A raft of thumb injuries have been reported throughout Sydney.
Surry Hills resident Billy Noke sits in the leafy courtyard of his Surry Hills terrace nursing his swollen right thumb. “I remember the good times. It was fun.”
Mr Noke is able to swipe left, just not right. Now just 17% movement remains in his right thumb. Effectively not enough to swipe right on Tinder.
It’s come as an enormous lifestyle adjustment.
“I had no choice but to sue Tinder. What am I meant to do at bus stops?” said a forlorn Noke.
Dr Pat Jarvis, head of the Sociology department at Sydney University says, “The thumb is what separates us from animals. The opposable thumb is necessary for our survival, for our ability to forage. With app-based dating now it’s intrinsic to our ability to mate.”
“I used to swipe every day. For hours. It became a habit. Until I would swipe in my sleep,” said Noke from the rehabilitation unit at Sydney Hand Hospital on Macquarie Street. “I tried to move to my left hand but it was impossible.”
Noke has since sought help from a world-renowned physiotherapist, Perry Haddock, to retrain the brain.
Haddock says, “Once someone suffers such a debilitating life-long injury it can as be mentally destructive as it is physically. The road to recovery is a long one. Rehabilitation is a day-to-day thing.”
Retraining one’s thumb on the left hand to swipe right, for a right-handed individual, is amongst the hardest things a person can do.
“We’ve learned from Jamie Lannister that using one’s left hand is difficult if not impossible,” says Haddock, referring to the historical documentary Game of Thrones.
“It’s not going to be easy, I just take it one day at a time,” says an upbeat Noke. “Friends come over and help me swipe right, but it’s not the same.”
Haddock knows this all too well: “It’s all about muscle memory, and it takes the brain over 100,000 hours of repeating the same action before it becomes instinctive”
God-speed Mr Noke.
If you have suffered RSI from Tinder swiping contact the Surry Hills Times.
