I recently came across this hilarious video about Tinder. For those who are wondering what the heck Tinder is, it's an app that integrates with your facebook profile and allows you to search for people of a certain age within a certain geographic distance. You swipe through profiles meeting your set parameters and rate the individuals as either attractive or not. If someone you think is attractive also rates you as attractive, Tinder lets you know you've matched and allows you to chat. Several of my friends have dated people they met this way, and over a few beverages at a party, a girlfriend of mine convinced me to set up a profile.
Because Tinder is free and based on geography, it has developed a reputation for being a hookup app. (see this mention of Olympians using Tinder to hook up with other athletes.) Essentially, if you're sitting at home bored on a Friday night, you can start chatting with your matches to see if anyone's willing to meet up on the fly. While I have certainly been propositioned by guys I've matched with, I personally love Tinder, and here's why:
1. People you find unattractive can't talk to you. Think about it: Isn't this generally the worst part of online dating? For women, maybe 20% of the messages we get through online dating sites are from men we actually want to talk to. That being said, you can't tell the following about someone from Tinder until you ask: height, whether they smoke, or parenthood status-all 3 of which are potential deal breakers for me.
2. You can see who your mutual friends are. Because Tinder integrates with facebook profiles, it allows you to see if you have any mutual friends with your matches. You can also see if you've "liked" any of the same pages on facebook. Here in Richmond, if I match with a guy close to my age and we have no mutual friends or interests, he either just moved here or we have nothing in common.
3. It's easy to look up further information about your matches. Again, because of Tinder's integration with facebook, everyone on Tinder has a facebook profile by default. If you can't find someone relatively quickly through a facebook search, that's a red flag that they're using fake photos or information (which, in my experience, rarely happens). If you have mutual friends with a match, it's usually easy to find them by searching through the mutual friend's friends.
4. Tinder opens the door to talk to acquaintances in a different way. Since being on Tinder, I've struck up conversations with one of my favorite local bartenders and a cute friend of a friend, neither of whom I've ever spent much time with one on one. Chatting with the bartender gave me some information that helped confirm that I should not, in fact, go there; chatting with the acquaintance led me to think maybe I've judged him too harshly in the past.
So back to the video that originally inspired this post. Is Tinder just a hookup app? A lot of people do use it that way. As soon as a man asks you, "So what are you looking for on here?", you can generally expect some form of proposition. Personally, I head those off by answering honestly that I'm looking to meet new people to date. I have met men who quickly asked me out and made their (honorable) intentions clear. There have also been some gray area invitations to meet up with guys who live nearby at a neighborhood bar. Having not pursued any of those, I can't say whether they were angling for a hookup or ambiguously asking for a date.
Some final words about Tinder: Once you swipe "no" on someone's profile, you'll probably never see it again. I personally swipe yes to anyone who seems cute and interesting; if they turn out not to be, I can always block them later. Tinder's GPS system can also be inaccurate at times, so you may find yourself matched with users from NoVA or Hampton Roads.
Readers: Have you tried Tinder? What do you think?
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