Swiped: Hooking Up in the Digital Age

I use Snapchat to talk to the boys I'm not supposed to,

because the messages disappear, if I'm being completely honest.

At least that way nobody knows if I'm talking to them

except for me and him.

Female Interviewer: What do you mean the boys you're not supposed to talk to?

Well, I am in a committed relationship with a man I love,

and I really, really, really love him,

but there's times where I've seen him

Snapping girls he's not supposed to,

or being on Tinder on the third page of his phone,

so I'm like, "You know..."

He tells me to move past it, we'll move past it,

but I'm like, "I'm going to do the same thing."

I've seen some of the conversations people have on Tinder,

and it's like, I'm a bold and brash man, but I'm not that bold.

It works for some people some of the time, they're like, "Hey, wanna suck my dick?"

and they're like, "Yeah, of course. Come over."

Dick pics on Instagram,

got a lot of private DMs

where people show me their penis

and they're like, "I would love to ride you."

I'm like...

It's pretty fast, you know,

it's like people are trying to just hook up.

- Man: How long? - I don't know.

An hour, in some cases.

An exchange of, like, six messages.

I think women are just as justified--

and should do this if they so choose--

- to use it in the same way. - Woman: That's true,

and I agree with you completely,

but the playing field has not been even,

and it has really never been even.

Man: What does it mean to be even?

No one's forcing anyone to do

what they don't want to, ya know?

Man: It's social coercion.

Thanks for watching our Internet edition of Nightline.

There is a major breakthrough headed to American consumers.

It's the iPhone--

an iPod, a cell phone, and portable Internet,

all in a little lightweight package.

The announcement has set off a major stir,

and it could change the way you live.

I am a child of the Internet.

I started going online at, you know, age ten.

My mom tells me that I started playing on the computer when I was three,

and I've basically been on it ever since.

I got my first phone when I was in eighth grade,

and that completely influenced the way I interacted with girls.

People get phones in middle school,

so nudes start when you get a cell phone.

Well, I used to do, like, a video call,

on Skype or AIM,

where it was just like both of us masturbating.

I was 14 or 15 whenever Grindr came out,

and I remember getting it and then lying about my age.

I think I got a Tinder, like, my senior year in high school.

I think I started one of those in high school,

I was probably, like, 16.

I do remember when you used to call people on the phone,

like if you had a crush on someone,

I think it was seventh grade, eighth grade.

Just shoot the shit over the phone.

And then you'd like hang up

and you kind of feel that warm kind of fuzzy feeling.

That probably doesn't happen anymore.

I think if you called someone these days,

you'd probably get labeled a psychopath.

Man: So we've really seen

two major transitions

since the evolution of social monogamy,

some 4 to 4.4 million years ago.

The first major transition was the rise

of the Agricultural Revolution, 10 to 15,000 years ago.

And the second major transition, I think,

has been the rise of the Internet.

And with the rise of the Internet,

we are in evolutionarily unprecedented waters.

We are experiencing a time

that people can engage with each other,

and particularly around issues of romance and sex,

in ways that are totally novel.

Now, that's not to say that we're not going to activate

ancient biological parts of our behavior

as we use the Internet

and as we use technology to engage,

but what it does suggest is that as a platform

it is totally novel, it is totally unprecedented.

If a girl is, like, very distinctly attractive,

then that's a swipe right.

If there are three girls

and some of them are moderately attractive,

then you go through and see who's who.

Usually what'll happen is,

I'll go through, and if I see a girl

that I think is really attractive,

swipe right,

and if we match, then I go through

and then I look at their profile,

because you can't really send a chat-up line

without anything to go off of.

Let me show you, 'cause I don't know

what this girl really looks like.

She's got this kind of ambiguous profile.

- Female Interviewer: She's 18? - Is she?

Well, I'm 22.

They all blend together at some point.

- Hey. - Hi!

- How are you? - Good, how are you?

- Good. Glad you made it. - Sorry, traffic was a bitch.

Yeah, it's a bad time. Do you want coffee?

Sure.

Where do you work?

I work at an Italian restaurant.

- Nice. - I'm a waitress. Yeah.

I had three dogs growing up,

and a bunch of cats and chickens and cows and goats.

I lived on a farm.

Totally, yeah. That makes sense.

- Yeah, yeah. - Oh, man, I, um--

So whenever I'm in a new class and it's like, "What's your fun fact?"

My fun fact is always that I'm related to Pocahontas--

- What?! - Yeah.

But that's an aside.

The other one is that I helped birth a goat on a farm once,

and they named the goat after me.

That's very cool.

Tell me about your puppy.

- Her name is Maya. - Nice.

Named after Maya Angelou.

That's what I was gonna guess.

Yeah.

Do you play any instruments or do any art, or...

No, I think that-- this is gonna sound super-pretentious and lame--

but I think I'm, like, an artist,

I just don't make a lot of art.

So I have to go meet my friends, but I really want to do this again.

- Yeah, for sure. - Excellent.

Hey, I'll text you. Thanks for meeting me.

- Yeah, oh, thank you. - I had a good time.

- I'll talk to you soon. - Yeah, talk to you soon.

Bye.

Daniel: Hey, dude, what are you doing?

If you just had dates where you go and you, like,

the conversation's good,

but you know it's not gonna go anywhere,

it was kinda like that.

Like a friendly date.

Like, you know that, like,

you're looking for an "in" to progress the conversation

into something more intimate or, like, sexual or something,

and it just never really happened.

I think you take Tinder a lot differently

than other people,

based on the first interaction

being at a coffee house,

instead of your house

or, "Hey, meet me at this alley."

- Open the door for her. - Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, that is indicative of a different intention, definitely. Definitely.

'Cause, Eli, I think most of your Tinder dates

- take place in the-- - Get physical real quick.

- in the home. - Yeah.

We evolved in the context of small groups

where, say, ranging from 50 to 150 individuals.

In small group living,

with limited geographical mobility,

you would have only encountered

perhaps a few dozen potential mates

in your entire lifetime.

So what's weird is that we take

this small-group mating psychology,

where the number of potential mates is very limited,

and transplant it to the modern world

where we have thousands and thousands of potential mates

that we can keep swiping through,

and it triggers this short-term mating psychology

in a way that never would have been triggered ancestrally.

I have a funny perspective on it,

because we used to be roommates.

And really, the funny part was, it was just out of the blue,

there was never any discussion of it,

but it would just be

a completely normal Tuesday night at 9:00 p.m.,

and there'd be a knock at the door and I'd answer the door,

and it would be a girl I'd never seen before.

And Eli would be like, "Oh, this is my friend. Here we go."

So it was very casual, and I always--

Yeah, I remember that. It was all of September.

Every single day, I'd be on Tinder,

maybe like 10, 20 swipes a day.

It's all the numbers game.

So like once a week,

pretty much on a Tuesday night,

'cause I remember my Wednesday class,

always being so happy in that class.

Woman: I have always wanted to, you know,