With first dates out of the question, users keep swiping for something else. I had Tinder on my phone for all of two weeks, back in β the year the match-making app truly peaked, hitting a billion swipes per day. My bio was idle provocation. This led to a few silly debates, but nothing more than flirty banter. It felt almost purely virtual, like old AOL chatrooms. Now, with shelter-in-place orders in effect around the nation due to the coronavirus, Tinder is effectively this directionless and some say pointless for most of its users.
But people are still on there, suggesting that the promise of dates and hookups was never quite the main attraction. Clearly, the hope is that Tinder can be a means to an end besides love or sex.
David, 24, in Denver, is similarly downbeat on the question of what he can get out of Tinder. Jaye, a year-old trans woman in the Bay Area, likewise indulges in the fantasy of post-quarantine relationships.
But I know how unrealistic that is. This whole situation has really heightened my Hopeless Romantic Lesbian vibes. Sarah, 32, in Washington, D. She, too, is feeling out potential new homes through their Tinder populations. Usually I get like times more dudes. Why bother muddling through these exchanges? For C. Because I think I have to come to terms with that in order to grieve.
But both times they just told me to get back on the apps. What would be a more practical plan, meet someone irl for takeout, then ghost, during a pandemic? In that, she has more or less summarized the whole short history of online dating tech, which is not a mechanism for developing human bonds but a toy that generates coincidences until you find one to pursue.
