To Swipe is To Love
Death is down by 500%? The Devil took a look at the charts. This couldn’t be right. He knew in recent years there was a dip, but he was sure they would make up lost ground like it had in the past with large-scale events. The Devil had in mind World War III. But the data didn’t lie: murder, war, famine across the world were at all time lows in the year 2012.
Exasperated, the Devil threw the charts on the ground.
“Can someone get me a coffee, extra black! And where is my second-in-command?”
Dmitri appeared out of the shadows.
“Jesus! You need to stop doing that,” said the Devil.
“And you need to stop saying Jesus’s name in vain. That’s what people do on Earth.”
“Listen, it's a crime there – it’s a crime here. I’ll keep doing it, thank you very much. Anyways, why the hell are numbers down? The nukes we created have been sitting on ice for decades. I thought we were going to make a killing!”
“PR dropped the ball on this one. I’m sorry boss, we weren’t able to create an effective message as we had hoped.”
“Damn we may have our worst year in business. We used to run one of the finest operations. And now look at us. To do evil is our company motto, and we’re bleeding dry.”
“We do have a special project in the works,” said Dmitri as his eyes lowered.
“Oh yeah what is that?” asked the Devil as he thought about how big the explosions would be if he could get the nukes to fire.
“People dying is getting tougher, but I think we need to update with the times. It’s time we start thinking differently.”
Dmitiri ushered the Devil through the door.
“This is where we house our special projects.”
The Devil looked around perplexed by all the blinking lights and screens.
“Is this what you’ve done with my new funding?” asked the Devil.
“Of course it is. Now we’ve got a whole bunch of things in the works, but we need to work with the trends not against them, something we’ve historically been terrible at. We’ve had it easy when it comes to the past because we didn’t have to adapt much, but now..”
The Devil picked up a smartphone on a pedestal. Observing its angles he asked, “What the hell is this?”
“It’s what the humans are calling an iPhone,” said Dmitri with irritation in his voice. “It’s been out for at least five years.”
Dmitri handed the Devil a packet. “We call it Project Dating. We believe here in the Department of Special Projects that human beings have an insatiable appetite. So why not give them more?”
The Devil was desperate. “Okay I give you the go ahead. But this name stinks for a project – too generic. Why don’t you call it–” the Devil looked around the room, steam was emanating everywhere. This was Hell. “Let’s call it Tinder.”
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On the Friday before Labor Day, Donald Dresden was crying in his pillow. Across from him sat his love letter he had spent the past week writing. Just two hours prior, his girlfriend texted him,”Can we talk?” And that was the start of the end.
He felt so much – anger, hurt, despair, confusion that he couldn’t feel at all. They had almost made it a year into the relationship, and he couldn’t understand what went wrong. He got up from his bed and grabbed the letter.
He took his roommate’s lighter that was on the kitchen table and watched as he burned the letter he had painstakingly wrote to the ground. He even filmed it, and then turned the camera back on himself to see tears flowing down his face.
Donald went into a wild digital frenzy: blocking her from every social media app, deleting every photo of her. All he was left with was the fire burning video. When his tear-streaked face was on the screen, he cringed. He was about to press the delete button, when a notification popped up.
“You just downloaded Tinder!” said the message with a fire emoji. And what seemed to be a second of red light encircling his phone before returning to normal.
All of his emotions were stalled by curiosity. Did this Iphone have a bug or something? It was the Iphone 3. It was prone to bugs at two years old. He clicked on the newly downloaded app. Two words immediately popped on his slightly cracked black iPhone – Swipe Right.
It took all but three seconds as he followed instructions and pasted his photos into the profile from his Facebook profile. And once he was finished with it – the door was finally opened. The world of unlimited women opened up.
The instructions were simple. Swipe right to match. Swipe left to say no. At first, Donald was a bit nervous – he almost felt bare in front of all these 2–D images. But after a few times reading through each profile and corresponding with a left or right swipe, his confidence surged.
Ten profiles in, he got his first match. The girl had a heavy dose of makeup on in all five of her photos, except one where it was too difficult to tell because of a faraway shot of her bungee-jumping. Or at least he assumed to be her.
Her profile stated, “Seeking someone to live out the many adventures to come. Pisces.” So all Donald really had to focus on was a thumb print size of pixels of her face. In his mind he couldn’t help but create a 1-10 scale and place her accordingly: 7.
He messaged her next. “What’s up?” He waited ten minutes, and the entire time he was focused on the act of swiping based on that thumbprint of pixels. This was the game he was playing.
He soon understood that basic messages like, “What’s up” weren’t going to cut it. So he had to get creative to differentiate himself from all the other competing 2-D profiles. Things he’d never say in person were behind the sanctity of a screen. Pickup lines like, “I’m an organ donor because I’d give my heart to you” or “Do you believe in love at first sight - or should we match again?” he tossed out with casual ease.
What was once a hesitation became dulled as now what was a novelty now became a game. To win was to get the most matches. To get the most matches was to be something creative, something he was not.
A few days later he went on some of these girls. Nothing had really attracted him except their face. So conversation fell flat. Interests weren’t really there, and he had to play up this image of a cool guy who would throw out pickup lines on the first conversation. Donald, the true Donald, was a bit more subtle than that. But he wouldn’t let on – the game would not allow it.
He wanted to see how far he could go, and he often got far enough to get what he wanted and never talk to the girl again. And then without even a bit of remorse he would then seek out the next point to add to his belt. This is what happened for the next few months. During this time, large red marks formed around his wrists for no apparent reason.
Every week he had a schedule of different dates. He would take these girls on the same route. French fries at Splunkies, a walk around the park nearby, and maybe drinks at one of three locations on Hiyaker Street. Everything seemed mechanical. But still he was drawn to the concept of maybe the next one would be better, maybe the next would be the one.
The longer he played the more he seemed to care less. He couldn’t really relate to any of these girls. And they all started to blend together. What had become exciting was now about as fun as playing the game over and over again with the same player. But he continued to swipe – he continued to base his love off the pixelated profiles.
In a dark room, with an erect finger and exacerbated motions he continued to swipe left or right as he took solace in the infinity of matches. His eyes red and his mind slightly frenzied he got a jolt of energy when he matched with two girls in less than two minutes. Let the games begin.
Deep red shackles had now formed around the wrists of Donald Dresden.
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The Devil watched with pleasure as Dimtri showed him a video of Donald in the special projects control room. “This app thing looks like it’s working better than expected,” said the Devil.
Dimtri smiled and said “This was our first focus group – there are several others just like this candidate: Donald Dresden.” Dmitri switched to another screen with a graph. “You can see that though deaths are going down, misery is going up per person with each of our focus group subjects. I think it’s time we release this to other cities and build this to scale.”
“Scale?” asked the Devil. “You mean there’s more?”
“We’ve got another app in the works. It’s called Grindr. We’ve got to increase our market share as fast as possible.”
