Mantalk #7

Set free from their fashion bubble, this week Craig talks all things Tinder and Seán tackles our need to get completely legless on a night out…

Craig
We’re rebranding, finally. This week marks a very important occasion in the lives of myself and Sean there doing the other article – Mantalk can actually become manly.

This week I’m gonna delve into the hyper-horny world of online dating that is Tinder. Left, right, yes, no, click into her, awh rotten!

Most people can relate to this tinder-technique. For some it works best when a simple ‘green-for-all and filter’ technique, others are picky. Let’s face it, the tinder fad may have dulled slightly but we’re still all on it, and like it or not, we still have a cheeky browse now and again.

But if we focus on the reasons why we have switched to online dating to find love (and lust), a pattern emerges. The pattern is that we are all trying to increase flirtatious contact with the opposite sex that doesn’t involve downing a Tom Collins or two beforehand.

Yet there are still people who won’t admit to using social dating sites, and they’re lurking in the corridors of the Science Building, at that glory hole in the Henry Grattan and up in the café in the Business School. It’s a little weird at first, it feels a bit different, but stick with it and it will become natural (girls with boyfriends may have heard this line before surrounding other activities).

The picture. All the interest you generate is based on a handful of pictures, so be wise. Don’t be that fella with his top off looking for a ‘girls into fitness’; you’re really just looking for a girl with a class body. Don’t be that free soul type either – ‘People don’t understand me’.

One that always gets me is people who lie on these sites. Sure, it’s okay to tell a few white ones but I mean the overall aim of the game is to meet people so what’s the point in being tall, dark and handsome online if you’re small, white and bet down in real life?

The reason we’re on sites and apps like Tinder is to meet people. Like it or not, that’s the reason why you are using it. And why shouldn’t you! Why should we have to wait for a night out? Why should we have to be gee-eyed drunk? In a dating environment, you get to know that person, which eliminates the awkward next morning after Coppers where you’re just like “Eh, the bus stop is out the door and go left”.

That moment. You’ve finally plucked up the courage to meet this person, and what better place than the Spire. You could spend the whole day at the Spire taking pictures of the Chinese people taking pictures of the Spire. And as soon as you get there, the handbrake goes up and you’re driftin’ around it looking for the love of your life and then the inevitable ‘tap on the shoulder’ moment has to be done.

Try be unique in your date selection; like meet at a bus stop, tell her you’re going to town or the park but instead you’ve arranged to go play with puppies at a local dogs trust or something. Everybody loves puppies!

Watch out for those Catfish though! Lads, I got one the other day. Now she seemed like a nice ‘girl’ and all I had to do was click on a link to a private chat and verify my card details to prove I was over 18. Now I didn’t go for it but I swear, I was in there!

Seán
Seánie G – “I don’t drink, no?”
Random child of earth – “But, like, what do you do on nights out and stuff?”
Seánie G – “I stand in the corner licking the wall, rubbing my nipples through my cashmere cardigan, humming the Iraqi national anthem.”

I am feared by people because I witness them when they are most vulnerable. I don’t understand why I am the alien because I choose not to drink, I mean, I am the sober one; sober does mean I am not affected by alcohol, thus, of sane mind, but people look at me like I have smeared my faeces on their jowls.

I think people are concerned about what I do on a night out because if I am not slurring my words or getting sick down my check shirt, well, what am I doing?

The truth is, I get bored very easily so I dance like I have taken 10-13 E-tabs with Honda emblems on them (love Civics). But wait, this sounds just like a normal night out for anyone? Correct, I just don’t get the thirst everyone else seems to have, I would only have 2-3 pints of water on a night out… my urine is light enough, if I drank anymore I’d be in trouble, but most sink a severe amount of fluids.

I stopped drinking after the third time I drank when I was 16; a young boy, an aspiring hustler. I didn’t like the effects of it; the lack of control I had over myself and the fact that I was liable to get myself into any situation was terrifying.

Looking back now, it was the best decision I have ever made. Through the years, I have learned so much from hanging around people who are heavily intoxicated such as social skill (don’t blink slowly when speaking to people, look them in the eye and not the tit); picking up a partner (don’t initiate the conversation with “’me’er woman, a word”, I find biting is much more effective and avoid grinding girls/guys from behind with your one in wonder); curry chip eating skills (in the mouth, nowhere else).

The only way to stop drinking is to forget what anyone else thinks about you and be who you would like to be. You will never be confident if you feel the need to drink before becoming the social butterfly you want to be, it actually has drastic adverse effects; you rely on it more and more and then it becomes addictive and then an alcoholic.

You don’t need to become that, when you become the person you would love to be, drink is irrelevant; drink is just an expensive and short term way of getting to be that person. Try psychotherapy, it’s much cheaper in the long run.

Seán Ó Grifín & Craig Sutton