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>From speaking to people who use Tinder ... Tinder is for hook-ups, one night stands, short relationships or maybe finding "friends with benefits" type relation

>From speaking to people who use Tinder ... Tinder is for hook-ups, one night stands, short relationships or maybe finding "friends with benefits" type relationships. My experience is that this is a giant load of crap, sorry. Every woman I see on there explicitly says "no hookups", all the ones I've met are not looking for hookups, they're looking for serious dates. I'm guessing you're under 25 years old. In that age range, Tinder is indeed for hookups. For people in their mid-30s and up, Tinder is absolutely not, except for the very occasional swinger couple I see there.

peterwwillis 11y ago
Seconded. Almost every profile I see on Tinder, if there is a profile, explicitly says "not looking for a hookup". (Which is ridiculous to me - how do people expect meaningful connection from just looking at pictures?)
- Jtsummers 11y ago
  hookup = sex with no strings in this context, so it's not ridiculous. They want to talk, and they want a date (or that's what they're asserting). Sex may happen, but that's not the initial intention, that's a part of the eventual goal (steady relationship).
- Grishnakh 11y ago
  There's nothing ridiculous about it; it's no different than any other dating site, except it doesn't have as much room for your bio. People naturally develop romantic interest in each other based on looks first. Tinder, like any other dating site, is just giving you a venue to meet people who available for dating. What better method for meeting people do you propose? Go look at the article: online dating is now the #3 (IIRC) most popular method, just behind bars and through friends. Meeting through friends is falling fast, and all the other methods have gone down the tubes: church, school, through family, etc. In a society where people are more mobile (i.e. they move around the country with job changes, they don't live in the same place they grew up or went to college), are less religious, online dating makes the most sense for anyone who isn't a big drinker.
  - peterwwillis 11y ago
    Dating requires more than physical attraction. To do more than hook up, one must determine compatibility, and Tinder provides nothing but the most shallow and difficult tools to accomplish this. You'd have better luck walking around with a list of your favorite interests and biggest deal-breakers taped to your back. I can only think of two better ways to meet people online: a referral-approval system for friends-of-friends, and actual interaction in a group setting, but online - like Facebook groups or more old-school chat rooms. Both have their problems, but they also rely on good old human interaction to determine compatibility. Whether a friend thinks you're both a good match, or whether you just like someone's snarky commentary on a forum, you're using your human heuristics to find a match instead of computerized heuristics. It makes more sense to me since you're trying to date a human and not a computer.
    - Grishnakh 11y ago
      >Dating requires more than physical attraction. Dating requires physical attraction, and a way to meet people you're attracted to. Tinder satisfies that, just as going to a bar does. >To do more than hook up, one must determine compatibility, and Tinder provides nothing but the most shallow and difficult tools to accomplish this. Tinder provides better tools for this than walking up to a stranger in a bar. A person in a bar doesn't carry a sign around saying a few things about them, such as that they like dogs or cats, follow a particular religion, aren't interested in casual sex, or whatever they choose to advertise about themselves. You can only find that out by starting a conversation with them and asking them these things. On Tinder, there's at least an opportunity to put these things out there, and then someone looking at your profile is able to screen you out. >You'd have better luck walking around with a list of your favorite interests and biggest deal-breakers taped to your back. No, you wouldn't, unless you happen to know a place that's packed full of hundreds and hundreds of singles of the sex and age range that you're looking for, and isn't limited to a self-selected group of people that may not be the group you're interested in (for instance, people who drink a lot). >I can only think of two better ways to meet people online: a referral-approval system for friends-of-friends That's pretty lousy because it limits you to people within your social circle. If you don't have a lot of friends, or you've moved, that isn't going to help you. A lot of people simply do not make a significant number of new friends after they're 30+ years old. What would be better is something more like OKCupid, where you're basically forced to create a pretty extensive bio for yourself, which people can use better to look for a good match. The problem with this is that people have been abandoning OKC and other traditional sites for Tinder (IME), and for good reason: the traditional sites let anyone message anyone, and as a result, women get bombarded with message from men they're not interested in, and men waste all their time writing thoughtful messages to women who never respond. Tinder fixes that by only allowing people to message each other if they both "like" each other. Men still waste time writing messages that never get responses, but now it's more like a response rate of 25-50% rather than a response rate of 0.5%. And women seem to like it a lot more too, because they don't get overwhelmed with messages (this happened to my ex-wife after we split: she had to disable her OKC profile because she was just getting too many responses). If you're able to meet eligible people through your social circle, great. But that doesn't work for a large and growing segment of the population. Honestly, you sound like a college student to me. We older people don't have time for the stuff you talk about.

peterwwillis 11y ago

Seconded. Almost every profile I see on Tinder, if there is a profile, explicitly says "not looking for a hookup". (Which is ridiculous to me - how do people expect meaningful connection from just looking at pictures?)

Jtsummers 11y ago
hookup = sex with no strings in this context, so it's not ridiculous. They want to talk, and they want a date (or that's what they're asserting). Sex may happen, but that's not the initial intention, that's a part of the eventual goal (steady relationship).
Grishnakh 11y ago
There's nothing ridiculous about it; it's no different than any other dating site, except it doesn't have as much room for your bio. People naturally develop romantic interest in each other based on looks first. Tinder, like any other dating site, is just giving you a venue to meet people who available for dating. What better method for meeting people do you propose? Go look at the article: online dating is now the #3 (IIRC) most popular method, just behind bars and through friends. Meeting through friends is falling fast, and all the other methods have gone down the tubes: church, school, through family, etc. In a society where people are more mobile (i.e. they move around the country with job changes, they don't live in the same place they grew up or went to college), are less religious, online dating makes the most sense for anyone who isn't a big drinker.
- peterwwillis 11y ago
  Dating requires more than physical attraction. To do more than hook up, one must determine compatibility, and Tinder provides nothing but the most shallow and difficult tools to accomplish this. You'd have better luck walking around with a list of your favorite interests and biggest deal-breakers taped to your back. I can only think of two better ways to meet people online: a referral-approval system for friends-of-friends, and actual interaction in a group setting, but online - like Facebook groups or more old-school chat rooms. Both have their problems, but they also rely on good old human interaction to determine compatibility. Whether a friend thinks you're both a good match, or whether you just like someone's snarky commentary on a forum, you're using your human heuristics to find a match instead of computerized heuristics. It makes more sense to me since you're trying to date a human and not a computer.
  - Grishnakh 11y ago
    >Dating requires more than physical attraction. Dating requires physical attraction, and a way to meet people you're attracted to. Tinder satisfies that, just as going to a bar does. >To do more than hook up, one must determine compatibility, and Tinder provides nothing but the most shallow and difficult tools to accomplish this. Tinder provides better tools for this than walking up to a stranger in a bar. A person in a bar doesn't carry a sign around saying a few things about them, such as that they like dogs or cats, follow a particular religion, aren't interested in casual sex, or whatever they choose to advertise about themselves. You can only find that out by starting a conversation with them and asking them these things. On Tinder, there's at least an opportunity to put these things out there, and then someone looking at your profile is able to screen you out. >You'd have better luck walking around with a list of your favorite interests and biggest deal-breakers taped to your back. No, you wouldn't, unless you happen to know a place that's packed full of hundreds and hundreds of singles of the sex and age range that you're looking for, and isn't limited to a self-selected group of people that may not be the group you're interested in (for instance, people who drink a lot). >I can only think of two better ways to meet people online: a referral-approval system for friends-of-friends That's pretty lousy because it limits you to people within your social circle. If you don't have a lot of friends, or you've moved, that isn't going to help you. A lot of people simply do not make a significant number of new friends after they're 30+ years old. What would be better is something more like OKCupid, where you're basically forced to create a pretty extensive bio for yourself, which people can use better to look for a good match. The problem with this is that people have been abandoning OKC and other traditional sites for Tinder (IME), and for good reason: the traditional sites let anyone message anyone, and as a result, women get bombarded with message from men they're not interested in, and men waste all their time writing thoughtful messages to women who never respond. Tinder fixes that by only allowing people to message each other if they both "like" each other. Men still waste time writing messages that never get responses, but now it's more like a response rate of 25-50% rather than a response rate of 0.5%. And women seem to like it a lot more too, because they don't get overwhelmed with messages (this happened to my ex-wife after we split: she had to disable her OKC profile because she was just getting too many responses). If you're able to meet eligible people through your social circle, great. But that doesn't work for a large and growing segment of the population. Honestly, you sound like a college student to me. We older people don't have time for the stuff you talk about.