I’m petitioning Tinder to remove its signature notification sounds from the app and adopt the stock standard notification sounds. You know, the same sounds that is used by Instagram, UberEats, Bumble and virtually every other application that blows up your phone daily.
Before you write me off as some girl who has lost the plot, hear me out, I have a legitimate reason.
I’m writing this piece retrospectively as I’ve now noticed myself on numerous occasions being caught off guard by this seemingly innocent little ding (or a couple of melodic dings in Tinder’s case after their sonic makeover).
Let me paint you a picture. Single girl jumps on Tinder and starts swiping. They match! Girl and boy begin bantering. An electrifying battle of the wits ensues as the 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 they inevitably engage in some hot and heavy coitus.
A few more dates follow between said girl and boy — feelings start to brew beyond the undercarriage. Especially because each date winds up with the two engaging in the horizontal sheet dance and subsequent snuggling as they both bask in the oxytocin glory.
Everything is hunky dory, right? Textbook you might even say.
Now, picture the girl innocently cuddling the boy on the couch one afternoon as they watch some episode of Game of Thrones. Both are experiencing all the feel-good warm and fuzzy feelings … and probably wondering where things are heading.
Then, it happens. Tinder notification. It’s clear and it’s distinct. Someone has gotten a new match.
Both girl and boy freeze as the elephant in the room let’s out a mighty roar.
If you’ve been traipsing around on the apps for a while, it’s unmistakable when you hear the alert come through.
No, it’s not your grandmother messaging to see if you’d like to come around for tea and scones. It’s the sound of another (or many) homo sapiens challenging your position over a territory that you’ve already begun marking for yourself.
We’ve been given the sensory gifts of touch, sound, smell, sight and taste, but when it comes to dating — hearing a Tinder notification is almost as bad as seeing the same notification on an upturned phone screen. Tinder takes it a step further by distinguishing their alerts for a new match to those for a message from an existing match.
So, what happens now that the alert has dropped? Do we address this, or will it be too awkward? Is it too soon to be discussing if we’re seeing other people? Are they going to feel pressured if the question is posed?
Perhaps the two were perfectly content with going with the flow and seeing how the bond naturally developed, but that damn notification had to surreptitiously creep its way in. The intrusive foghorn that reminds us of the transient nature in modern dating encounters, inexorably triggering all those pesky feelings of inadequacy and/or insecurity.
Why are they still getting matches? Am I not enough? Do they think I’m unattractive?
Truthfully this happened in the early courtship days between my current partner and me and what made it even more comical was that both of us thought it was the other party who was the perpetrator of such a heinous dating faux pas.
I knew with certainty that it was his phone blowing up. I had already removed all the dating apps from my phone, and I had a fleeting thought of pausing the shenanigans to ask who it was but decided it could wait until after.
Relief came in the form of both acknowledging that we no longer required the app’s presence on our phones.
I’m sure that this desired outcome isn’t always guaranteed in today’s dating terrain. Sometimes all it takes is an innocent ping from a dating app to implode a budding connection between two humans. Perhaps the solution to saving yourself the grief and awkwardness is to turn off all notifications across dating apps as a blanket rule.