Today there are many applications to flirt or meet people, but Tinder has become the dating app par excellence, present in 196 countries and with more than 50 million users around the world. Since it began its journey back in 2012 with the help of two childhood friends, Sean Rad and Justin Mateen, the platform has been making its way by leaps and bounds. These young entrepreneurs had the brilliant idea of using GPS location to find nearby people , without the need to have them added to a contact list, and they created an online dating page unlike anything that existed up to that moment, turning it into a icon.
The app began to grow like foam over the years, so much so that the Rio 2017 Olympic Games were renamed by the media as the Tinder Olympic Games, and expressions such as “make a match” are now part of our usual jargon. . It is estimated that today there are about 26 million a day; a simple action is enough to open a window, chat and organize an appointment.
With these staggering figures, it is clear that our way of relating and interacting has changed significantly with the rise of new technologies and, above all, with the use of smartphones. We could say that Tinder has become the new bar of the bar, in the disco where we deployed our charms to attract the attention of the person we liked . The uses that we can give it are very different, and in the absence of finding the perfect method to find the person who is as compatible as possible with us, in the purest Hang the DJ style of the Black Mirror series, these apps offer us the possibility of know different profiles that can more or less fit our interests. Although there is a Premium version that has more options, the application is still free and allows its users to “sell” themselves by showing their photos, interests and a short biography where they can describe themselves.
The global coronavirus pandemic has caused an increase in the number of users, and it is that, in a globalized world where interpersonal relationships have been reduced due to restrictions, we are left with the resource of this type of apps. In fact, surely we all know in our environment, if we are not ourselves, people who have it installed.
Tinder was conceived by its creators as a means to meet people, however, its purpose is still not very specific, and it depends a lot on the aspirations of each one. There are people who claim to have found love and others who use it for fleeting encounters, and there are even those who say that it is a way to find new friends, or to make acquaintances when you are traveling.
Addicted to immediacy
The truth is that this way of relating has created different ways of understanding the links and is responsible for the emergence of new terms, such as the concept of liquid love formulated by the sociologist Zygmunt Bauman. Every day we find it more difficult to commit ourselves, to establish strong ties , either because of fear, boredom or because sporadic encounters, and phrases “as we are seeing”, have become the daily routine of many relationships.
We have become addicted to the immediacy that the digital age brings with it, and on many occasions we forget the complexity of human relationships, those in which communication, empathy, active listening are the pillar on which they are based. Ultimately, our social skills are giving way to superfluous conversations and encounters in which, in most cases, the law of minimum effort prevails. Little is said about the frustration that many individuals may not meet their expectations of notoriety, suffer “ghosting” or feel undesirable. Our brain biochemistry is affected by these processes, and it is that the dopamine peak that involves getting many matches, considering yourself popular, and starting conversations, can quickly plummet when we suffer a rejection, even if it is virtual.
All the options available in the new digital era offer innumerable advantages, however, it is important to emphasize that our personal worth is not determined by the numbers of “likes” or matches that we achieve. Undoubtedly, we can use and take full advantage of these tools, but without becoming clouded and forgetting who they really are and who we are : unique and exceptional beings, regardless of the success or “failure” that we reap within the virtual world.
