Now it was time to see for myself and figure out where the hype is coming from. I wanted to give you my first-hand experience on what it is like to be a user of Tinder, from registration to ultimately going on a date with someone I met on Tinder. And this is how it went:

My account was set up within minutes and I was officially a Tinder girl. I had never seen myself within the dating app realm, but once I got started, I found the app strangely addictive. Swipe left and right on random people, finding out someone had ‘liked’ you, and receiving the mysterious ‘you have received a match!’ notification gives you a little booster of self-esteem time after time. Making you want to come back to get a little more of that validation and reassurance we are all secretly are desperate for. In a world of social media on the rise, people increasingly receive validation in form of likes and followers on for example, Instagram which determines your level of popularity. And that concept is applicable to using Tinder. Because in the end a real person chosen to swipe right on your pictures, which in the end makes you feel good. And you want to feel this way again, and again, and again. As I embraced the addiction of swiping through the stack of cards, I got my first match, my second match, until I couldn’t count them anymore. Even though this could have been overwhelming, the thought of always having the freedom to not further interact with them gave me the necessary endorphin and adrenaline kick without strings attached. I ended up engaging with some of them: