Do you know Tinder? More importantly, are you on Tinder? I know... I was probably the last person on earth to know about this app, but give me a break! I am in a very happy relationship and I don't have that many single friends. Of course that, as a good friend pointed out, I do work in the communication field, so I should know about these things. Well, point taken... let's move on.

I was introduced to Tinder during a work-turned-into-fun dinner: four girls with wine. One was a user since the beginning. The other one was using it for a few weeks. The other one is in a relationship but was very much aware of its existence. And then me. The silly out-of-the-loop girl who didn't have a clue. They showed me the app and how it works and told me some stories about their experience. I have to confess that I was shocked, surprised, intrigued, curious and then shocked again in the space of 30 seconds. I asked the girl who was using it for longer if she didn't feel it was shallow and if she wasn't annoyed to be judge only based on her looks. She told me it wasn't that much different from going to a bar, scout the place, see who appeals to you and who doesn't and that make your move or wait for someone to approach you. Basically the same, with the difference that she didn't have to leave her house and she could easily discard the guys who weren't interesting. Ok, I can relate to this. She's a busy girl in her thirties, working in PR just like me. We don't have that much time, so in a way it kinda of made sense. 

Totally surprised with this, I basically went around for the next days asking everyone I know if they knew about Tinder and if they were on it. The answers were from every kind, but the one that surprised me was the one from a girl I know through my job. She wasn't on Tinder, but a friend of hers was and her conclusion was that it was all about sex. Well... come to think of it, this really didn't surprise me. I guess what surprised me was that she was the only one that spoke about it. All the other people were describing it as online dating. Afterwards, I had dinner with two of my best friends. One was on Tinder, the other one didn't know what it was (I felt a little better ahah!). We spent 2 minutes on my friend's profile and it was fun! Going through the images, saying yes or no, it was all so easy and so... objectifying. After those 2 minutes of fun it all felt so... sad? Is that the word I'm looking for? I mean, I still remember what it was like when I was single, it was all so difficult. The older you get, the more difficult it is to meet people and especially to meet someone special. So Tinder seems like an answer to a problem that exists in our society. Maybe it's not the perfect solution, but it is an answer nevertheless.

In the name of research, I visited Tinder's blog and the first sentence is: "It was almost 2 years ago that we came to the realization that even with all the networks we have at our disposal, the ways we meet new people were boring, outdated, and filled with barriers. We envisioned a solution that was extremely fun, natural, and would mimic our real world behaviors - and Tinder was born."

I have to say, there's a not to be said about this statement...! And all this talk about Tinder and online dating also got me thinking about our social media being vs.our human being, but that's a subject for another post. ;)