I am asking Tinder to remove the signature notification sounds from the app and adopt the standard stock notification sounds. You know, the same sounds used by Instagram, UberEats, Bumble, and pretty much every other app that blows up your phone on a daily basis.
Before you dismiss me as a girl who has lost the plot, hear me out, I have a legitimate reason.
I’m writing this piece in retrospect, as I’ve now realized on numerous occasions that I was caught off guard by this seemingly innocent little ding (or a couple of melodic taps in Tinder’s case after its sonic makeover) .
Let me draw you a picture. Single girl jumps on Tinder and starts swiping. They match! Girl and boy start joking. An electrifying battle of wits ensues as a widely accepted form of foreplay in 21st century mating rituals.
Girl and boy decide to meet for a first date. Sparks fly on this first date and inevitably, they engage in intense, heated intercourse.
A few more dates between this girl and the boy follow: feelings begin to emerge beyond the landing gear. Especially since every date ends with the two of them participating in the horizontal sheet dance and subsequently snuggling up while they both bask in the glory of oxytocin.
It’s all fat dory, right? Textbook you might even say.
Now, imagine the girl innocently cuddling the boy on the couch one afternoon while they watch some episode of game of thrones. They’re both experiencing all the warm and fuzzy feelings of feeling good…and probably wondering where things are going.
Then it happens. Tinder notification. It’s clear and it’s different. Someone got a new match.
Both the girl and the boy freeze as the elephant in the room lets out a mighty roar.
If you’ve been looking for the apps for a while, it’s unmistakable when you hear the alert.
No, it’s not your grandma texting to see if you’d like to come over for tea and scones. It’s the sound of another (or many) homo sapiens challenging your position on a territory you’ve already begun to mark for yourself.
We’ve been given the sensory gifts of touch, sound, smell, sight and taste, but when it comes to dating, hearing a notification from Tinder is almost as bad as seeing the same notification on your phone screen upside down . Tinder goes a step further by distinguishing its alerts for a new match from those for a message from an existing match.
So what happens now that the alert has gone down? Do we address this or will it be too awkward? Is it too early to discuss seeing other people? Will they feel pressured if the question is raised?
Maybe the two were perfectly content to go with the flow and see how the bond developed naturally, but that damn notification had to be sneakily placed. The intrusive foghorn that reminds us of the fleeting nature of modern dating encounters, inexorably triggering all those nagging feelings of inadequacy and/or insecurity.
Why are they still receiving matches? Am I not enough? Do they think I’m unattractive?
The truth is that this happened in the early days of courtship between me and my current partner and what made it even more comical was that we both thought it was the other party who was the author of a fake no such atrocious dates.
He knew for sure it was his phone exploding. I had already deleted all the dating apps from my phone and briefly thought about stopping the shenanigans to ask who it was, but decided it could wait until later.
Relief came in the form of recognizing that we no longer need the presence of the app on our phones.
I’m sure this desired outcome isn’t always guaranteed in today’s dating landscape. Sometimes all it takes is an innocent ping from a dating app to implode a budding connection between two humans. Perhaps the solution to save yourself the pain and discomfort is to turn off all dating app notifications as a general rule.
Helen Chik is the author of Sex, Swipes & Other Stories| @helenchikx
Read related topics: Dating Tips