Tinder: What’s love got to do with it?

Frankie Bond investigates the latest trend in social networking

‘I WANT TO GO OUT WITH YOU’ screams Rachel McAdams at Ryan Gosling in the Notebook, as he hangs precariously from the fairground wheel dressed like a cross between Tiny Tim and Lenin.  For our generation, steeped in popular culture, love was what Ryan taught us it was; a momentary spark between two soulmates, occurring for just a brief second in the unlikeliest of places. It might be a fleeting glance at the fairground,  a 2nd hand bookstore in Notting Hill, an awkward meeting in a biology class (Bella & Edward) or even on the subway with another man (although I’ve literally never heard another English person call It that, I’m willing to assume James Blunt meant the tube and not the roof of a nearby sandwich shop). The point being that the intertwining of fate and chemistry was rare; like Ryan we had to seize our moment to turn an accidental collision of eyes into hand-holding picnics, walks in the park and long conversations about feelings. And then along came Tinder.

Gone are the days of Gosling. ‘The Notebook’ copyright of New Line Cinema

Tinder is an unstoppable juggernaut that is fundamentally changing the way young people approach each other. Within six months of its launch the app had 500,000 users and was growing by 5% every day. Although it wont reveal official numbers on members, Tinder now has 50 million matches and over 50 marriages to it’s name (and presumably a few divorces as well). This has all come with a predictable helping of moral panic from the media. The Telegraph noted alarmingly that Tinder was ‘making it easier for teenagers to have casual sex’ whereas Vanity Fair fingered it as a culprit in the on-going digitised sexual revolution amongst teenagers. This apparently also includes Snapchat and Skype, where ‘sometimes they strip for each other or masturbate together’; a description frustratingly at odds with my own experience of Skype, which typically involves tidying my Uni room for twenty minutes before my parents shout ‘your going to have to speak up’ as they stare scared and confused into the webcam like the subjects of a hostage video.

Tinder’s genius is that it has managed to pull off the most unlikely of tricks; making internet dating socially acceptable. It’s easy to forget this was a medium once considered by young people to be solely the preserve of paedophiles and elderly women with cats (the Saville and Boyle demographic, if you like). ‘Tinder works because it has managed to destigmatise online dating’ says Doug Haines, from the dubiously titled London school of attraction. Today it’s almost impossible to find a student not on Tinder, and the question as to why a demographic that goes out several times a week and comes into contact with literally thousands of new people every year would need an iPhone app to help them meet has largely faded into the background.

Tinder though, is different to most dating sites. Rather than bothering with the usual series of preferences, tinder opts instead for an aggressive form of aesthetic egalitarianism, where users are distinguished only by five carefully chosen Facebook photos and their rough geographic location. The annoyingly addictive function of allowing users to swipe left and physically discard hundreds of prospective suitors every minute gives the app the feel of being kidnapped at gunpoint by Paddy McGuiness, shoved into a van somewhere on the outskirts of Bolton and being forced to be the male contestant in ‘Take Me Out’ on a never ending loop until you literally cant stand the sight of another mildly attractive blonde girl called Jess. Accordingly to the Huffington Post students can even be found referring to ‘Tinderitus’ – the sensation of having a sore thumb from swiping so much, though It’s worth noting they definitely made that up.

Even more worryingly , Tinder has taken the great social problem of our age and managed to make it fundamentally worse: Facebook stalking. Ten years ago, If you’d crept in through someone’s front window and started ruffling through the holiday snaps on their fridge you’d have been sectioned. Now, however, its become widespread to look so far back through the photos of some girl from your old school you never really spoke to that it becomes unclear whether she’s using a retro instagram filter or you’ve genuinely reached a point in her timeline before the advent of digital photography. In the run up to many an essay deadline there are people I’ve stalked so intensely it would probably be less weird, though admittedly more legally problematic, if I’d just followed them home that night and watched them sleep. Now Tinder is allowing us to trawl through photos of even people we’ve never met. It can be done anywhere, anytime, around anyone. My personal preference is a large park or public space with the distance set to 1/2 mile; then if you are to encounter rejection you can at least walk around and ask for some feedback afterwards.

The founder of this emerging cult is a man called Justin Mateen, who himself has apparently found dates through tinder and coincidentally is also someone I sincerely hope dies alone. Justin claims he is reinventing the way people meet: ‘In the real world your either a hunter or you’re being hunted’ he says, perhaps allowing for the possibility that the slightly creepy, hunger-games lens through which he views relationships may have contributed to his status as a single man.

Yet despite all this, with young people having rated each other over 4.5bn times the Tinder train seems unlikely to be stopping anytime soon. It seems we’ve given up waiting for that magical moment when the clashing forces of fate and circumstance collide, in favour of trying to sleep with most people in a ten mile vicinity who can take five decent selfies. According to Mateen, there’s even Hollywood celebrities who use Tinder regularly, though he cant say who. That’s probably what Ryan Gosling does these days. He’s given up scaling fairground rides in search of love and settled for just sitting in a darkened room scrolling Tinder , messaging girls about how much he wants them, all of them, forever, him and them, everyday, until he swipes to the left and starts on the next one.