Tinder boss Sean Rad has shared details of his dating life in an excruciating interview

“THERE’S a term for someone who gets turned on by intellectual stuff ... I want to say ‘sodomy’?” Swipe left.

We hope you didn’t swipe right on Sean Rad.

THE hour is late — just shut up and close the deal!

That sage dating advice might have helped Tinder chief executive Sean Rad last week. Instead, the 29-year-old tech guy gave an excruciatingly self-indulgent interview about his own sex life on the eve of the controversial hook-up app’s initial public offering.

Tinder owner Match Group, a dating-site conglomerate being spun off by billionaire Barry Diller’s own IAC/InterActiveCorp, was celebrating its $4 billion (US$2.9 billion) market valuation when Rad ran off at the mouth in a jaw-dropping confessional to a British newspaper.

Claiming that a “supermodel, someone really, really famous” has been “begging” him for sex, Rad told London’s Evening Standard that the leggy model has “taunted” him and said she “called me a prude.”

The unnamed model in question is “one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen,” Rad added.

“But it doesn’t mean that I want to rip her clothes off and have sex with her.”

Supermodels, get in line. Picture: Andrew Burton

The bizarre interview took a still-weirder turn when Rad went on to say he shunned the supermodel because he was looking for an “intellectual challenge” — only to reveal moments later his own spectacular ignorance of basic sexual vocabulary.

“Apparently, there’s a term for someone who gets turned on by intellectual stuff. You know, just talking. What’s the word?” Rad said, reportedly creasing his face in an effort to remember.

“I want to say ‘sodomy’?”

Told that sodomy “means something else” as he searched his phone for a definition, the newspaper reports that Rad exclaimed, “What? No, not that. That’s definitely not me. Oh, my God.”

It later emerged that, astonishingly, Rad had dined with New York public relations guru Matthew Freud the night before the disastrous interview.

Rad said in his interview that he “wants to start an art collection” with the help of Freud, who is the nephew of the late painter Lucian Freud.

So is it possible that Rad and Freud didn’t delve into questions of PR strategy over their duck confit and Bordeaux? We certainly hope so — for Freud’s sake.

Chaos around the story prompted a surprise securities filing from Match Group ahead of the late Wednesday offering.

Match’s filing said analyst estimates that the article cited elsewhere for Tinder’s user base were “inaccurate,” and that its users swipe more than 1.4 billion profiles a day, not 1.8 billion.

Tinder’s chief financial officer Justin Mateen, left, is pictured with chief executive Sean Rad. Picture: Michael Buckner

The gaffes weren’t altogether surprising, however. Last November, Rad was demoted to president after a summer C-suite sex-harassment storm happened on his watch.

Co-founder Whitney Wolfe had accused another co-founder, Justin Mateen, of texting her “a barrage of horrendously sexist, racist and otherwise inappropriate comments.”

The lawsuit was reportedly settled for about $1.4 million (US$1 million). Wolfe went on to found rival dating app Bumble.

Rad’s reputation was also tarnished by allegations that he had sent a text calling Diller a “d — k” — and drew Diller’s initials,“B.D.,” in the shape of a penis.

Despite the penis prank, Diller restored Rad to the top job in August.

Rad’s replacement, former eBay exec Chris Payne, exited shortly after Tinder had a public meltdown over a lurid exposé in Vanity Fair.

An IAC spokeswoman didn’t respond to requests for comment on Rad’s interview.

Originally published as Tinder boss Sean Rad has shared details of his dating life in an excruciating interview