Luna García, a 28-year-old psychologist from Ponferrada living in Madrid, had one of the worst appointments in her memory during the pandemic. On an agreed date on the dating app Tinder, she ran into a guy wearing a grimy mask. “You are going on a date! What do you do with a dirty mask? He had it in a mess, broken, as if on its side. Things have already started badly ”, he tells ICON Luna, who prefers not to give his real name. “He was talking all the time, on top of very boring things. There was no where to catch it. When I tell him that I'm leaving, he goes and blurts out that he thought I was very special in the app, but that he had realized in person that I was ordinary and didn't speak. In the end, we both won an argument with a stranger, "he recalls. "And I told him that his mask was dirty."
A more bizarre problem with the mask, if possible, was faced by the 27-year-old from Murcia, Raquel Guerra, who also prefers to use a pseudonym. He had his eye on a man who attended the same gym, but did not dare to speak to him. Until he found it on Tinder. Or not. “Since I always saw him with the mask, I wasn't sure if it was him. I tried to get him out, with messages like 'How good your green shirt was today' and he only replied: 'haha'. I didn't know if he thought he was following a joke or if it was really him, because he didn't speak at all. We stayed when you could go outdoors without a mask, but, as I get closer, I say: 'Damn, it's not him.' Mission abortion, I pass by, and then the image comes back to me and I realize that it is really him. With different clothes from the gym, of course,that's why in my head it didn't fit. I didn't turn around because I thought it would be awkward to explain. He hasn't been to the gym again. Maybe he's on vacation ”.
Luna and Raquel are just two of the many people around the world who made Tinder have the busiest year in its history in 2020, sources from the app tell ICON. A growth that has been maintained in 2021: in February of this year, there were 19% more messages per day than in the same month of 2020, just before home confinement due to the expansion of the coronavirus in Spain. The company assures that each user, on average, has made 11% more screen swipes during the pandemic to view other profiles (which in the application jargon is called
swipe
) and reaped 42% more coincidences. (
matches
In the Tinder language, the expression to denote that two people have mutually marked that they like each other).
On March 29, almost at the beginning of our quarantine, Tinder surpassed 3 billion swipes in a single day worldwide for the first time, a record that, throughout the year, it beat 130 times more.
According to data from Tinder, the talk time before a face-to-face date has lengthened among young people since the pandemic began.Malte Mueller / Getty Images / fStop
Despite the surplus, however, the virus and restrictions have made it difficult to complete many appointments at this time. "Previously it was very easy for me to meet someone, but I have noticed that the time before talking on the chat is longer," acknowledges Luna García, who adds that, in her appointments in 2020 -after confinement- and 2021, always has been, as a precaution, outdoors. Tinder has observed it in its figures: although it is common that, with the development of conversations, people give each other the phone or the Instagram profile, the chats on the platform are now 32% longer. An alternative explanation can be found in another data: according to Tinder, 60% of those who opened a profile last year did not necessarily do so with the aspiration of finding a partner,but because "they felt alone and wanted to interact with others."
Yes, but after the vaccine
The 26-year-old journalist from La Rioja, Lucía Ramos, who spent 2020 in Madrid and currently works in Paris, does not feel that the coronavirus has complicated appointments so much: “The covid has changed the world, but things continue as before, it fucks the same ”, Ditch ICON. The mechanics of the encounters have also inevitably been affected by circumstances. For Lucia, the mask was "the initial stumbling block." “When I had my first date, I was wondering how to see my face without the mask. Normally, it is horrible not knowing if you are going to like someone in person, but the mask complicates it even more. What you say? 'Put it down, in case I don't like your face'? ”, He reasons. Luna García agrees: “The greetings were rare, you are in limbo because, on a Tinder date, obviously everyone knows what he is going for.And before the pandemic, the kiss could come naturally, but now, when you put the mask on when you leave the bar, there is a barrier. It is an uncomfortable and difficult moment to overcome, everything slows down ”.
This has even abruptly canceled possible love stories, as seems to be the case of the Canarian writer Jessica Martínez, 24, who prefers to use an invented name.
“The boy took me out to dance salsa, so when I got up from the table, I put on my mask.
I know that the normal thing was that there would have been a kiss.
I was still a paper cutter, but I put it on out of responsibility.
The next day, he would move to Barcelona and I don't like to invite anyone home on the first date, ”he tells ICON.
For the first kiss or for simple identification, the mask is a new obstacle in Tinder encounters.Iryna Veklich / Getty Images
None of the users interviewed say they have encountered anyone on Tinder or any other dating app who gave them virus-related prerequisites, such as a recent PCR test or being vaccinated, although they do know of people who have. “A friend was extremely stressed because the person she wanted to meet preferred that they not see each other until they were both vaccinated, given that their parents were a population at risk. In the end they did remain, but keeping a distance of one and a half meters. And now both are immunized and are a couple, "says one of those consulted. "People who have the two doses are a great game, it compensates to throw it," says Raquel Guerra laughing, who admits that, although she is interested in the vaccine, she does not consider it a mandatory condition to have an appointment. Yes he tries,like most, stay outdoors.
Polyamory in the times of covid
And with more contacts, logically, the possibility of contagion grows. This experience has been closely lived by Samuel Paredes, a 32-year-old researcher from Tenerife who lives in Budapest who, for professional reasons, does not want to give his real name either. "I follow a regime of polyamory and relational anarchy, I am not looking for a monogamous vibe, so I use these applications very often," he tells ICON. Although Samuel is not sure if he has passed the coronavirus, since he has not had symptoms, he has seen how one of the girls he was staying with became ill. “In polyamory it is easy to have had intimate contact with more people. Then you have to warn everyone. The person is in a hurry, of course, because they have to contact many, not only family or friends, but also with friends. Suddenly he has to inform all of God ”, he relates.
The presence of the virus has become part of daily normality, also in dating apps.
Javier Narváez, a 24-year-old graphic artist from Madrid, tells ICON that the jokes of “PCR and we got involved” have been, in this time, something quite common in the descriptions of the profiles, in addition to the photos with a mask.
For her part, Raquel Guerra, given that she was reluctant to share personal images on her profile, uploaded a series of photos with the mask placed on different parts of her face: “It was a joke, kind of puzzle, something like 'rebuild the face to starting with the parts without a mask '”.
Dating and encounters abroad are now the norm when it comes to setting a first meeting with a Tinder match. CSA-Printstock / Getty Images
Tinder sources also say that topics such as "the shortage of toilet paper" became part of the profiles during confinement, which, in the case of the so-called Generation Z (born between the late 90s and early 2000s ), were updated three times as many times as before the pandemic, often with current affairs.
The company also reveals that, among this sector of the population in Spain, the mentions of “skating” have multiplied, in turn, by three and that, between February and March 2021, the phrase “walk through El Retiro” has been written 50% more times, which suggests a detriment to other options that were previously more common to meet, such as bars.
The restaurant and expectations
Bumble, a dating app that went public this year and was founded by a former Tinder marketing vice president, opened its own restaurant on July 24 in New York, designed as the ideal place to go for your dates. Jessica Martínez, user of this application, doubts that she was going to go to a restaurant of this type: “He doesn't stay for dinner. You have to stay somewhere where, if things get bad, you can get away. I don't feel like seeing a person with food dripping from their mouth for the first time ”. “Dating in restaurants is from people who think they live on
Friends
”, Dictates, for his part, Lucía Ramos.
However, Jessica does believe that, be it in a bar or a restaurant, seeing how the other person treats the waiters serves as an indicator of what they really are like: of course I'm not going to like it ”.
The 24-year-old from Madrid Javier Narváez confesses not having been successful in the dating application since the beginning of the pandemic, although he does not directly link it to the virus.
“Let's start from the premise that I don't know how to flirt.
And half of the people who say they know how to flirt, don't either, "he says.
Narváez says he was the one who opened the conversations with the
matches
"95 or 98% of the time."
In the data provided by Tinder, the company highlights the behavior of Generation Z users, who, according to their own reports, 40% enter to "meet new and different people."
He also ensures that this generation is more given to the meetings being limited to the digital field, for which the platform launched the videochat modality.
In the absence of a vaccination with a complete schedule, a flawed restaurant or, simply, the desire, many generation Z aspirants to be a couple continue to see each other, as we have all learned to do for a year and a half, through a screen.
With immunity, love may also come.
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