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Tips and warnings for online Tacoma dating

Tinder resignation

Is Tacoma's Triangle District a cool place to take a Tinder date? It's better than a hot air balloon basket. Photo credit: Pappi Swarner

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Look, there's no point in pretending that this whole article is anything other than an excuse to publish a singles classified ad for myself, so let's go ahead and get that right out in the open. I enjoy whiskey, comedy podcasts, whiskey, dialogue-heavy films, whiskey and having long, intimate conversations with friends. I have two almost-jobs, and I'm eager to pass my neuroses onto a lucky lady.

As the six-year title-holder of Tacoma's Most Eligible Bachelor (in my mind), there are some things I've comfortably observed, from a safe distance, about the mating patterns of your average Tacoman. First and foremost: if you run in a coed circle, chances are you've all been matched and rematched in as many configurations as possible, leaving you all single and bitter.

Since this is the case, it makes sense to open yourself up to new experiences and different groups of people. The easiest way to accommodate this is to finally bend yourself to the will of the Internet, and utilize its system of tubes to help you make a love connection. Because everything is terrible and love is a cruel game, may I suggest the matchmaking application known as Tinder?

For the blissfully uninitiated, Tinder is an app that allows you to casually flip through a series of profiles of people in your general vicinity. If you like how the person looks, you swipe to the right; if not, you swipe to the left. If it turns out that you both like the way the other looks, Tinder lets you know, and then it's up to you to make the next move.

I've never used the app, myself, but I spoke to an anonymous source in a parking garage, who told me all about it.

"I've been absent-mindedly using it since November," says Deep Throat. "I don't go to bars that often. This just seems like a different way of meeting people. ... Places like OKCupid seem a little more serious, like they require a little more of an attention span. ... On Tinder, I've about fifty-six matches, and maybe thirty conversations, of varying lengths. It's just fun to look at people and see how they can be extravagant or outlandish. To see their personalities."

My inside source has never been on a date as a result of Tinder. The casual nature of the whole thing tends to lend itself more to any other time-waster app, as opposed to more focused endeavors like OKCupid or any of the other, countless dating sites. Even though Tinder was ostensibly modeled to be the heterosexual version of the gay matchmaking app, Grindr, there's just no matching men's capacity for horniness. With Grindr, there's never much of a shortage of nearby men who wouldn't mind some casual sex. Tinder, however, offers the harder sell of relationships between the two sexes.

So, where might you take a date you met on Tinder - if, in this world, you were to meet your date suddenly and within moments of first contact, just like on Grindr? Deep Throat and I both agree that the scariest place would be to meet at either of your homes. Barring that insane idea, let's take a look at the best and worst Tacoma locations for Tinder meet-ups.

Best Locations

OK, so I lied. There is no best place to have a date with a stranger you met on your telephone computer thingy. Acknowledging this, why not cut your losses and put your cards on the table (where you previously cut your losses)? Knowing that you need to take your stranger to a bright, public place (to further complicate kidnapping schemes), and that you wish to impart the best of your personality in as few words as possible, why not head to any number of the summer's abandoned elementary school playgrounds? Bring some drinks! There's slides and swings, and the police will inevitably be circling, ensuring that you have the sort of breakneck date that 2014 is all about.

Worst Locations

Beyond the aforementioned home date, there's all sorts of ways you could make a false step with this one. Elegant dinner? Too much, too soon. Shotgun wedding? Too clingy. I'd say the worst place to bring your new friend would be up in a parasail and/or hot air balloon, where you'll shout your greatest secrets and fears over the sound of rushing wind. But, hey, if she doesn't turn and run (and how could she, what with you guys being hundreds of feet in the air?), then you may have just found the love of your life!

In closing, be careful out there in the world of online dating. Also, in closing, can you set me up with your sister? I think she'd really get me.

Getting Lucky with Nicky and Adam

Longtime friends Nicky Martin and Rev. Adam McKinney are notoriously great at staying single. This summer, that'll change. The limited series "Getting Lucky" will find the two awkward socialites hitting club after club, wingman-ing each other. The column will end when one of them gets laid, or when the summer is over. So, it'll probably end when the summer is over. Read Getting Lucky with Nicky and Adam" beginning next Friday on our Walkie Talkie blog.

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