Tinder sucks.

This is a fact, not an opinion. It’s something that anyone who has any experience of the app knows is true in the same way we know gravity pulls things down to Earth, water is a requirement for life, and the Eragon movie is a tragedy beyond imagining. It’s an awful, shallow app that magnifies all the worst parts of yourself while destroying any shred of self-esteem you might have had lying around.

All of which might be why it’s so popular. It’s an almost perfect analog for all the ways normal IRL dating make you feel. All from the convenience of your phone, just a swipe away.

The Coronavirus also sucks. Obviously. You’re stuck inside your home reading this just as I’m stuck at home writing it. (Hi!) The federal government is failing in it’s duties in basically every way you could ask for, people are losing jobs left and right, you can taste the panic in the air, the newly revealed vulnerabilities in all of our lives. It sucks.

But what if we combined the two? What if by combining a symbol of all the futility and pointless longing and loneliness and shallowness of the pre-Coronavirus world (Tinder) with the biggest health and economic disaster in any of our lifetimes (COVID-19) we could create something beautiful?

Almost definitely not. But maybe we can laugh a little at how ridiculous certain parts of ourselves are no matter the circumstances. Fuckboys and fuckgirls are fuckboys and fuckgirls whether we’re in a lockdown or not.

So, after painstaking research and journeys into the depth of horny human’s souls in which I discovered details and thoughts not meant for the likes of you good people, I have emerged with a few key, illustrative: Tinder Conversations in the Time of COVID.

(Note: To protect the identity and dignity of these horny humans, I have chosen to forego all identifying details such as names or gender and instead refer to them only by the first letter of their first name. If you like, you may attempt to guess the gender of the following conversational participants. I am sure this will in no way backfire)

A: Hi, how’s your life in lockdown going?

B: **ignores message**

A: …

B: **continues to ignore message**

(Okay, so some things have not changed due to the lockdown)

D: Holy slapping tits I am BOOOOOOOOOORRRRRREEEEEEEEDDDDD!!!

J: Oh yeah?

D: Yeah, like so bored I’ve cleaned my room four times in the last three days. The last time I had to make a mess just to clean it up.

J: Lol that’s nothing. I’m so bored I’ve already re-watched Tiger King twice. And I have a pants-wetting fear of big cats from when my mom got her face mauled by a leopard.

D: You think that’s boredom? Yesterday I painted the hallway and spent six hours watching it dry. The white paint dries faster than the off-white paint. I don’t know why.

J: Last Wednesday I watched my roommate attempt to change a tire for a full day. Like from the moment the sun went up to when it sank below the horizon. By the end, half his car had been torn apart. I didn’t want to tell him I could have done the whole thing for him in like twenty minutes.

D: My dog is visibly annoyed at my presence now.

J: My phone no longer turns on at my touch. It now flashes three words at me in angry red letters that take up the whole screen: GET A LIFE.

D: I’ve gotten myself off so much lately I have calluses now. And not just on my hands.

J: Pornhub won’t allow my IP address to access the site anymore. Last time I tried I just got a screen that asked me if I was okay and if I’d eaten in the last 24 hours.

N: You see that thing on Facebook?

Y: What thing on Facebook? You know it’s all personalized, right? It’s not all the same Facebook.

N: You know…that thing on Facebook.

Y: I do not know that thing on Facebook. What thing?

N: The thing that tells you the truth about all this. What the media and the government don’t want you to know. That thing on Facebook.

Y: Oh…and what is it that the media and the government don’t want us to know?

N: This whole thing, the lockdowns, the economic meltdown that will affect us all for years, the hospitals getting overwhelmed, the deaths. It’s all just a smokescreen. It’s all made up by the greeting card companies so they can sell more cards to the sheeple! You’re welcome.

Y: How? And why? What did Hallmark ever do to you?

N: Hey, those corners are sharp and a paper-cut can ruin any kid’s birthday party.

Y: …I do hate papercuts.

N: So can I see your tits?

F: Hey there, I’m looking for some fun tonight. You wanna have some fun?

W: Sure. What are we talking here? Could meet up at a grocery store or something.

F: Just subscribe to my premium Snapchat and we can have all the fun we want.

W: How is that any different from paying for porn? Fuck this, I’m going back to Pornhub…YES PORNHUB I’M FINE AND I’VE EATEN TODAY!!!