Hannah Jones/ Winonan
If you’ve ever been lonely, bored and single on a Saturday night, take comfort. Now there’s an app for that, too. Tinder, the quickest way to find another lonely, bored and single person in your area, has been a trend taking the app store by storm.
Tinder uses Facebook profile data to match users based on location, common interests and mutual friends. Matches may share an interest in sports or similar tastes in music and will be nearby. The app compiles a pool of these matches and from there, it allows the user to scroll through photos and descriptions and make the call: “like” if you’re interested, “pass” if you’re not.
If two users have “liked” one another, the app opens up a chat between them. The possibilities from there are endless, but Tinder’s claim to fame is making quick hookups easy as 1, 2, 3.
As a result, it has gotten a rather dirty reputation as an app exclusively for facilitating impulsive sex with strangers. The reality isn’t always quite so hair-raising, however.
Grant Gensler and Sam Schulz, both junior engineering majors, joined Tinder only recently just to see what the fuss was about.
“We just decided to jump on the bandwagon,” Gensler said. He gestured to Schulz. “I got it because he got it.”
Schulz shrugged. He wasn’t embarrassed about signing on. Tinder, for him, wasn’t the underground sex market it was made out to be. Mostly, it was something to do.
“I use it more just to pass the time,” he said. He made a scrolling motion with his thumb. “Just flip, flip, flip.”
Tinder’s screening process can make chatting with strangers less creepy than, say, a spin around Chat Roulette: a site famous for turning webcams all over the world into a minefield of flashed genitalia.
Gensler even referred to it as “a form of people watching” which isn’t as big a deal as everyone makes it out to be.
But, Tinder is not immune to sneak attacks and misrepresentation. Jenny Pierce, a junior music education major, has strong opinions on the app: “I think it’s really dumb,” she said.
Pierce said a friend of hers had gotten the app just to “mess with people,” telling random lies about herself and tricking users into conversations. She never actually meets up with them, Pierce said.
“That’s not why the creators made it,” Pierce said. “I feel they had good intentions, but it gets misused.”
Pierce said she also has friends who use the site as intended—actually talking to people they are genuinely interested in. As a rule, though, she thinks love lives should be managed the old fashioned way.
“I met my boyfriend through school,” she said. “In person, it’s just better. You’re going to act differently online then you would in real life.”
Whether you’re a user or not, Tinder’s reputation precedes itself, and the decision is yours: you can “like” or you can “pass.”
