The Bartender Knows: TINDER HELL III, THE FINAL CHAPTER

The websites are everywhere. Over night, hundreds of different versions of digital desire have cropped up to cater to millions of people in the world who are looking for love in all the wrong places.

You’ve got the ChrisitanMingles, the AshleyMadisons, the WhereBlackPeopleMeets, and the EHarmonies—each one trying to find that niche place where people (both paying and non-paying) can find love, companionship, sex, or a ‘fun’ partner while in town on business.

Who can blame people for this style of dating? Sure, it lacks that electric buzz of talking to a new and interesting (and attractive) stranger. It does take away from the sense of risk confronting another human being, both bravely and assuredly, when you walk up to them at the bar, smile and say hello.

Men used to hold themselves with pride at their ability (and guts) to approach a group of unknown women, all talking amongst themselves, and make his way, charmingly, into their conversation. I’m not talking about the guy who just hovers, a blank look on his face, relatively ‘near’ a gaggle of ladies, embarrassingly holding his quarter full beer, no doubt warmed by the nervous palm of his hand, hoping, begging, that one of the girls will look his way.

But the girls are not drunk enough yet. Hopefully they will never be that drunk to fall for the wounded, desperate man standing, slightly crooked, right over their shoulder.

No. These women are far more interested in the two musician types that have saddled up at the far end of the bar with Uniqlo masculinity. They glance over, observing the contours of the men’s faces, they way they laugh, with no care or concern for the world around—which in the end makes them more attracted to these obvious hooligans. The girls give each other winks and laugh, dropping a dirty comment here and there. But the men do not approach. Nor do the women do anything about it. They do not engage the men.

They do nothing.

So finally, in the end, nobody (except for the drunk, hovering, sad guy) does anything. Everybody ends up going home alone.

Here we are, in the modern century, 4,000 years since proper (I mean, Epic of Gilgamesh proper) civilizations have existed and in these civilizations people have been talking to each other. Maybe much more in the “I’m the master, you’re the slave” way, but yes, the art of charm has been the solvent of human interaction (“I go way back with Herotitus—how much are these goat carts going for these days?”).

These types certainly weren’t texting.

But guess what folks? We are texting these days—most human interactions are regulated to one or two versions of this removed, Apple based software.

Frankly, it’s fucking convenient.

Sure, maybe a dick pic does get sent here or there (no, Mom, I have not sent any dick pics in my life, you did raise a gentleman). But generally speaking, we are full sail into the world of simple flirtation, a screen profile, and one or two less than funny memes involving Steven Spielberg and a dead dinosaur.

So let’s just accept it, people, without judgment or grudge—this is our world bed, and we must lie in it.

Think of all the perks this brave new digital world has to offer. You've heard about the rise of STD’s in old home populations. My grandfather would have had these technological advances on lock down if he was alive.

What about all those people trapped in a loveless (aka sexless) marriages? How would they conduct discreet infidelities without the use of the Internet? There are only so many pool boys and secretaries in the world, if you know what I mean.

Each App is very clear in its demographics. There’s Match.com, dutifully out there for the upwardly mobile, decent income earning, relationship needing lonely person. Same with EHarmony, though that one is a little more for the geriatric jet set.

WhereBlackPeopleMeet.com is plainly obvious, as is JDate.com. Although, as a man of many interests, I can’t think of anything more boring than dating someone within my cultural demographic. We know OKCupid (nicknamed OKStupid) is specifically made for grimy Bushwick hipsters to mutually contract HPV for free and have shitty, no oral sex included ‘dead’ sex.

Finally we come to my favorite black sheep App, the one that hangs quietly outside bus station bathrooms. The App that wears only black soiled tight jeans, a ripped t-shirt, hair mussed over the forehead, breathing heavy, cock and pussy on the mind.

We are talking about Tinder.com, folks, the David Duchovny of dating Apps. Tinder.com, the most shallow of the shallow, was made for one purpose and one purpose only:

Fucking.

You guys can go back to my previous posts of “Tinder Hell” Parts 1 and 2 and catch up. But this is “Tinder Hell III: The Final Chapter”. And hopefully, unlike Jason Voorhees, we will not return to this dead and cooked goose in a useless sequel.

I’ve established Tinder.com is for the lonely, the losers, and the nasty, and it’s just fine to be a casual mixture of all three. It was based essentially on Grindr.com, in which ones phone becomes a tracking device to find whose in closest vicinity to fuck and suck in random bathrooms, parks, and AirBnB rental properties. It was inevitable that some genius would invent an App for straight people to meet and engage in immediate pornographic activity. We all heard the rumors of this ‘hook-up’ site rumbling through the bars. Soon everybody started “tindering”, swiping left and right pending on the looks of the fellow desperate person on the other side of the iPhone.

Cool, right? Tracking how close someone is to hook up in the general vicinity? Sounds perfect for the sex hungry.

But guess what—straight people ruined it.

Soon, no one was using Tinder for straight fucking. They would text forever, play games, dodge hanging out, flake, and even get offended by the ‘crass’ nature of the participants.

Ladies, a lot of this is on you. I was listening to this girl talk at the bar about how gross the people were on Tinder. It’s TINDER, lady! You want romance, get on a pay site. Tinder is the glory hole of intimacy. But like I said, straight people fucked it up.

An old business adage goes as follows:

Everybody wants something. To get what you want you have to pick two out of these three things:

Good. Fast. Cheap.

Pick only two, because, yes, even love is a business--and you can’t have all three. You can have it good and fast, but it won’t be cheap. You can have it cheap and fast, but it won’t be good. You can have it good and cheap, but it won't come fast.

Thanks straight people. All I wanted was to make some new friends in local restrooms. Guess there’s always Port Authority.

Till next time.