Falling Behind the Times

By Eloise Nickson

If you meet me, within the first ten minutes you will learn 4 key insights into my romantic aspirations:

1. My favourite rom coms are Clueless and How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days.

2. I’m far more Charlotte York than Carrie Bradshaw.

3. I adore Audrey Hepburn movies.

4. I have never, and swear I will never, been or go on a dating app.

It’s autumn, it’s the season of When Harry Met Sally and The Notebook - the air is full of romance, longing, and hope for something new. Autumnal aesthetics thrive on the warmth of another; making us singletons feel lonely and lustful. But, unfortunately for us, the university dating life is nothing like the movies - and with the rate that dating apps are expanding, hook-up culture is becoming more common and inescapable. It calls into question the future of love for us hopeless romantics. Will we ever have someone chase us down Brooklyn Bridge, begging us not to leave? Or if our favourite, timeless movies we’re set today, would the main point of tension stem from the main character finding their lovers tinder profile? The result of conflict being going (re-word ‘going’) online and finding someone else to ease the ache, instead of turning up at their door, roses in hand or a boombox on shoulder.

The first time I heard of Tinder, was of my mum’s friend’s success story; after coming out of a ten-year relationship, she found the love of her life within a few months on Tinder. Within a couple of years, they were engaged at Disneyland, had a beautiful wedding, and now parent two children. For her, finding love online was far more successful than a real-life romance. But it seems millennials and gen z experience Tinder in two completely different ways.

Nowadays there are only two reasons gen z will create a Tinder account; to play the swiping game, or to find a hook up situation-ship. It’s no longer a dating app for most users, but a one-night stand, label-less fling. Where did the original meaning get lost - and how did it get so obliterated?

Subjecting yourself to a date with a tinder-boy usually starts with your friends lecturing you, and ends with you being ghosted (sigh). Because tinder is so easy, boys won’t talk to you in person - unless you are both drunk in a club. Is this a by-product of the confidence a screen gives us? Using our social media pages as marketing tools for ourselves, posting the best parts of our lives, our best features; the things we can’t cut and edit out of our real bodies, the things we can’t hide if we hit on someone somewhere other than the meta verse.

I have nothing against Tinder, in fact I wish I could be a Tinder user - I wish I could do the long-term-low-commitment-casual-girlfriend thing, but I’d be lying if I said I could be happy with that. In my head, I will experience a book-worthy, swoon worthy romance, despite the fact I never go on dates and in fact avoid it like the plague. Even so, I have a Spotify playlist that gives me the vibes of being a 2000s rom-com main character that I listen to on my walk to uni. I live in a very sad fairy-tale world far removed from reality - the reality in which if I want to get a boyfriend, I should be on Tinder or Hinge, or any other of the multitude of dating apps that advertise themselves every which way I look.

For all the talk I hear about Tinder, I wanted to know how popular it truly is with those around me, so I conducted a poll that lead me to the results that 61% of students have previously used, or are currently on dating apps - meaning 39% of us are not. This figure shocked me. I expected to be alone in my anti-dating app-ness, but perhaps this is my echo chamber of friends with similar hopeless romance views and a longing for the past. When thinking of the romantic ideals of the past, I recall an article I read that studied the notion that dating apps and hook-up culture has expanded because our lifespan has too. It used to be the idea of “the one”; “the one” that we would spend our entire lives with. Now, we live so much longer that perhaps we crave multiple different partners, our hearts arguably not built to host a love for as long as they beat, now that its beating time has doubled.

There is also a rise in feminism, and a decrease in conservative and traditional values. Sleeping around, rightfully, is no longer as frowned upon in Gen Z; we are the generation of liberation and freedom. I wonder what my hatred for dating apps and my rejection of hook-up culture says about me. I lament on if this makes me anti-feminist, by not being a cool, liberated woman, am I condemning and shaming those that are? Just because it’s not for me, does that mean I come across as not being supportive of it at all? But if I give in, and I lose my own ideals and morals, do I not just loose myself and the potential of a partner who see’s eye to eye with me?

Suffice to say, I think there is hope out there for us hopeless romantics - maybe it exists in Paris over Plymouth. But it seems we just must wait, there is no meeting place, no app for specifically our category (a true gap in the market for any computer science or app developing-y students to explore) and these people come around when you least expect it (cliche, I know, but isn’t all romance?). Or maybe it does exist online, maybe our own Hugh Grant-esque man is awaiting us in the confines of our mobile phone - maybe we must bleed to grow.

The most important thing, though, when everyone is baking Christmas cookies with their partners and plastering it on your Instagram wall, is to not get lost in the notion of wanting. Sometimes, we can want a relationship more than we want a person. Especially in the colder, lonelier months, we can put pressure on ourselves, wondering why it isn’t us and it is them. We get caught up in being bitter when we see these couples, rather than feel hopeful for ourselves and hopeful for the future of love.

So, change the narrative: instead of thinking that should be me! why isn’t that me! Look at them with sanguine and think that will be me, they deserve this and so do I.

Editor’s note: The opinions expressed in this piece by the author are their own – they do not and are not intended to represent the beliefs and opinions of Plymouth University, University of Plymouth Student Union or the Plymouth Gazette. 

Picture credit: Unsplash