Tinder Indiscriminate Narcissists: All Right, All Right, All Right

You know this person. The one who swipes right on everybody just to examine people who liked them and then unmatch the ones they’re not interested in. In fact, a Glossary of Tinder terms in The Awl gave this user a name back in 2013: The Indiscriminate Narcissist.

This is the behavior that Tinder would like to ‘correct’.

But this behavior is bigger than Tinder. Though the dating app lists under the Lifestyle section instead of the Social section of the App Store, I think the generation of users that are active on Tinder see it as yet another social network built for dating, like Twitter is with public sharing or Facebook is with keeping track of friends or Instagram is for sharing photos. The list goes on and on, and in each case down the list, the user expects more.

We want more followers, friends, likes, snaps, taps, and everything in between. More.

The Tinder Rule:

“Just like Dunbar’s Rule, there is a Tinder rule,” said Rad. “You can only maintain so many relationships at any given time, and that holds true on Tinder in its own way. If you go past a certain point with the amount of people you swipe right on, there is a diminishing return on every match.”

Tinder, then, is faced with the challenge of maintaining the value of a match while offering a product that inherently begs the user to do more.

After all, isn’t Tinder a game as much as it is a messenger or a platform to meet new people? I’ve heard of impromptu Tinder parties, where a group of friends gather around a screen and vote collectively on swiping left or right. I, myself, have had people hand over their phone — “swipe for me for a while,” they say — as though the act of judging other humans, with another human, is a cherished pasttime.

And if we put anecdotal behavior stuff aside, we can point to the obvious truth: The actual design of Tinder is based around a deck of cards. Can’t get much more gamified than that.

Users want to swipe more because that is the game of Tinder, but the match is the equivalent of a turbo-charged Like on another social network. It’s not just a friend giving you a hat-tip on your photo or some random follower favoriting your tweet.

It’s someone who might actually like you. Someone who may potentially want to have sex with you. The stakes are raised, and so is the reward.

Sure, it saves time to swipe right on everyone, narrow down your choices to people who have already stated their intentions by swiping right on you, and clear out the rest. It’s a lower stakes game. You know everyone who is interested in you, and the ball is entirely in your court. But when you know you’ll get rid of 90 percent of your matches after doing this, the match itself ceases to matter all that much.

What’s worse, the Indiscriminate Narcissist is not only bringing down the value of a match for themselves, but they are bringing down the value of a match for every person they get paired with.

Tinder has a Community:

Tinder has created an ecosystem that is nearly ubiquitous. There are more dating apps out there than I can count (I’ve covered lots of them) and none have the same reach and engagement as Tinder. And that’s where it’s success comes from.

“What makes us different is not a set of features,” said Rad of competition. “We have a community. There are a bunch of awesome bars and restaurants in Los Angeles, but each night there are only one or two hotspots. And that’s determined by the crowd of people there. The community. What we’re doing is trying to protect the integrity of our community.”

What Google did for search Tinder wants to do for meeting people.

“You have to build for the future, and when we think about what we want to be, it’s bigger than the Tinder you see today,” said Rad. “What Google did for search, we want to do for meeting new people. Everywhere.”

yet only for singles...and mostly young singles, yes?

Yes, they age discriminate with pricing against older people.

They really want to be there for college students and 20somethings.