Sex app Tinder in public meltdown – because a journo dared suggest it was, well, a sex app Dating app developer Tinder went ballistic this week over the suggestion people might use it for facilitating casual sex. The official Twitter feed for the swipe-for-sexytime appmaker became an angry rant platform Tuesday after a Vanity Fair writer had the gall to suggest that attractive young professionals are using Tinder to …
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"Hi, my name is Jack, and I want a relationship that lasts as long as my current phone contract."
I was going to say "more like lasts as long as the average payphone call", but that's the point at which I realised I'd been confusing Tinder with Grindr. :-/
(FWIW, I also just noticed that it's not spelled "Tindr"... call yourselves a social media company?! Having checked, I notice they're a lot newer (*) than Grindr and Tumblr, so it was probably already a cliche by the time they started).
(*) I briefly mistyped this as "newr". No, really.
causing the shutdown of half the UK's nightclubs.
Nah - The ban on smoking did that. Without cover from kilograms of burning tobacco (and other plant material) most clubs reek of pee and vomit - barely covered by some of that auto-spray, de-deodoriser shit (that I am also allergic to). Clubbing is similar to going to the diaper ward of an old peoples home to make out.
Well, *that* time can come too soon entirely - it is not something I well seek out and pay a 100 quid for!
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>I think that the, "IT people have no social skills", concept went out of fashion around the same time as the Pentium-Pro.
If by that you mean earlier this week, then ... well, I still disagree.
>I know that I turn away from any kind of social networking.
You're not building a winning case here, you know that don't you?
>Yes, I am in a long distance relationship with my girlfriend via email, SMS and VoIP
Cool. What's she in?
"Does the world today really have difficulty talking to people and where appropriate, flirting and chatting them up?"
Technically: Yes.
If you try to do that on the street, you'll get arrested faster than you can say 'cat'. And flirting is a punishable crime anywhere outside of the internet. At least for a not too attractive male.
Definitely at work or at street. Possibly in a pub too.
So: What's left?
No public places and talking to unknown people in private places isn't usually an option at all as you aren't invited. If you are, there's never any unknown people, at least of opposite sex.
I'd like to know where this talking is happening as I don't see it can happen anywhere (outside of the net) anymore. Or does the commenter still live in 60s and "free sex" -era?
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"Or does the commenter still live in 60s and "free sex" -era?"
Most of the UK hadn't really caught on to the sexual revolution even by the 1970s. In 1966 our boys only state secondary school had no sex education. The Upper VIth Form were polled. One boy had a steady sexual relationship with his girlfriend; two boys had each had a one-off stand with the same young woman at a pub. Everyone else was a virgin - and most didn't have a girlfriend. Peer same-sex experimentation had usually petered out by about 14 (no pun intended).
Any association with our peer cohort of girls was generally limited to rare joint after-school society meetings - and a Christmas dance. At the latter the headmaster made sure that the hall lighting was never allowed to dim to an intimate level. Our peers who had not passed the 11+ started work at 15 and usually married at 21 in order to get some sex. What they got was two quick children and often a loveless marriage.
The church had a whole house set up as a teenagers' youth club. A "call me Dave" guy was in charge. It closed down after the church organist's daughter took advantage of the facilities and became pregnant.
> Does the world today really have difficulty talking to people and where appropriate, flirting and chatting them up?
Seriously? Do you even really need an answer to that in an age where people would rather text someone that's only 5ft away rather than talk to them face-to-face?
Edit: and no, I'm not talking IT people, I'm talking to everyday Joes and Josephines I see in public.
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"Tinder creates experiences. We create connections that otherwise never would have been made. 8 billion of them to date, in fact."
8 billion connections, compared to around 7 billion people on the planet, nowhere near all of whom are using Tinder (a bloody huge amount of them being kids)
These numbers strongly suggest casual hook-ups and/or affairs - unless Tinder is trying to become a Facebook-alike, where people can 'connect' and stay connected in the Tinderverse without actually getting together.
AAMOI, I wonder what the actual number of active users are - that'll be an interesting comparison with the 8 billion connections.
Unless, of course, the user base isn't just Earth-bound. See icon.
"Does the world today really have difficulty talking to people and where appropriate, flirting and chatting them up?"
Hooking up with a future partner has been tricky since match-makers and arranged marriage customs stopped being the social norm. The sort of flirting that happened 40 years ago - especially at work - would now be likely to be deemed sexual harassment.
People then joined various social activities to meet potential mates - or they were "introduced" by mutual friends at home or at work. The Cilla Black "Blind Date" TV programme was a format from real life. Marriage bureaux and dating agencies were a commercial service covering a larger geographic area for those whose social activity was limited.
By the 1970s the young population had become more mobile. Computer dating was a way that young professionals away from home could meet people who they knew were also looking for someone.
Tindr etc have replaced those functions - and there is some certainty that the other person is interested in meeting you. Is there a profile parameter that indicates how sexually experienced/liberal someone is?
There was a sci-fi story once about a disc you could wear on your forehead that changed colour depending on how attracted you were to someone. The idea was this would simplify the recognising of mutual attraction. There are many physiological reactions that indicate our interest - but they can be misread or falsified.
A good-looking friend attracted women particularly because of the large dark pools of his irises. That is usually a sign of sexual arousal when it occurs dynamically on interacting with someone. They were most disappointed when they found he was gay and that his eyes always looked like that. In the1990s when he came out he went to gay night clubs with the "phone on each table" system. Effectively a low-tech Tindr.
> The sort of flirting that happened 40 years ago - especially at work - would now be likely to be deemed sexual harassment.
I'd certainly not be married to the love of my life for the last 25 years if she'd not been allowed to chat me up at work all those years ago.
See Unix engineers can have social skills and chat up people of the opposite gender.
AC's recollection of how people met in the 70s seems quite different from even my parents' recollection of the 60s in the UK. For them and me it was more about chatting up someone you met at work, down the pub at a club (night or social/sports).
If I look at my kids things don't seem to have changed that much, although chatting up someone at work has to be done more carefully......
who needs dating sites anyway? Dating means taking the girl out, buying her dinner, booze, spending a fortune and risking her saying "no".
Far more efficient and cheaper to pick up a working girl through adultwork.com, where you know you're going to get what you pay for, how much its going to cost, and you get to choose the girl of your dreams, with no pressures about "relationships".
And besides which theres no chance of her claiming child maintenance off you later...
"A few months ago, parent company IAC said Tinder would be spun off as part of a new unit that includes fellow dating app Match.com. The spin-off company is set for an IPO later this year"
Now, add a startup spinoff called kindling to that IPO and we could have a company called the bonfire of the vanities.
(No liability for keyboards)
... that Tinder is great for finding someone to meet up with :-).
Tinder is the best thing since swiss cheese :-).
Had some fun times indeed! Such as jumping.... on a bouncy castle... for example!
Oh, one thing, when meeting all these people, remember to ensure that ring in your wallet is actually still in there, you don't want to meet up with the next person the next day only to find out its missing!
Trust me, you don't! Happened to me.. had to pop to shop real quick before arriving.
But yes, Tinder is a great service for um, meeting people to eh.. talk, yeah, talk ;-)
The disappointing thing about this is that there is stull media mileage in the notion that having sex is in someway wrong and that looking for it is also morally dubious. For fuck's sake, we get here by sex. Reproduction is why we are here and sex is the means by which it is accomplished. Grow the fuck up Vanity Fair.
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