I have a Tinder account now, and it’s quite unsettling.

I was At Da Clubz as few weeks ago and one of my friends was doing a lot of swiping on her phone, regaling in online banter with well-groomed strangers and it looked like such fun. So my drunken self, which sometimes takes the form of an excitable toddler, decided to get on board. I believe I said something along the lines of “I want to play” like a small child wanting a turn at a cup and ball game.

Obviously I didn’t download it myself, because that would be embarrassing. Instead, I forced my friends to do it for me so I could truthfully run with the “oh, yeah this is just something my mates signed me up for, I’m not actually one of those people who us Tinder” line. They created my account, installed the app and even chose the photos for my profile, thus eliminating several soul searching minutes trying to determine whether the picture of me dressed as a “sexy pineapple” made me look like a whorebag or a comical party animal who just happened to have toned legs. With my social superiority established and three non-suggestive photos of myself selected, I was ready to take on the world of stylised finger navigation and witty exchanges.

But, like “stopping the boats”, “getting on Tinder” actually had horrifyingly ruthless methods, a gross dehumanization of innocent people and was drenched in hypercriticism. I was as heartless and discriminative as our country’s asylum seeker policy on that app; I was suspicious of everyone and not a soul made it shore. But it’s not my fault.

You see, I’m easily unimpressed.

My disapproval is so easily earned it’s like a Student of the Week certificate in a school with only 30 kids – all you have to do to be worthy of it is exist (although my awards are handed out for even more specific categories such as “most idiotic thing to brag about which should actually be cause for embarrassment” or “worst choice of body spray” and the ceremonies are held hourly rather than weekly). My judgemental distain is so liberally applied it may as well be a bottle of sunscreen at a Weasley beach party (obviously this needs to be made into a reality – imagine the board shorts Mr Weasley would get about in).

What’s worse is that it’s incredibly unjustified, as I am no prize pig myself. I can’t crush walnuts between my sculpted thighs or name all our past prime ministers, and I don’t think Lena Denham is the voice of my generation. Clearly, I’m not a great example of a human being. This opinion is further evidenced by a text message exchange between a friend and me this week:

Me: Want to hear something gross?

Respectable Person: Yas!

Me: My thrice-used gym socks smell like corn chips.

Respectable Person: Noooooo. Why haven’t you washed them?

Me: I’m busy.

Clearly, I’m not really qualified to be one handing down verdicts about other people’s scummy ways when my active wear reeks of cheese-flavoured snack food yet I still deem it suitable for public use. It doesn’t stop me, however, for creating a complex and deeply hierarchical taxonomy of people based on they way they carry their sunglasses.

But the thing is that I don’t do it on purpose – I really don’t. Some people are natural athletes: they can catch a ball flying at their face from any direction on instinct. You can’t explain their abilities other than natural, God-given talent. They can’t help but be good at sports. That’s like me, except instead of being able to throw a cricket ball over a Bunnings Warehouse complex; I can shoot a judgemental glance across seven football fields with the speed of a racing car. If I see someone driving a Commodore with white sunglasses I immediately classify them as a douchebag with lightning-fast speed. It’s just my natural reflexes kicking in. I can’t help it.

Some people would see this as a positive thing. For one thing, it helps us identify threats (whether that be to our street credibility or a our lives by helping us detect a member of an enemy tribe with a flint to ready to be lodged into our brains). It’s our ability to make snap judgments that has helped human beings survive the wilderness and dominate other species to allow us to be the creatures who get to enjoy air conditioning and novelty pyjamas while the others have to live in literal doghouses.

But other people say this talent for immediate classification of people into minute subgroups based on their outfit choices/use of slang/personalised plates/any other aspect of their lives impacted by their free will is actually a bad thing. These are probably also the people who find their live partners online.

Because while someone might have chose a photograph of what looks like a hand-dug grave as a lure to attract future partners (not a joke, I have the screenshot for evidence), that person might just be an excellent cook who makes hilarious observations about the world and doesn’t mind being the designated driver. The person who is proudly displaying a cruiser as evidence they like to party may be an excellent listener who knows all the words to Float On AND Khe San. And that guy who chose three cringe-worthy formal pictures may have gentle hands but a powerful thrust and excellent breakfast recipes. Unfortunately, all you see is a photo. And if one of those photos looks like the pit your mangled body will be dumped in once that maniac tracks you down and cuts you into 11 to 17 pieces, then you’re probably going to swipe left. You’d be a slightly-homicidal dinglebat if you didn’t.

So where does that leave me? Right where I started, I suppose: using social media to judge people for using social media to judge other people on social media, while desperately clinging to a deluded sense of supremacy rooted in the belief that I’m not like any of them. And who wouldn’t want to swipe right on that?