Tinder Travesties - An Investigation of Chad

So, I don’t have much luck on Tinder for a number of reasons. I’m mostly on it just to hold onto the possibility that one day I will be loved (read: get laid). But that’s beside the point. What I will admit is, as a straight guy on Tinder, I don’t run into very many weirdos. Every so often, I find a Republican or an aspiring cop or a woman asking for men over six feet only, and that’s jarring, but that’s more of an IQ thing than a weirdo thing. Men on Tinder need to be bolder. It doesn’t take much for a woman to get a swipe-right on Tinder, but a man? It’s a tough crowd out there, and you gotta use every tool in your arsenal, which is why a lot of men rely heavily on the Tinder bio to set themselves apart from the crowd. Sure, a lot of them are normal, but a lot of them are also very not-normal. That’s where the magic begins, my friends. My friend Val came across the Tinder profile of a gentleman named Chad (not his real name), and I thought that it would be worth it to study his bio and peel apart its layers. What is Chad trying to accomplish? How is he accomplishing it? Is he effective? The answer may surprise you. At the bottom of this article, you can find his full bio, but I think it’s better if you experience Chad one or two sentences at a time, for the sake of dramatic effect. This is going to be an excellent study.

My names not chad.

Already there’s a sense of intrigue and anonymity here. This is a strong hook. “If his name’s not Chad,” thinks the female, “what could it possibly be? What reason could not-Chad have for staying anonymous?”

studying engineering while working as one. I play multiple sports & love being active.

Here Chad did two things right: He did not answer the question posed in his very first sentence, and he established himself as a man with both job prospects (because he’s studying to be an engineering) and a decent amount of physical stamina. So, overall, this is pretty strong. Chad comes across as pretty basic, but he’s marketable both for his strong standing in the world and for his enigmatic personality.

Love music, weed, science, mushrooms, & being reckless.

So now we’re noticing a dip in Chad’s personality. You can see a rhythmic back-and-forth of intellectual and psychedelic pursuits as he lists these interests of his. The last item, “being reckless,” is an immense curveball. Here, Chad is trying to have it both ways, establishing himself as a young man full of prospects, but also attempting to prove that he is not boring by stating outright, “I’m reckless.” It’s not a clever move, but it’s Tinder. It’s hardly ever clever. Moving on:

I’m on the laid back side of things & enjoy to chill, cuddle and party.

I hate Chad. His lack of an Oxford Comma has disqualified him in my mind, but I’m not a Tinder-woman, so I guess my opinion doesn’t matter anyway. That being said, Chad is still playing to the duality of his nature, essentially saying that he’s down for a night in (chill, cuddle) and a night out (party). I theorize that it’s a ploy to catch people on both sides of the spectrum, or the ambiverted many who enjoy both as well. But I digress.

I like my mind to be as stimulated as my body when connecting to people.

Oh boy. There’s a quote in Seussical the Musical that plays in my head whenever a moment like this comes up: “Fasten your seatbelt, because here things go wrong.” Chad made a mistake here. He’s played the sapiosexual card, and he thought he could be sneaky about it, but we’re clever here. We catch these sorts of things. He was playing it well enough earlier, don’t get me wrong, as the pendulum of his personality swung between sweet, laid-back dude and reckless party-boy. But now? Sure he didn’t say something as stupid as “I only want to seduce smart women,” and he used flowery language, but he’s completely bared himself as fake-deep here. We all know, even if he didn’t outright say it, that Chad is thirsty as all hell, and that all he craves is an unholy Bacchanalia in which he indulges relentlessly in the pleasures of the flesh, and something tells me he doesn’t care if his mind is as stimulated as his body. If it wasn’t obvious before, it’s obvious now. Moving right along:

Looking for a specific type in the bedroom, which is why I’m anonymous.

He’s finally done it. He’s finally addressed the elephant in the room. Why is Chad but a name that he hides behind? And here we have it, more or less. Perhaps he knows he’s fucking weird, and he is embarrassed. Or perhaps he is proud of how fucking weird he is, but because society has not evolved to his level, he must wear the mask of Chad. And now:

I am into a variety of kinks and am looking for someone into cuckolding, group sex & 3 ways.

I won’t comment much on this. I don’t kinkshame. What I will say is, Chad made a good move going anonymous. Anyone who approaches any sort of social interaction putting this information at the forefront runs the risk of getting mercilessly ridiculed. I am a petty man, and while I understand that we are all just pathetic hormonal monkeys grasping for a shred of human affection, I am not beyond pointing and laughing at not-Chad’s own attempt to grasp human affection. Because it’s cringe, bro. But finally, I must leave you with the best part of this bio, the ending beat to this comedy of errors that is the way that this man presents himself to the world:

let me eat you out girl.

I don’t know what to say about this. He markets himself as a giver in this final moment, I’ll tell you that, and that’s all fine and dandy. But this sentence reverses everything we thought we knew about Chad. Up until now, we thought he was a thoughtful young sapiosexual with a dark secret. But now the jig is up, and we know what his whole plan was all along: Chad wants to put his mouth on your genitals. The goal was sex this entire time, and while it masquerades as a thoughtful offer to give rather than receive, Chad makes two mistakes: He is too forward, and he betrays his entire illusion. His ending beat, which is supposed to be a final appeal to the woman who made it this far in his bio, plays upon the worst aspects of the meat of the bio, and solidifies his standing as fake-deep, disingenuous, and above all thirsty.

So what have we learned? Honestly? Very little. We’ve mocked Chad and become aware of some glaring faults in his usage of the Oxford Comma. But really, other than that, this has been a fun little romp through the slog of bios that women must endure in the world of online dating. That kind of sucks. To anyone currently reading through the slop heap of cover letters that men write on these apps, I hope one day, you find a gentleman who is honest, clever, and not Chad.