Tinder Offers New Dating Experience to Singles, Challenges Stigma of Online Dating The Tinder dating app has taken off in popularity since launching in 2012, with 50 million active users worldwide. While initially viewed solely as a platform for casual hookups, some users like Makindree Nicolosi and Liz Sun have found meaningful relationships through meeting matches on Tinder. However, others like Mia Phillips are disappointed that interactions often only involve users seeking casual encounters. Attitudes towards online dating have changed over time, with experiences like meeting partners through Tinder now more readily accepted than in prior decades.

1. Tinder Offers New Dating Experience to Singles, Challenges Stigma of Online Dating
Swipe right for hot, and swipe left for not. It’s a deceptively simple concept, yet one
that has taken the world of social media by storm, and has even helped some people fall in
love.
People’s reasons for using Tinder differ, but one thing is clear: Tinder is no longer
solely about casual hook-ups, as evidenced by the sheer number of people who have an
account, and the fact that some people have actually managed to find true love through the
app.
One of them is Makindree Nicolosi, a pharmacy student at the Massachusetts College
of Pharmacy and Health Sciences (MCPHS). She met Joe, her boyfriend of almost a year,
through the app. When she first created her account, however, she wasn’t expecting to fall
in love.
“Honestly, I was persuaded to go onto Tinder by my college friends,” says Nicolosi.
“My college friends were on it in hopes of finding a relationship, and they talked me into it. I
had no intention of finding someone to start a relationship with. Rather, I was just viewing
it as a way to meet new people, experience new places, and gain more experience in the
dating world as I had only really been in a one-year relationship before.”
Nicolosi went on Tinder dates with two other guys before hitting it off with Joe.
When she was home in Pennsylvania for her spring break, she was showing the app to her
aunt and it brought up guys in her area. “The first guy to pop up was my neighbor Andrew
Fulton and that freaked me out,” she says. “The second guy was Joe. Obviously I swiped
right for him.”
After months of texting, Skyping, and talking on the phone, before meeting him in
person, she agreed to be exclusive with him.
Nicolosi’s experience is a Tinder success story, demonstrating what can come out of
a free app where all it takes to connect with someone is a swipe of the finger and the guts to
strike up a conversation.
The Tinder dating app for mobile devices has been around since 2012. Research
shows that there are now 50 million active users on Tinder from around the world. The

2. average Tinder-user checks their account 11 times per day and spends an average of 90
minutes a day on the app.
The app follows a simple matching process. Users start by linking the app to their
Facebook accounts in order to develop their profiles and select photos. For security
reasons, Tinder only reveals the first name, age, up to six selected photos, and any pages
one has “liked” on Facebook. Tinder pairs users with potential matches based on
geographic location, gender, and age range, which can all be pre-set in the app’s
preferences. If two users have liked each other by swiping right when their profiles come
up, then it’s a match and they can start messaging each other.
With so many people using the app, one is led to wonder what makes Tinder so
wildly popular, and what people really expect from it.
An article from The Sydney Morning Herald reports that young people, particularly
women, say that “Tinder has heralded a complex new era where the norms and etiquette
around dating (already turned on their head by the online dating revolution) have been
chewed up, spat out, and no one’s really sure what goes anymore.”
Liz Sun, a senior at Gettysburg College, also met her boyfriend through Tinder, after
having the app for almost three years.
“I got Tinder for fun because everyone has it,” says Sun. “I was not thinking of
getting in a serious relationship at the beginning, but it just happened.”
Like Nicolosi, Sun says she is not embarrassed to tell people how she and her
boyfriend met. “I don’t care,” she says. “There is nothing to be ashamed about. People are
fine with online dating, so why not Tinder? It’s the same thing. We just need a media to
meet people.”
Yet just a few decades ago, Sun and Nicolosi’s experiences with online dating would
probably not have been so readily accepted.
Celeste Marianelli, 57, remembers how her friend, Meg, met her husband online
back in the earliest days of online dating, and then agreed to marry him when he proposed
to her the first time they met in the Philadelphia International Airport. Marianelli and her
friends were shocked that Meg met her husband online and that her marriage has actually
lasted until today.

3. “It was not normal,” says Marianelli. “It was considered risky and unknown. There
was all that weird stuff online with perverts and stuff.”
Over time, however, Marianelli’s attitudes about online dating have changed, as she
realizes how commonplace it has become. “Everything I’m hearing now, there’s so many
apps for it,” she says. “I’m still leery about it. I guess I just believe in chemistry, but it can
happen online too. Maybe people aren’t as nervous that way and it’s easier to meet people.”
In fact, Tinder has become so popular that a few competitor apps have sprung up
recently, trying to profit from the Tinder model. Some imitators include Down, which lets
users identify Facebook friends they think are attractive; Zoosk, which learns the
preferences of users and shows them profiles similar to ones they’ve previously liked, and
Happn, which connects members to people with whom they’ve previously crossed paths.
The app has even crossed into celebrity territory and inspired hackers to come up
with inventive ways to play with people’s emotions.
Last summer, talk show host Conan O’Brien had actor Dave Franco on his show, and
the two of them pulled off a Tinder prank. They both created fake Tinder accounts and had
a contest to see who could get more matches. O’Brien went by the alias Chip Whitely while
Franco posed as someone named Gengus Roundstone. Both lied about their age and
O’Brien joked that lying on the Internet is something people never do.
O’Brien and Franco’s stunt demonstrates that the app has become so popular it has
breached celebrity culture. Furthermore, while the app is something that, for some, can be
used seriously to find long-term relationships, it can also be made light of, and many still do
not view the app as a way of getting into a serious relationship. As O’Brien jokes, “What are
any of us really looking for? I’m looking for that special someone who’s going to change my
life for a period of like 20 minutes.”
There was also a recent Tinder hack, according to The Verge, that led hundreds of
straight men to flirt unknowingly with other straight men, believing them to be women.
Sarah Connelly, a Gettysburg College Senior, got the app to meet new people when
she was in a new city, but now takes it much less seriously. “Mostly I just use it as a game,
and not really as a way to meet people,” she says. “Although I did have conversations with
some people that were interesting. I had a conversation about the theory of relativity and
how the universe was rapidly expanding with someone.”

4. With so many people using Tinder as a joke, it does lead one to wonder how to tell if
the people on Tinder are for real.
Shannon Brobst, a senior, has the app, but does not use it very seriously, joking that
her friend Sabrina has met several of her boyfriends on Tinder, “and she should be
embarrassed because they’re sketchy.” Brobst says that when others ask Sabrina how she
and her boyfriend met, she lies and says they met at college.
Mia Phillips, a junior, also has Tinder but has not had the positive experience with it
that some have. “I think it’s bullshit,” she says. Her experiences on Tinder have primarily
been guys trying to hook up with her, she explains, and that is not how she chooses to live
her life.
“My expectations were not met on Tinder,” says Phillips. “I think it definitely
depends on what you’re looking for and what you’re willing to put up with.”
Even if people use Tinder for diverse reasons and some people have had more
success with it than others, there is no denying that Tinder’s popularity is growing.
If any more proof is needed of how outrageously popular Tinder has become, Alan
Feuer of The New York Times recalls how his friends used Tinder at a crowded New York
City bar. Instead of socializing with people around them, everyone was glued to their
phones, engaged in multiple Tinder conversations. According to Feuer, “As the night went
on, no one crossed the bridge from Tinder to the real world, not even the bartender, who
was using the app as he worked.”
Welcome to the Brave New World of Tinder.