Amira Azzouz 
Ever wondered what Tinder is all about? Well, I have. I must admit I'm a very curious person and after hearing about it from several friends of mine (all of them females), I thought I'd try to convince one of my team members to try it out so we can write a juicy article about it. Yet I failed, apparently no one was intrigued by it as much as I was. Anyway, I didn't waste much time and decided to create my own account and explore things myself, after all it could turn out to be an interesting article and a one of a kind experience. Was it? Not so much, but my analysis will be. If you ever wondered what goes on over there, but were too shy to try it out or thought it goes against culture and what everyone around us tells us to do, then continue reading, because I'll tell you all details without leaving anything out.
(Read more from our Lifestyle section here.)
Before making a complete fool out of myself, I read a bit about Tinder online, just to make sure I know what I'm getting myself into. You connect your Tinder account with your Facebook profile, choose which pictures to upload of yourself, the bio and voila you're ready to go. Of course I chose two relatively pretty pictures of myself, because let's face it, experiment or not, you still want to leave a good impression on people. I kept my first name, got rid of my second, didn't think an 'About Me' was suitable anyway and started off from there. A list of people appear and you swipe left if it's a NOPE, as in not interested, and right if it's a YEAH. What would have made my experience much cooler though would have been a, 'Hell Yeah' and a 'No Way in Hell' button, they're a lot more expressive. If the person you clicked YEAH on, also picked you, then Tinder opens up a conversation for you; let the match making begin!
I have to admit, Tinder was quite the ego booster for me. In a matter of three hours, I already had lots of matches and they were the good looking ones too. So here's the important question, what should one expect of Tinder? Or better yet, what kind of guys would you find over there? Are you ready for it? If you think you are, then let's begin the categorizing.
PEOPLE YOU KNOW
Yes, as the title indicates, you wouldn't actually imagine how many people I knew quite well were already on Tinder and came up for me as a potential match. I came across around 20 people I knew with Tinder accounts, including people I used to know and the guy I like. Yes, awkward moment, but the answer was pretty easy on that one. NOPE!
KIDS ANYONE?
For some reason, some guys put up pictures of themselves with their wives, and some even thought a picture of their wedding day was suitable, whereas others had the brilliant idea of adding their complete family picture (yes with their kids!). Can you tell me again what you're doing over on Tinder? It's definitely not the next Facebook or Instagram in case you've got things mixed up.
THE GYM SELFIE
Narcissists are everywhere, it's kind of hard to avoid them, but when you see them on such an app, you automatically run the other way. Be it a gym selfie, a close-up on his biceps or whatever makes him sleep at night, there's a reason why women stay away from guys like these. Message to the men out there, we are never impressed by show offs.
HELLO I'M A TOURIST
It's a crowded country and foreigners come very often for a short work trip and of course since they're already using Tinder, why not continue checking out the options in Egypt? A guy's profile said something like: "In Cairo for a week, staying at Fairmont Nile Towers". You'll automatically assume a guy like that is interested in hooking up, so that's definitely a big NO.
CONTROL FREAKS
No one can argue that meeting new people and interacting with them can be quite challenging, especially if you don't step out of your comfort zone, but the ones who have it the hardest are the control freaks. Yes, there's a lot of them on Tinder. Let me walk you through a scenario, God forbid if you don't answer, he starts getting awkward and extremely nervous, and you may find the following words appearing on your screen, 'YOU NEED TO ANSWER NOW!' Unfortunately it doesn't stop there, if you decide to unmatch him, there's an actual guy who managed to get my full name as we had some common friends, What's App me and ask me why I was that mean to unmatch him? Stalker much? He kept on persisting for a whole day and that's when I had to block him, even though it's not really my thing. Scary, right?
THE NORMAL ONES
What's normal anyway? It's a different definition from one person to the other, but for me, it's a person who's fun, ambitious and easy to talk to, of course minus all of the things I mentioned above. I'm usually a pretty good judge of character and analyzing personalities, and from my humble experience I can say that a big amount of the so called "normal people" were mostly on Tinder because they felt lonely. I'm not talking about the needy kind of lonely, but you've got to hand it to them for actually trying to put themselves out there and meet someone. At first they claim they're on there to explore what it's all about, also out of curiosity and that they just joined it a few hours or a day ago. Did I mention that most of them had a recent unpleasant breakup experience as well? These are the ones I actually recommend you give your time to if you ever decide to try Tinder out, they're interesting and mostly decent. If not, don't feel like you're missing out on anything at all.
So why am I telling you about this? Bare with me, I just have a few more sentences to write. They say it's a shallow method to determine if someone is suitable for you or not from a few pictures, but it's actually quite interesting because a picture can tell you a lot about a person. It can tell you if the person in front of you is fun, adventurous, outgoing, a show off, whether he loves animals, is married with kids, looking for a hookup, too full of himself, shy, trying to give off the "I'm successful" vibe or just humble. If you pick wisely from the details of the pictures instead of just the looks, Tinder can actually be an application which makes dating a little bit easier. Meeting new people is quite challenging and no one should judge the method you take to widen your circle.
What started off by trying to give you a juicy story, turned out to be me trying to make more of a statement. I'm Amira Azzouz and I choose not to be defined by what the society claims to be the right or wrong way to meet people. There's no such thing, all you have to do is pick wisely and know what works for you and only YOU!
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