It was a “pleasant evening”, he says. She didn’t look a lot like her photos, but it wasn’t as awkward as he’d thought it would be. Chris* was a 21-year-old law student; she was a student, too, and about the same age. “I wasn’t sure if she was my type, but I went through with it anyway, because screw it – it would make a good story, even if it went wrong,” he says. “It was a bit of Yolo, you know?”
They met at a bar, shared a bottle of wine, got to know each other. “There was no chemistry between us, at all.” He shrugs. “She went home afterwards. I didn’t see her again.”
Another outcome, and the night would have met the mainstream narrative about Tinder, which is that it’s another manifestation of the so-called ‘hookup culture’ that’s said to exist among Gen Y. Young men and women, so go the trend pieces, are pursuing casual sex at the cost of meaningful relationships and emotional bonding, and technologies like Tinder are enabling them.
But the Tinder stories that don’t get told are often as mundane as Chris’. The pearl-grasping andhand-wringing over tweets and texts and casual sex is, to some extent, just moral panic, as studies show we’re having no more sex than past generations did; we might even be having less. Love is no less of a battlefield than it was 10, 20, or 30 years ago – it’s just being fought on different, digital territory.
Photo: Unknown
More than five per cent of New Zealand’s population is using Tinder, says the company's communications director Rosette Pambakian. It’s the fastest growing dating app in the world: “Globally, we’re doing over 800 million profile ratings per day, and making over 10 million new matches per day.” The average user checks the app 11 times a day, for seven minutes at a time.
Internet dating, on the other hand, continues to carry a stigma. “People consider online dating embarrassing – a last resort – but Tinder, by simplifying the whole process and making it look cool and modern, has managed to make it pretty normal,” says Matt*, 24, of Wellington. “Everyone’s on Tinder. You don’t even have to put yourself out there.”
Location-based hookup apps are nothing new. Grindr, geared towards connecting gay, bisexual and bi-curious men for one-off hookups, turns five years old next week. Even the spin-off for straight people, Blendr, was released a full 12 months before Tinder. Neither Hinge, for dating Facebook friends-of-friends, nor Down (formerly Bang With Friends), for having sex with them, have taken off.
But part of Tinder’s mainstream appeal is its simplicity. You don’t need to create an account, as it signs you up through Facebook (on the proviso that it will never publish to your page), and you don’t need to labour over the perfect bio. Simply set perimeters around age, sex and distance from you, and you’re away.
Swipe left on someone, and they’re gone for good (#YOSO is the app’s motto). If you swipe right, and they do the same for you, “it’s a match”. You’re then given the option of either messaging them in-app, or to “keep playing”.
Frank Mansfield talks about dating and Tinder:
The app’s ease of use and simple design give it a hypnotic, game-like quality that quickly becomes addictive. After the first few judgements have been agonised over and handed down, the left and right (and left, and left, and left) movement over face after face rapidly picks up pace. It’s possible to rack up a list of tens, if not hundreds of matches, most of whom you might never talk to or chat back.
Graham*, 25, says one school of Tinder users is “using it genuinely, to make friends, dates, boyfriends”. But “the other seems to only be on there as a popularity contest – collecting matches like Ash collects Pokémon, and never talking to people.”
This “gamification” – a buzzword that refers to the use of game concepts like point rewards to engage people in real-life situations – of dating gives Tinder a levity that makes it easy to pass off as a bit of a laugh. “The guys I’ve seen doing it are just sitting there going ‘yes’, ‘yes’, ‘yes’, or pranking each other and swiping ‘the ugly ones’,” says Chris, making air quotes with his fingers. “I’ve been to a BYO where there’s three people with Tinder, just passing their phones around and laughing at people.”
It helps that Tinder isn’t marketed as a hookup app, or even a dating one. Its creators insist it’s simply “a social discovery platform, facilitating an introduction between two people”. As much as regular Tinder users are sceptical of its merits as a means of making friends (“Yeah, sure,” says Chris. “I mean, how many people are that lonely?”), a right swipe means nothing more than “I like the look of you”, and as such, the stakes – and expectations – are low.
“You realise very quickly that a match doesn’t mean anything,” says recent graduate Emily*, 21, of Wellington. “If you swipe a dud, it’s no big deal.”
For some, too, the superficiality of the face they present on Tinder acts as a safety barrier. Beyond what you can glean from their pictures, the most you can know about someone is their first name, age, and whether you have interests (as determined by Facebook Likes: “Air New Zealand”, “The Civilian”) or friends in common. “A lot of people don’t have a bio, and if they do, it’s just like ‘My apartment smells of rich mahogany’, or ‘I love the outdoors and the gym’,” says Emily dismissively.
I’m very picky. If they have a selfie, no. If they have a topless pic, no.
Like most Tinder users, the direction she swipes is largely based on a person’s photos. (Just look at the comparative failure of Twine, which operates the same way, but only makes photos available after a successful match.) She’s drawn to “normal pictures”, like ones of them with dogs (“There was a guy covered in puppies, and he wasn’t very attractive, but I thought he could maybe give me access”) or travel snaps.
“I’m very picky. If they have a selfie, no. If they have a topless pic, no. If they have a pretentious shot, taken with a fancy camera, or one of them playing guitar, I’m like ‘f… off’,” she says. “I feel like they’re trying to sell me a brand ... My flatmate intentionally put a picture of him and his grandmother as the first one on his profile; he was like, ‘It’s working like a charm’.”
“Every second guy on there is cuddling a baby tiger,” says Louise, 29, of Christchurch. “Is there a place that guys go to hire baby tigers so they can get a ‘cute’ profile picture? Baby tiger, left swipe.”
She’s met with about six matches, mostly for one-off dates, since she downloaded the app in July, and describes it as no more or less superficial than dating in real life. “If I were at a bar, I’d scan a room for who I thought was cute and skip over those who weren’t my type,” she says. “Tinder’s no different except you get the added bonus of shared interests and their first name.”
Compared to online dating, Tinder’s remarkably transparent. The swipe model facilitates snap decision-making – there’s no opportunity to creep on someone’s profile, or Google them, or go through their old tweets – and the highlighting of mutual friends makes for easy background checks.
“It being so simple makes things more casual and puts less pressure on you to create a comprehensive profile pleading your case,” says Sean, 23, a New Zealander living and working in Japan. He’s talking about Grinder, through which he met his now-boyfriend (“He talked to me because, and I quote, ‘You had a photo of yourself holding a cat’”), but the same applies to Tinder. “The flipside is that you don’t really know much about who you’re talking to, and can accidentally get involved with assholes and creeps.”
The limited information available upfront forces you to get to know someone you’ve matched with the old-fashioned way: by actually talking to them. “Tinder’s 50-50, all the time,” says Chris. “You say something about yourself, ask a question; they say something about themselves, ask a question.”
Being original is difficult. I’ve googled Tinder pickup lines. They’re all there. They’re all shit
About 70 per cent of matches begin chatting through the application; how far it escalates from that point depends on the quality of your opening line, which can range from the explicit to the banal. This Taranaki local hedged his bets on his first message to Laura*, 23, last weekend: “Hi. Two options. A) You sit on my face. B) We go out for a drink.”
“It’s tricky – just saying ‘hi, how are you’ is boring but safe; trying to be funny has its perils, but if you get it right, you’re away,” says Ray*, 25, of Wellington. He’s “single, curious, and happy to meet new people”, but not interested in a relationship, and found Tinder “a natural fit” for facilitating casual flings. “Being original is difficult. I’ve googled Tinder pickup lines. They’re all there. They’re all shit. I prefer not to chat too long, and to meet them in person as soon as possible, otherwise it’s a waste of time. I don’t use it for penpals.”
He’s met two matches in person. One woman, with whom he’d had plans to meet for a drink, texted him that night to ask him to meet at a party instead. “I wasn’t too happy with that. It’s a lot more difficult to meet where she has a lot of friends around than it is one-on-one at a bar.” The night ended with him going back to hers.
With the second, he went on a couple of coffee dates. “After the third, I rudely never responded after deciding we weren’t compatible. I hope she doesn’t think too badly of me.”
Ray deleted the app in January after a few months of on-and-off usage “because I was wasting time on it”, but downloaded it again a couple of weeks ago. It appeals to him as a cheaper, more comfortable means of meeting people than trying to pull in town, and less confronting than approaching someone cold on the street.
It’s bringing you hundreds of people, who are your age and in your area, whom you could have a thing with, right to the palm of your hand
“Once you remove the online dating stigma, you can gauge whether you like someone with a few pictures and a quick chat,” he says. “It doesn’t mean you’ll get married, but you can certainly go out for a drink to see how things adapt.”
But you don’t have to even be in search of a date, to download Tinder. Wellington student Sarah*, 23, has had around 200 matches since she first downloaded the app at the end of last year, but she’s never met any in person. Most of them, she doesn’t even chat back. The thrill of the match is “an esteem boost thing”, she says, as well as a reminder that there are eligible singles in her area.
“There’s an element of hope and possibility to it, because it’s bringing you hundreds of people, who are your age and in your area, whom you could have a thing with, right to the palm of your hand,” she says. “It’s really hard to meet people at university. You don’t talk to people in your lectures or tutorials, but you’d talk to a stranger through an app ... Before Tinder, you’d hope that a friend would bring a hottie to a party, and that if you were better looking than the rest of your friends, with better banter, you might have a shot with them.”
She’s not sure what the ratio is of people who, like her, are using the app “as a bit of fun”, to those who are looking for a relationship out of it. “But whether you have Tinder or not, you’re going to be that kind of person – the app doesn’t all of a sudden change your ability to or interest in getting a boyfriend,” she says. “The only way it will increase your chances is by increasing the number of dates you’ve gone on tenfold in the space of a month.”
But just because people don’t download Tinder with the intention of using it to land a relationship doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. Regardless of what your expectations of it are, Tinder puts you in touch with hundreds of new people that you wouldn’t otherwise have met. Naomi*, 22, of Auckland downloaded Tinder “out of curiosity” in July last year after a friend mentioned it at work drinks; she’s since deleted it after she began a relationship 10 months ago with a man she met on the app.
“People on Tinder were a representative sample of the people you’d meet in a bar – there are creepy, self-absorbed douchebags, and some really lovely people, too,” she says. “Before I met Tom* I had no idea about him, apart from a few basic details. Of course, the initial swipe to the right is always totally superficial, no matter how deep and meaningful you think your tagline is.”
After exchanging a few messages, she asked him out for a drink. “It was a busy bar in a familiar area, so I felt safe, and I had a few excuses up my sleeve in case I needed to leave early. By some total fluke, it went perfectly and I never had to use them. We found we had a lot in common and spent hours there just drinking and chatting.”
Naomi’s honest about how the two met. “It’s still a bit of a laugh when we tell people. I don’t think my parents have figured it out yet, otherwise they’d be giving me heaps of shit about it. But I think meeting people through dating sites and mobile apps is much more socially acceptable now than it once was.”
That might be the case, but the success of Tinder lies partly in its status as a punchline. No one’s taking it seriously, so no one can get hurt, and any relationship – sexual, romantic, or platonic – that comes as a result of it is just a bonus.
“I’m going on there ostensibly for a laugh, but actually because I’d secretly love it if I met someone who I was into, who was into me, that I could go on to have something casual with,” says Chris. “Maybe if I met the love of my life, OK, but Tinder’s that fun along the way.
“You don’t have the fear of rejection, or a break-up. It’s the ultimate millennial relationship device.” He pauses, and makes air quotes with his fingers again. “‘I want to find someone whom I can wake up next to and text in bed with’.”
*Some of the names in this story have been changed.
