Tinder loving care

Looking to score a date with Valentine’s Day around the corner? Writers Muhammad Syafiq and Goh Pei Xuan susses out hot dating app Tinder and tells you what works, and what doesn’t.

ILLUSTRATION: BRENDA LEE HUI ZHEN

Finding a connection with someone special is now just a click or swipe away, with the popularity of smartphone applications like Tinder.

The wave of dating apps like OkCupid, Paktor and Tinder has revolutionised the online dating scene and increased the options of potential dates for users, making it more convenient to date.

Launched in 2012, Tinder is the most widely used location-based dating application with over 1.4 billion swipes and 26 million matches made daily, according to Tinder’s official webpage (www. gotinder.com).

For those willing to part with their dime, the premium Tinder Plus (available at US$9.99 or S$14.24 per month) grants users five ‘Super-likes’ per day and gives users the option to swipe beyond their own countries.

Tinder co-founder Sean Rad said in an article in TIME Magazine: “Nobody joins Tinder because they’re looking for something,” and swiping on Tinder is like being at a buffet; the sheer number of potential dates makes it hard for one to stay focused and committed on a single person.

As such, Tinder has been widely criticised for promoting hook-up culture among users. The convenient app allows users to get validation and attention with no strings attached.

Given the stigma that surrounds the app, it is no wonder that most users are reluctant to reveal that they are frequent swipers on Tinder, until they have been unwittingly caught by friends who are also using the app. One would be hard pressed to find someone who is ready to flaunt his well-used Tinder-thumb.

SWIPE RIGHT?

When we were tasked to try out Tinder for this article, we were slightly apprehensive.

We heard horror stories of romance scams, catfishing — where a person adopts a fictional online identity to lure potential dates — to anecdotes from friends with persistent stalkers.

Friends who tried out the app claim that the initial excitement when getting matches was addictive, but they got bored as conversations became harder to sustain.

Nevertheless, we were curious and eager to try out the app for ourselves. As first-time users of Tinder, we found the application easy to navigate. Three minutes later and with minimal effort, we verified our Facebook accounts and started swiping on Tinder.

We dedicated an hour to swiping each day for three days.

DAY ONE

We started the social experiment by having a full frontal shot of our faces as our main Tinder profile picture.

We found ourselves getting matches almost immediately with users who swiped right for us.

We averaged five matches each on the first day.

Syafiq: I matched with Girl C from the Philippines, who was using Tinder Plus. We talked about her life in the Philippines and compared our cultural differences. This made for an interesting conversation.

Pei Xuan: I got my first ‘super-like’ from Guy A and I reciprocated. He thanked me for liking him back, then rambled on about his less-than- stellar looks and his inability to hold a conversation with girls.

He told me he feels most confident when he wears his army uniform.

The former felt like a common thing a guy would say to introduce his humble personality, but the latter was slightly odd.

Observation and conclusions: With our pictures being the initial point of contact, it opened many doors for us to connect with new people. Most of our matches were simply in for casual conversations and nothing more. However, knowing that they knew how we looked like in reality made us more cautious about what we said.

DAY TWO

We swapped our full frontal shots for something a bit more subtle: our silhouettes. Our matches dropped from five on the first day, to three on the second day.

Syafiq: I got matched with Girl N, a girl with an interesting one-liner on her profile: “The thug life chose me.” Her profile said she was 20 but after we started chatting, she told me she was actually 17. She inflated her age so she could match with older guys. I was uncomfortable talking to girls that young, but I could not tell that I was talking to a 17-year-old, perhaps because she was mature.

Pei Xuan: Guy J asked me “what happened to the photo with (my) face” after I changed my main Tinder profile shot to one with my silhouette on Day 2.

After I replied that I just felt like changing it, he told me: “We can’t be friends anymore.”

His blunt reply surprised me, as it is more common for online users to want to show the best sides of themselves. But this was not the case for him.

Observations and conclusions: Day Two showed the importance of having an attractive profile picture.

But the fact that we still got matches whom we had casual conversations with affirmed our initial observation — that many are on Tinder simply to pass time, talking to anyone they matched with.

DAY THREE

We took a more active approach on the last day of the social experiment and started the conversation with our matches. On our last day of the experiment, we averaged 2 matches.

Syafiq: I got matched with Girl H, who turned out to be my old friend from secondary school. It was unexpected, the best thing that happened to me on Tinder.

Pei Xuan: I asked Guy L how long he had been on Tinder, and got more than I bargained for: his detailed life story in which his previous girlfriend (whom he met on Tinder) left him to be the mistress of another man in his 40s with a wife and kids.

He ended the conversation with: “I cannot bring myself to trust people online anymore,” before asking whether I was single and whether I had plans on Friday.

I thought he was on Tinder to fill the void left by his ex-girlfriend, and was looking for someone to bare his soul to. But this was the most interesting conversation I had in my three days of swiping.

Observations and conclusions: Starting conversations in real life may be awkward, but in the virtual world, there are perhaps no boundaries to what is an appropriate way to start a conversation.

Taking a more active approach is definitely a way to go in Tinder if you want to engage in more meaningful conversation with your matches. After all, it takes two hands to clap.

RELATED STORY: Beyond the swipes, Love at first swipe

A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Nanyang Chronicle on February 10, 2016, with the headline ‘Tinder loving care’. Print Edition