Tinder vs Reality
Tony Stark on
Tinder
Tony. Engineer. Self-employed. Net worth: don't worry about it. All photos are professionally shot. Bio is just "I am Iron Man." He orders the entire wine list. He talks about himself for forty minutes. He tips four hundred percent. He texts from another continent twenty minutes later.
The Profile
What His Tinder Looks Like
Bio: "I am Iron Man." That's it. That's the bio. Five words. Three of which are articles. It got 12,000 right swipes.
The Photos
Photo 1: The Headshot
Professionally photographed. Studio lighting. Tony in a charcoal Brioni suit, leaning against a workbench that appears to have a half-built robot on it. His facial hair is mathematically precise. The photo looks like it was taken for the cover of Forbes, because it was taken for the cover of Forbes. He used it twice.
Photo 2: The Workshop
Tony in his workshop, sleeves rolled up, welding mask pushed back, surrounded by holographic displays and at least four robots. This photo is captioned 'Working from home.' He is building a flying suit of armor that can survive atmospheric reentry. That is his work-from-home.
Photo 3: The Rooftop
Tony on the roof of Stark Tower at sunset. Manhattan stretching out behind him. Glass of scotch in hand. He looks like he owns the city. He does own a meaningful percentage of the city. The building has his name on it in letters forty feet tall. He put his name on the building. She will learn this is representative.
Photo 4: The Sports Car
Tony next to an Audi R8 in red and gold. The car is custom. The paint job matches his armor. He has theme-matched his car to his superhero suit and does not see anything unusual about this. The license plate says STARK 4. There are Starks 1 through 3. He has four sports cars and he numbered them.
Photo 5: The Charity Event
Tony at a black-tie fundraiser, mid-speech on stage. Behind him is a massive screen that says STARK INDUSTRIES CHANGING THE WORLD. He is pointing at the audience with both hands. He is making that face. That Tony Stark face. The one where you cannot tell if he is about to save the world or sell you something. The answer is both. He is always doing both.
The Prompts
My bio...
"I am Iron Man."
I'm looking for...
"Someone who can keep up intellectually. Also someone who doesn’t mind if I take a call mid-dinner about global security threats. And someone who is comfortable with the fact that I have a sentient AI that runs my house. His name is JARVIS. He is polite. He is always listening."
My most controversial opinion...
"I privatized world peace and it worked. Also, I think Pepper could run Stark Industries better than me and I am both proud of that and deeply competitive about it."
The way to win me over is...
"Challenge me. I cannot resist someone who tells me I’m wrong. I will then spend $40 million proving I am right, and by the time I am done we will have accidentally invented something that changes the world. This has happened four times."
The Main Event
What the Date Is Actually Like
The most overwhelming, overstimulating, impossibly generous date in recorded history. He ordered sixteen wines. He solved her engineering problem on a napkin. He sent a self-driving car with macarons.
8:00 PM — The Arrival
Tony arrives in a suit that costs more than her car. It is a Tom Ford three-piece in midnight blue, tailored so precisely that it appears to have been machined rather than sewn. He is wearing sunglasses indoors. At night. In a restaurant. He does not remove them for six minutes. When he does remove them, it is with a gesture that suggests he is revealing a gift to the world. She would find this insufferable in any other human being. Tony Stark is not any other human being. He pulls out her chair. He does this with an ironic half-smile that acknowledges the gesture is performative while simultaneously performing it flawlessly.
8:05 PM — The Wine List
The sommelier brings the wine list. Tony opens it. He reads it. He reads the entire thing. It is forty-seven pages. He reads it in four minutes. 'I’ll take the entire list,' he says. The sommelier laughs. Tony does not laugh. 'To compare,' Tony clarifies. He is not joking. Over the course of the evening, sixteen bottles of wine will arrive at their table. He takes one sip of each, makes a comment that demonstrates genuine oenological expertise, and moves to the next one. The sommelier is sweating. Not because Tony is difficult. Because Tony is right about all of them. He identifies a mislabeled 2008 Margaux. The sommelier verifies it. Tony was right. The restaurant comps the bottle. Tony says, 'I know.'
8:15 PM — The Talking About Himself
Tony begins talking about himself. He talks about the arc reactor he invented. He talks about the time he built a suit of armor in a cave. From scraps. He says 'in a cave, with a box of scraps' in a way that makes it clear he has told this story before and also that he will never, ever get tired of telling it. He talks about the patent portfolio. He talks about the time he solved time travel on a whiteboard over a weekend. He talks for forty straight minutes. She gets in approximately three sentences. Here is the thing: it is somehow not boring. He is so animated, so self-aware about his own narcissism, so genuinely brilliant, that listening to him talk about himself is like watching a one-man show by the most charismatic human alive. She realizes with horror that she is enjoying this.
8:55 PM — He Asks About Her
After forty minutes of monologue, Tony stops mid-sentence. 'I’ve been talking about myself this whole time,' he says. She nods. 'Tell me about you,' he says, and leans forward with the intensity of a man who is used to giving things his complete, undivided attention for brief, focused bursts. She tells him she works in environmental engineering. His eyes light up. 'What’s your efficiency target on the new EPA carbon capture regs?' She did not expect him to know about this. He knows about everything. She tells him her research numbers. He pulls out a napkin and starts sketching a better filtration design. In pen. On a napkin. At a restaurant. The design is better than what her team has been working on for six months. She is simultaneously attracted and furious.
9:10 PM — The Pepper Call
Tony’s phone rings. The ringtone is AC/DC. He looks at the screen and his face does something complicated — one part guilt, one part affection, one part 'I am about to be in trouble.' 'I have to take this,' he says. He takes it. On speaker. 'Tony, the situation in Sokovia is escalating and we need authorization for—' 'Pep, I’m at dinner.' 'You’re always at dinner. There are robots, Tony. Armed robots.' He mutes the phone. 'Work thing,' he says to his date. He unmutes. 'Send in the drone squadron and tell Rhodes I said he owes me one.' He hangs up. He takes a sip of wine number eleven. 'Where were we?' he says. She was on the napkin sketch. She has now accepted that this man’s life operates on a different frequency than the rest of the universe.
9:30 PM — The Self-Aware Moment
There is a brief moment — between the fourteenth wine and the arrival of dessert — where Tony gets quiet. Actually quiet. He looks at her and says, 'You know, most people find me exhausting.' She says, 'You are exhausting.' He laughs. A real laugh. Not the performative Tony Stark stage laugh. A real one. 'Yeah,' he says. 'But I’m working on it.' For about ninety seconds he is just a man at a dinner table, not a billionaire, not a superhero, not a brand. Then the moment passes and he starts explaining how he could improve the restaurant’s HVAC system. The ninety seconds were real, though. She knows they were real.
10:00 PM — The Check
The bill arrives. It is substantial. Sixteen bottles of wine plus dinner for two at a restaurant with a Michelin star. The total is $14,200. Tony looks at the bill for approximately one second. He tips 400%. Four. Hundred. Percent. The tip is $56,800. The waiter’s hands are shaking. Tony writes on the receipt: 'The 2008 Margaux was a 2009. Still tipping because the steak was perfect.' He hands it back with a wink. The waiter will tell this story at every dinner party for the next fifteen years.
10:10 PM — The Ride Home
Tony walks her outside. A car is already waiting. It is not a normal car. It is a self-driving Audi that JARVIS sent when Tony texted 'headed out.' The car has heated seats, a curated Spotify playlist based on her music taste (JARVIS researched this), and a box of macarons from a French bakery that she mentioned liking on her Instagram three years ago. She did not tell Tony about the macarons. She did not tell JARVIS about the macarons. JARVIS found the macarons. She gets in the car and it drives itself to her apartment with perfect precision. She sits in the back eating macarons while an AI plays her favorite album. This is either the most romantic or the most unsettling thing that has ever happened to her. It is both.
10:30 PM — The Text
She gets a text from Tony twenty minutes after the car dropped her off. It reads: 'I had fun. Also, your filtration design can be improved by 34% with a modified zeolite membrane. I attached the specs. — T.' She opens the attachment. It is a fully detailed engineering schematic that would take her team three months to develop. He did it during the car ride. Wait. He wasn’t in the car. He was already somewhere else. She checks his Instagram. He posted a photo fifteen minutes ago from what appears to be a private jet over the Atlantic. He is in a different continent. He texted her from a different continent twenty minutes after dinner. Attached was a schematic worth six figures in R&D. She does not know how to process this. She eats another macaron.
He talked about himself for forty minutes, solved my research problem on a napkin, and sent me home in a self-driving car with macarons.
Then he texted from a different continent. With an engineering schematic. Twenty minutes later.
Date Rating: 8/10
Two points deducted: one for the forty-minute monologue and one for the Pepper Potts phone call on speaker about armed robots during the entree. Eight points awarded for: the wine list commitment, the napkin schematic, the self-driving car, the macarons, the ninety seconds of genuine vulnerability, the $56,800 tip, the filtration specs from a private jet, and the fact that she will never have a more interesting dinner.
Would she swipe right again? She already has. He hasn't responded. He is in Sokovia.
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