Tinder Social – Swipe with friends?

So goes Tinder Social’s slogan. Your News Editor and Deputy Editor-in-Chief embarked on an epic quest to find out if this was truly the case.

Admittedly, this wasn’t our initial plan. We had planned a BIG night out with our fellow raver and Lifestyle Editor, Gerard. Alas, it became a typical Saturday night: we were sat alone, thinking of who we could contact that wouldn’t blank us and would be our companions to the deepest recesses of Kelsey’s.

While we were painfully aware that this feature is normally used for arranging Roman-style orgies, our intentions were less sordid…somewhat…

Suddenly it hit us like a train derailing. Why continue to pretend we have friends when there are thousands of strangers waiting for us outside our very door? The answer glared from our phones in the form of Tinder’s little known feature, Tinder Social.

While we were painfully aware that this feature is normally used for arranging Roman-style orgies, our intentions were less sordid…somewhat.

Unbeknownst to him, we recruited Gerard to our journey to add diversity to our group. We didn’t have any specific preferences – only friendly faces and solid banter. Clearly most groups were intimidated by our sheer beauty and hilarious bios because we received a mere two matches. Or maybe a woman accompanied by two men, one heterosexual and one obviously of the other persuasion, didn’t strike Leamington’s partygoers as the most appealing company.

Our first match, a woman and her gay male friend seemed friendly enough, excitedly blurting out ‘Hey’ to begin the conversation that potentially could have formed a lifelong bond.

They got the conversation off to a fantastic start by seeking to gain our affections with their rampant homophobia…

Unfortunately, Jack saw it as his duty to break the conventions of Tinder Social and suggest a possible romance between our Lifestyle Editor and the unidentified Leamington male. Things were moving too fast for the pair and silence ensued. We will never know what could have been.

We noticed a trend, spotting several groups of ‘bois’ skulking the servers. We had the misfortune of matching Leamington’s ‘likely lads’. Let’s call them M, L and C. They got the conversation off to a fantastic start by seeking to gain our affections with their rampant homophobia.

Believing in second chances, we engaged in a verbal parlay, asking if they were also of the homosexual persuasion. Lily was even kind enough to excuse herself from the proceedings.

This didn’t seem to make them any less offensive, so Jack thought he would calm things down by asking if they would save the group a piping hot dish from Vialli’s. The boys bizarrely saw this as provocation and the conversation (in the loosest sense of the term) soon degenerated into repeatedly dropping the kind of words that would make your elderly relatives run for the hills.

Lily made the shrewd decision to save Jack from being assaulted in the street and exited the chat…

After a remark about M’s unfortunate choice to don a garish Ralph Lauren t-shirt in one of his pictures was received particularly badly, Lily made the shrewd decision to save Jack from being assaulted in the street and exited the chat. With it, our investigation into the seedy underbelly of the Tinder universe came to an end.

Gerard remained the silent witness throughout the unpleasantries, sharing the stance of Taylor Swift: “I would very much like to be excluded from this narrative that I never asked to be part of.”

So what did we learn? Other than confirming our repellence to other people, not much. See you on Tinder Social sometime soon.