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Tinder apologises after posting Twitter rant in response to Vanity Fair article

TINDER just threw one hell of a tantrum. It is not happy, and it wants you to know about it.

MATT YOUNG
2 min read
August 13, 2015 - 7:14AM
It happens to all of us, Tinder.
It happens to all of us, Tinder.

TINDER just threw one hell of a tantrum.

A rep for the dating app has admitted it “overreacted” after its social media team launched a series of furious tweets — dubbed a “hormonal rage-fit” — in response to an expose in the September issue of Vanity Fair.

So furious was the team behind @Tinder, they sent not just one tweet, but more than 30 tweets to the Vanity Fair team and journalist Nancy Jo Sales, who was responsible for the article, Tinder and the Dawn of the “Dating Apocalypse”.

The article revealed how singles (and the not-so-single) use the service as a mere hook-up site, throwing down the idea of modern courtship and replacing the need for long-term love with short-term, casual sex. The date, it seemed was dead.

Millions of people use “their phones as a sort of all-day, everyday, handheld singles club, where they might find a sex partner as easily as they’d find a cheap flight to Florida,” Sales wrote.

But the problem was, Tinder wasn’t the only target.

Sales interviewed a number of users from Tinder, but included experiences on other apps such as OKCupid, Happn and Hinge — with much the same results.

“Honestly, I feel like the body doesn’t even matter to them as long as you’re willing,” said one woman, identified as Reese.

“They start out with ‘Send me nudes’. Or they say something like ‘I’m looking for something quick within the next 10 or 20 minutes — are you available?’”

The experiences described on Tinder were in stark contrast to how it represents itself through clever marketing; as an innovative solution for singles on the go to meet “the one” by finding people through common connections, namely Facebook.

Instead, as Sales discovered from one user, identified as Alex, “you’re always sort of prowling. You could talk to two or three girls at a bar and pick the best one, or you can swipe a couple hundred people a day — the sample size is so much larger. It’s setting up two or three Tinder dates a week and, chances are, sleeping with all of them, so you could rack up 100 girls you’ve slept with in a year.”

Enter Tinder, who sent a series of bizarre rants claiming the story wasn’t representative of its demographic. The app, it deemed, was used for “all kinds of reasons”, noting a “sh*t ton of marriages”.

Later, in a statement to Gawker, with its tail between its legs (no pun intended), Tinder fired off this apology.

“We have a passionate team that truly believes in Tinder. While reading a recent Vanity Fair article about today’s dating culture, we were saddened to see that the article didn’t touch upon the positive experiences that the majority of our users encounter daily.

“Our intention was to highlight the many statistics and amazing stories that are sometimes left unpublished, and, in doing so, we overreacted.”

And Sales’ response?

Here are some highlights from Tinder’s Twitter rant.

Tinder did not respond to news.com.au’s request for comment

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Original URL: https://www.news.com.au/technology/online/tinder-apologises-after-posting-twitter-rant-in-response-to-vanity-fair-article/news-story/1fa67b22cf18cb60c3f474e8a8a6c0a8