#13062019

My friend K, who as far as I know hasn’t been on a dating site in at least five years, was baffled when I told her that I’ve come across profiles on Tinder that say in the bio, “If I superlike you, it was an accident.”

“Is this like one or two profiles?” she asked.

“No. A lot of profiles, actually.”

If you only sample profiles that make a mention of the word “superlike” in the bio, I’ll bet that in at least 95% of those, the reference will be about how the superlike is accidental. 

“Why do you think that is?” is what I imagine my friend would have asked if we’d continued in that line of conversation.

“Because even though the consequences are super low the point of not existing entirely,” I would say to her, “I think people -- women, especially -- are afraid of rejection.”

Or maybe it’s not rejection, per se, but of coming off as desperate. The idea that if you superlike someone, you must really like to match with them. It’s in the name. And that, I suppose, to some people translates as desperation. 

There’s a common notion/idea that anything can be sexy with the right partner. The implication being that it’s not the thing, it’s the person.

That’s kind of how I see the situation here. The “right person” would see the superlike as a sign of heightened interest. It’s being direct. It’s walking up to you at the bar and asking, “can I buy you a drink?”. And if they’re interested, they’d appreciate the gesture. They’d say yes. Right swipe in return.

And if they think you’re desperate and swipe left, that’s the end of it. It’s unlikely that they’d ever think of you ever again. Which, of course is a good thing, because that would mean they were never really into you. 

"I want to do a speed-dating event,” is what my friend K actually said. “But I don’t know if women our age would come for it. They might think it’ll brand them as being desperate.”

“Well, it depends how you market it,” I suppose. “If you present it as this cool experience thing happening at the hipster bar downtown, they’ll show up.”

I don’t know if it’s a symptom of my generation specifically, or internet culture in general, but it seems to me what we’re way more interested in coming off as cool, than in just being real.

Maybe we all need to go back to kindergarten. 

Do you like me? 

I super like you!