Have you heard of the Tinder application for smart phones yet? Some say its old news and has come and gone, but there are those few who still cling onto Tinder and spread the Tinder love.
What is it? On the gotinder.com website, Tinder’s main slogan is “Discover those around you,” and continues to draw the viewer in with a simple mission statement: “Tinder finds out who likes you nearby and connects you if you’re both interested.” Initially, you make think that this sounds creepy, but you can’t deny you are now intrigued.
So, how does Tinder find out who likes you, when you and your friends can’t even figure out who likes you? Once installed on a phone, Tinder uses the GPS to find other users around you based on your location. Still sounding creepy? Just hang on and keep an open mind for a few more paragraphs!
As soon as you open up the app, it connects to your Facebook in order to retrieve your age, photos, and interests. Don’t worry though; it won’t post to the world that you’re using a “dating app.” Then from there you can set what gender you prefer, what age range you prefer, and you can set the distance of how far you would like the app to go out and find users that fit these settings. For instance, if you set a 50-mile radius, the app would use GPS to find users within 50 miles of you. You can also set up a small profile, and add or delete other pictures.
Once the app finds users near you, it compiles their photos together, and you can go through each one and anonymously “like” or “pass” on them. When you click a user’s picture you can see any shared Facebook friends you might have and shared interests as well. Here’s the good part: if you “like” a person’s photo and that person happens to “like” your photo, Tinder makes you a match and lets you chat within the app. It’s like speed dating without the awkwardness, and without trying to politely tell someone you don’t like them.
Is Tinder just a shallow hook up? Many people may say it’s creepy and for shallow people who only care about appearances, however let me ask you this, have you ever been out with your friends, spotted a cutie, and then went up and said hi? For the less bold, maybe you’ve never done this, but meeting people is a combination of attraction and luck. Attraction sparks the interest, and if your personalities coincide –that’s the luck.
Today, communication is less personal and usually behind a screen, so why should meeting people be any different? When was the last time you casually bumped into an attractive stranger at Starbucks, he buys you coffee, and you all of a sudden have the whole world in common? My guess is probably never because you aren’t Ryan Gosling and this isn’t the Notebook, and you’re not Mila Kunis in Friends With Benefits. This is reality; it’s awkward, things get weird, we’re all a mess, and let’s be honest, we would all rather be on the couch, in sweats, eating cheese wiz out of a can, then go out in search of the “one.” Tinder let’s us be the lazy Americans we are, and allows us to find our “matches,” even on the days where we don’t change out of our pj’s and eat pizza for every meal.
Will you find true love on Tinder? I guess it’s always a possibility. You can find “true love” almost anywhere, but there’s always that cliché that says you find it when you aren’t looking. After all, Tinder is just an app for those tech savvy youths to have fun with. So, if you’re looking for the “one,” my guess is that you won’t find them on Tinder, but then again, you could be the exception and not the rule this time.