If you haven't heard of Tinder, you haven't been paying attention. It's the hottest thing in online dating. It's worth billions. I'm not going to bore you with all the details of how it works. You can learn that anywhere, but here are the main reasons Tinder is different, and why it's getting so much buzz:
- It's not "really" online dating. Tinder has an organic feel. It uses your facebook contacts to link you with friends of friends.
- It's entirely smartphone based, so is very comfortable and intuitive to people who are familiar with social apps. It doesn't feel like normal online dating.
- It empowers women. Because you can't communicate with anyone until there's a mutual match, women feel empowered to control who gets to write them.
Yes all these things are true, but there's one fundamental flaw with Tinder that makes it almost entirely useless, completely inferior to virtually any other online dating site: It sucks. Here's how Tinder destroys online dating:
It doesn't allow men to make the first move
This is the biggie. Sure, at first women think this is a good thing, but in reality, it makes it harder for matches to be made, meaning even women suffer. Women just don't make the first move. Female empowerment aside, desirable women aren't going to put a lot of effort into meeting men. They don't have to. Men need to initiate the conversation to get things going. Tinder doesn't allow that. So if you're a man, prepare to wait around for nothing to happen. If you're a woman, prepare to put in a whole lot more effort than you're used to.
The location based matching goes haywire
Most people want to date someone who lives within X miles of their house. Tinder always uses your smartphone location, and only allows you to set a search radius around your current location. Every time you go on a weekend business trip, or just drive across town, be prepared to get a ton of matches that are way out of your desired search radius.
No filter criteria
Look, I don't care how great you are, I'm not dating you if you have kids. We all have our dealbreakers. Filtering out people who don't meet our minimum criteria saves everyone time. With Tinder, there's no way to do this.
Your friends of friends run out in the first ten minutes
The whole social networking aspect of Tinder is an appealing idea, but in reality there are only so many people that are connected to your network. After you burn through all those, Tinder basically becomes just another anonymous dating app.
Ads
Oh, and did I mention that half the "matches" you receive as a man are bullshit profiles designed to draw you to a website for a competing dating served or (more likely) a prostitution service? Yeah.
The bottom line
All these add up to Tinder being a big waste of time. I've been on Tinder for a few months, basically flipping through profiles every time I have a spare moment like I'm a crack addict. Wasting a lot of time. I think I've been on a total of 3 dates, two of which were, let's just say not good. I had one successful experience when I happened to find someone within a mile of where I live, and guess what... she was a black girl.
So what do I recommend? Stick to "traditional" online dating. Use the techniques from my book to achieve success in the least amount of time possible. Good luck!
