In case you guys missed it, Tinder was an absolute mess last night. Like a person who’s been dumped over text, Tinder did what every Millennial mess-up would do after a breakup: tweet about their frustrations.
As a response to newly-published article in Vanity Fair, titled “Tinder and the Dawn of the ‘Dating Apocalypse’,” the mobile dating app had a Twitter meltdown over some of the points made in the magazine’s story. The article – which offers a fairly critical opinion on the current state of dating in the digital age – uses Tinder and other online and mobile dating apps as examples of a new age wherein the traditional ways of dating are dead and we’re left with a hookup culture and sad expectations.
What started off as a casual (yet very pointed) reference a study cited by Nancy Jo Sales (the writer of the Vanity Fair story), quickly escalated into a Twitter rant about how Tinder is seemingly making the world a better place, referencing user data from those in Pakistan, North Korea, and China. Some really haughty social justice claims for a company that held a lavish Tinder Plus launch party in Santa Monica, CA earlier in the year.
Tinder’s Twitter meltdown does re-affirm a belief that we’ve all known: online dating and the tools we use to engage in it are terrible. That’s not to say that the apps themselves are terrible; rather, the overall experience associated with online dating is just unpleasant overall. While many people continue to create new dating startups (in spite of the terrible odds), consumers are simply trying to navigate their way through his new dating world – a world that’s not entirely out of line of what was argued in the Vanity Fair piece.
You can take a look at some of the tweets from last night’s Tinder meltdown below:
–@VanityFair Little known fact: sex was invented in 2012 when Tinder was launched.
— Tinder (@Tinder) August 11, 2015
Next time reach out to us first @nancyjosales… that’s what journalists typically do.
— Tinder (@Tinder) August 11, 2015
The Tinder Generation is real. Our users are creating it. But it’s not at all what you portray it to be.
— Tinder (@Tinder) August 11, 2015
Our data tells us that the vast majority of Tinder users are looking for meaningful connections.
— Tinder (@Tinder) August 11, 2015
Talk to the female journalist in Pakistan who wrote just yesterday about using Tinder to find a relationship where being gay is illegal.
— Tinder (@Tinder) August 11, 2015
Talk to our many users in China and North Korea who find a way to meet people on Tinder even though Facebook is banned.
— Tinder (@Tinder) August 11, 2015
If you want to try to tear us down with one-sided journalism, well, that’s your prerogative.
— Tinder (@Tinder) August 11, 2015
But it’s not going to dissuade us from building something that is changing the world. #GenerationTinder
— Tinder (@Tinder) August 11, 2015
