggshell) and listened to the slight hum of my refrigerator to determine if it was a signal of dilapidation.
“I had not thought death,” I continued with ardor growing by the word, “had undone so many—”
“Can we go back to bed?” she asked, her lips in a pout, her head cocked to the left.
I read the next line to myself—“Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled”—and looked up at her.
“Sure,” I said.
She left at eight o’clock the next morning in the same dress and heels of the night before. We never saw each other again. We never spoke again. Expected lines.
But I do still think of Anna fondly from time-to-time. She was my first and only experience on Tinder. She was the girl who inadvertently showed me that I should never use dating apps, not because the experience was bad, but only because of what constitutes their foundation.
I have stopped writing here and am publishing over at Fountain Pen. You can subscribe there to follow along:
The definition of bravery is the ability to face danger, fear, or difficulty.
Before Anna, I had always needed to take a risk with an attractive girl. Anxiety would climb up from my stomach to my throat—sometimes my voice would quaver, sometimes my hands would shake—and I would be full of an atavistic fear that still arises today.
I am not alone in that fear. Nearly every man I’ve spoken to is still filled with it—in spite of the eight beers sloshing around his stomach—because of how risky approaching a woman was in tribal times. Not only could rejection lead to a social ostracization that would make it harder to mate in the future, but the very act of talking to a taken woman could lead to a caveman depositing a rock on your head.
Despite the irrationality of the fear in today’s context, most men still feel the boulder looming, which was the insight that made Tinder successful. With Anna, there was no nervousness to speak of: technology had finally helped our brains catch up with the abundance of modern society. I could not feel rejection from her because of the application’s design: had Anna not responded, it would have been another. Tinder showed me that there was a sea of Annas, all accessible as long as you were equipped a well-tuned profile and a sinewy thumb up to the challenge.
Dating apps are similar to other modern “innovations” from the junk food that plays on our desire for the once-scarce sugar to the social media platforms that play on our craving for social validation and acceptance. Though there are certainly positives to these technologies, the removal of evolutionarily-coded frictions often has adverse consequences. Now, we die of obesity not starvation. Now, we feel alone despite having thousands of followers.
Since the advent of the internet, we’ve learned that it is easy to hijack our lizard brains, but it is not easy to do so satisfactorily without insidious effects. When technology makes pleasure more accessible or discomfort less painful, the negatives often flow from one place to another. By removing much of the traditionally-required courage from dating, Tinder has made us weaker because bravery—like any other muscle—atrophies when one does not exercise it regularly.
Avoiding opportunities to develop courage is a terrible idea. Bravery is more important than other qualities of body and mind because it is the cornerstone of a well-lived life. Courage enables us to uphold other virtues, and it is the defining factor of potential: much of the difference between what your life is and what it could be comes down to your valor in trying moments.
But all forms of modern technology make it easy to live a life that is entirely uncourageous, and it is no coincidence that we’ve reached the nadir of our collective heroism. Societies break down when courage is winnowed out of them—should we be surprised that our world is in pieces?
I have stopped writing here and am publishing over at Fountain Pen. You can subscribe there to follow along:
The definition of romance is a feeling of mystery, excitement, and remoteness from everyday life—an explanation so reductive that it is useless.
Romance, like many sensitive emotions, can only be understood through experience. Unfortunately, dating apps in tandem with modern culture and technology are making it more and more inaccessible—not only in sexual relationships, but in all aspects of life.
In the past, young adults went out to hear live music that played with their heartstrings—now it’s grinding to the Blue Remix. In the past, we stopped strangers to ask directions—now it’s Google Maps. In the past, we stumbled into small alluring restaurants—now it’s DoorDash.
Our distaste for immersing ourselves in the intricacies of life does not stop there. Dating—once the nucleus of the romantic experience—has been reduced to one million faceless faces; countless one-night stands under the guise of sexual empowerment; calculated dating decisions based on curated photographs and physical dimensions; the quota of flirtation before the bedroom.
As romance can still exist after the first encounter, perhaps it is possible to design a dating app that encourages it as Keeper is attempting to; yet in their current iteration nearly all of them are training us that sex without connection is the expectation, not the exception1. For a platform to successfully regain what we’ve lost, they must not only open us to emotion and train us out of our societal fetish for “body counts” the length of laundry lists, but also curate experiences that send butterflies fluttering with the same passion that used to be found in the Ritz Bar.
Until that day—if it ever comes—Hinge, Tinder, Bumble and the like will continue to be partially responsible for the death of romance, a genocide we must take seriously as it is one of the core reasons to live. Without romance there is less love, regret, remorse, happiness—at times exhilarating, at times painful—but always bringing us in deeper connection with the feelings that make us human. Today we are moving towards a world where many of us only have a seed of this spirit inside of them, locked up in a solitary walled garden, nearly impossible to reach.
§
Bravery and romance are forces that are too strong to be wiped out at once. Instead, they will die the death of one trillion cuts. Every swipe is a cut. Every one-night stand without a trace of connection is a cut. Dating apps are responsible for billions of them.
Special thanks to Alec, Alex, Ben, Ranjit, and Val for the feedback and the edits!
This includes Hinge: I know hordes of people who use it as they do Tinder.
"But I do still think of Anna fondly from time-to-time. She was my first and only experience on Tinder. She was the girl who inadvertently showed me that I should never use dating apps, not because the experience was bad, but only because of what constitutes their foundation."
This is so savage 🔥😝
Beautifully Written, Arjun. People of this generation should read this.
I am going to highlight some of my fav lines.
"Now, we die of obesity, not starvation. Now, we feel alone despite having thousands of followers."
"But all forms of modern technology make it easy to live a life that is entirely uncourageous, and it is no coincidence that we've reached the nadir of our collective heroism."
"calculated dating decisions based on curated photographs and physical dimensions; the quota of flirtation before the bedroom."
P.S. It's good to be back on Substack again.