Anecdotal evidence from smaller markets (city of just a million or so) is that online dating doesn't work, and you certainly can't be sure of not running into p

Anecdotal evidence from smaller markets (city of just a million or so) is that online dating doesn't work, and you certainly can't be sure of not running into people again. Your comment evokes something like a tuple space, where people are essentially querying a database by uploading their dating profile. Tinder's "architecture", whereby only mutual matches are informed, is a bit like that in principle. In practice it means there is no way to message someone who hasn't matched with you, whether because they are not actively looking through matches or some other reason: there is no way for contact to be initiated unilaterally. This is a big change in the dynamics of the dating situation. I'd almost prefer a professional matchmaking service to the kind of "shadow labour" that's involved in swiping through Tinder profiles—particularly because of this problem of matches being, as it were, a passive/uncoordinated rather than active/coordinated phenomenon. Unfortunately, Tinder's interface encourages very superficial judgements based on appearance, and the way you are required to "flirt" by text with people you haven't met is absolutely a bad thing.