Faking it
Our very own christine cheah experiments with some hook-up apps.
BEING a young working adult living in the Klang Valley, my smartphone has always been a good companion to me.
Instant messaging keeps the loneliness away, and there are plenty of apps to keep me entertained.
But now, it seems smartphones are also being used by some people to get an ONS (the Internet acronym for “one night stand”).
To satisfy my journalistic curiosity, I downloaded a few popular hook-up apps – Tinder, Skout, Momo, Miumeet and Grindr – for a little experiment.
I asked around for “hot spots” where I could try out the apps’ geo-social capabilities. Pavilion KL and The Curve, Petaling Jaya are good locations, apparently. I opted for the latter.
I station myself at a cafe, and almost immediately after uploading my profile, receive eight messages. One of them turned out to be a married man.
I told him I was new to the game, and he replied that the app I was using was actu- ally for people seeking one-night stands. For him, all he looks for is someone with whom he can eat, chat and “play”. Considering the app we were using could be downloaded by anyone above 17, it all felt a bit wrong – and potentially dangerous.
In most of the conversations I had that afternoon, the guy would ask me if I wanted to meet up for a drink; though hints of sexual intent were never far away. It was pretty unnerving to think that all these men were no more than 400m away from me.
Naturally, I turned down the requests, and told them I was a journalist just trying the apps out for a story. All of them stopped replying.
But not all the apps were about hooking up. On one hand, there were certain ones that were filled with escort services, but on the other, there were some where you could just find someone like-minded to chat with.
Skout was recommended by a friend who said it was one of the better ones. I found about 15 fellow users around me with just one glance at the screen.
It had a “Shake to chat” feature. You shake your phone, and it connects you to another user shaking the phone at the same time in any part of the world. Your profile will remain anonymous to the other person for the first 40 seconds, so you get to leave without revealing any personal info if that person freaks you out.
On my first try, I was put in a conversation with a guy from Tokyo, Japan. He wasn’t fluent in English, but he still tried to chat. He was just bored and looking for someone to talk to.
Incidentally, the people behind Tinder – probably the most popular app of the lot – have been trying very hard to tell everyone that the app was not made for hookups. It was meant as a social tool, for people to expand their social circles.