Swiping people left and right: the Tinder/hook-up culture discussion

no.

So I got this app last week and since then, I have apparently swiped ... Everybody? it says "there's no one new around you" :( Is that normal? I'm in the ~25th largest city in the US..

Closer to 20th biggest actually, just had to dbl check myself. I mean, I know there are a Lott more ppl in ny or Chicago, but.... One week of only moderately obsessive swiping and that's it?

now you just sit back and let the love roll in

try turning off the wifi connection, rebooting the program, and trying again. mine doesn't get along w/ wifi v much

I've been hooking up with dudes through online sites since AOL in '99 and it's done wonders for my charm, charisma, and self-presentation. It works like any other date: you start a conversation, meet at a public place for a drink, if you're feeling it you hook up. At worst it's a hookup and you'll have time to finish that load of laundry

So, when you swipe left is that a permanent swipe left, or do you you cycle through people again as they go back online?

pretty sure it's permanent

I figured as much, but am pretty certain I've seen doubles. Wasn't sure if it's a glitch or not.

if they remove their account and sign up again you may see them again

deleted tinder recently - found myself wasting time swiping but with no real intention of meeting people (nor any good conversation with matches really)

it's compulsive even when you have no expectation of ever meeting anyone on it. it's also just depressing - all these fucking faces - i feel like as it's got more popular there are more aggressively normal people on it also.

yeah, those things happened with okcupid for me in a big way over time.

I was laughing about Tinder over the weekend because a friend and I, both from smallish cities, were visiting Montreal and we were kind of casually flipping through Tinder and we never ran out of possible matches. I mean, we were busy doing things so we weren't looking for any extended period of time, but with the search radius even down to two or three miles it still seemed limitless

It is limitless - it starts to erode your sense of humanity and human individuality after a while... or maybe that's just me. Something about seeing the same pictures 300 times and the same slogans etc - the same places even.

The amount of pics beside the holocaust museum in berlin is truly odd - like just to stop that classic date scenario where it's all going so well until it turns out she supported the holocaust.

apparently all the men in london have pics of themselves beside tigers.

all the women have pics of themselves jumping on a beach.

it's the 2015 version of of men are from mars, women are from venus

I feel like you get a handle on undercurrents in your local culture you might not have been aware of

I saw a picture of a woman holding a shotgun and a dead wild turkey today

college sports apparel is amazingly widespread

for a while i spoke to this woman who was a truck driver - she explained she sometimes slept in her truck with a baseball bat.

i guess it was interesting to think how it could put you in touch with someone so radically different from your hipster friends.

or to imagine the rich material for a play us going on a date would have been

ugh

i've seen a few celebs on it too actually...

surprising number of profile pictures for women feature them in Venice IIRC, that faded relic of past glories.

they clearly don't make celebs like they used to..

So I got this app last week and since then, I have apparently swiped ... Everybody? it says "there's no one new around you" :( Is that normal? I'm in the ~25th largest city in the US..
― Nobody ever knows anything. (sleepingbag), Wednesday, May 27, 2015 7:04 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Closer to 20th biggest actually, just had to dbl check myself. I mean, I know there are a Lott more ppl in ny or Chicago, but.... One week of only moderately obsessive swiping and that's it?
― Nobody ever knows anything. (sleepingbag), Wednesday, May 27, 2015 7:07 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I have, uh, gotten a lot better at using this app since last week 😜

did you have the radius set to like two blocks?

Swiping left is mostly permanent - a very smart trick is that the premium version gives you a 'cancel last swipe' button.

But yeah you can create a second one - I had a description-less one for brief ego boost then deleted it and signed up again saying "Hey just out of serious long term relationship, not looking for anything permanent" - obviously got a different set of matches than the first.

I got hit by the compulsiveness too, swiped everyone within 2 miles - there are probably more women with the top range (25 miles?) than in Ireland, but that's London for you.

Also yeah it's incredibly performative, all of a dating profile shrunk into 500 characters so there a lot of heavily laden words about being Fun! and Genuine! and er Tall! pinging past.

Also a lot of travelling, leading up to this encomium on the Travelling Girl (warning: Elite Daily).

Not just all words to be fair - lots of photos of Machu Picchu and Everest Base Camp. They don't let just anyone in there!

~1/10 of the women on tinder here (zurich) have the quote 'travel is the only thing you buy that makes you richer'

i went on a few dates from it but i'm also thinking of deleting it now. it's such a great rush when you swipe right and get a match with someone cute. seemed to happen a lot when i first installed it or when i'm back in london for the weekend. it's awful when you start to worry that you've swiped through the whole city.

sorry but 'travel' is not a hobby imo

biggest tinder celeb spot: violinist for the trans-siberian orchestra

"hobbies" are for savages

this encomium on the Travelling Girl (warning: Elite Daily)

this is such a horrible barf-inducing article. "There is something to be said about a woman with stamps in the pages of her passport." somehow, "she is wealthy" entirely escapes the discussion.

lol elite daily

I think I removed several people on facebook who shared mostly stuff from that site, then blocked the site.

Oh yeah obviously what is being performed is "I have quite a bit of money (or at least know how to produce this impression)".

The way in the Avengers film where Ultron bathes in the cliche of consuming All The Internet and learning about humanity - you could connect a decent AI to a Tinder device in Trafalgar Square and it would hum for a bit and declare it now understood the British class system. Less mountains of skulls, too, in general.

the skulls are already buried across the imperial diaspora

*frequently what is performed

i defiantly have started seeing ppl i've swiped left on pop up again

just started noticing it in the last month or two

definitely not "defiantly"

Right, but since deleting your profile is two taps and importing again from Facebook is like four taps, that's not that surprising, right?

Slavoj Žižek to thread: http://bigthink.com/videos/online-dating-and-synthetic-sex

Is the Facebook requirement keeping people away from this?

In other words, does it make public on Facebook the fact that you've installed it and are seeking out matches?

Prolly not

no, and no

it isn't a "Facebook app" or w/e, it just uses the info to log in and grab age/selected photos

Also connections / shared interests, which are among the data it shows you about profiles. So if'd be a bad idea for someone to ask a friend "hey saw your friend on Tinder, are they cool?" then I'd go with manually creating a profile / pictures.

true!

imo that's a strength, not a weakness, but if you find online dating shameful I guess you can go undercover

girl i am currently seeing made a fbook account just to get on tinder and then subsequently deleted it

Right, but that's so cumbersome

Are they funded by Facebook?