Tinder in Three Acts

We’re swiping for god knows what — and not finding much of anything

Photo: sinkdd/Flickr

You match with a 34-year-old woman named Tracy on Tinder. You start exchanging texts. Your point of entry is the fact that you lived in Korea for two years teaching English to elementary school students, and Tracy happens to be Korean. It’s a good opening gambit. Being in Korea was the one time you could work the “endearing foreign guy” shtick, and maybe you can still kind of pull it off.

Your Tinder motivations perplex you. Part of it is simple distraction: Going on a date is more interesting than not going. But you also seem more concerned with narrative arc than anything else. Concerned with dramatic structure. It’s more about seeing the plotline through to its absurdly grim conclusion than it is about the pursuit of a relationship. Even if you know by date number one that things probably won’t work out, you’re propelled forward by some sort of inexorable dating death drive.

You arrange to meet Tracy on a Saturday in March at a coffee shop in Chelsea. As the time of the date draws near, you find yourself dreading the inevitable awkwardness of two strangers meeting via dating app.

You sit down with your coffees at a wooden counter facing the street. You talk about where you lived in Korea. What she’s doing now. She’s a…