“It’s a balmy night in Manhattan’s financial district, and at a sports bar called Stout, everyone is Tindering. The tables are filled with young women and men who’ve been chasing money and deals on Wall Street all day, and now they’re out looking for hookups.”
So begins Nancy Jo Sales’s article, “Tinder and the Dawn of the ‘Dating Apocalypse,’” which appears in the September 2015 issue of Vanity Fair.
The piece paints Tinder—almost romanticizes Tinder—as somewhere young professionals go solely to get laid, an app where people with “Tinder game” get the most action, and where “Tinder kings” bed the most “Tinderellas” of all.
This article about Tinder will make you feel depressed for humanity… http://t.co/yFPXXFAuQD
— Nicole Sullivan (@stubbornella) August 12, 2015
Wow. @nancyjosales just exposed latest real-life Hunger Games–the dystopia that is TinderGames. Just say no, Kids.
http://t.co/dU7COuoqtw
— Emma Kress (@emma_kress) August 12, 2015
The article completely skips over the part about how some—emphasis on “some”—people use Tinder to find longer-than-a-few-hours relationships. Sales also didn’t reach out to Tinder before publishing the piece.
What this all means: Tinder is not happy—and the company made that abundantly clear on Twitter Tuesday night:
Hey @nancyjosales — that survey is incorrect. If you're interested in having a factual conversation, we're here. https://t.co/SLWlTLvJuf
— Tinder (@Tinder) August 11, 2015
–@VanityFair Little known fact: sex was invented in 2012 when Tinder was launched.
— Tinder (@Tinder) August 11, 2015
–@VanityFair & @nancyjosales — we have lots of data. We surveyed 265,000 of our users. But it doesn’t seem like you’re interested in facts.
— Tinder (@Tinder) August 11, 2015
Our actual data says that 1.7% of Tinder users are married — not 30% as the preposterous GlobalWebIndex article indicated.
— Tinder (@Tinder) August 11, 2015
It's disappointing that @VanityFair thought that the tiny number of people you found for your article represent our entire global userbase 😏
— Tinder (@Tinder) August 11, 2015
Tinder questioned how she reported the story, too.
Next time reach out to us first @nancyjosales… that’s what journalists typically do.
— Tinder (@Tinder) August 11, 2015
The Tinder Generation is real. Our users are creating it. But it’s not at all what you portray it to be.
— Tinder (@Tinder) August 11, 2015
And boom! Point made? …Not yet, according to Tinder:
Tinder creates experiences. We create connections that otherwise never would have been made. 8 billion of them to date, in fact.
— Tinder (@Tinder) August 11, 2015
Tinder users are on Tinder to meet people for all kinds of reasons. Sure, some of them — men and women — want to hook up.
— Tinder (@Tinder) August 11, 2015
Just like in real life. And in the many years that existed before Tinder.
— Tinder (@Tinder) August 11, 2015
But we know from our own survey data that it’s actually a minority of Tinder users.
— Tinder (@Tinder) August 11, 2015
They. Did. Not. Stop.
Our data tells us that the vast majority of Tinder users are looking for meaningful connections.
— Tinder (@Tinder) August 11, 2015
And our data also tells us that Tinder actually creates those meaningful connections.
— Tinder (@Tinder) August 11, 2015
We have tons and tons of emails from people that have all kinds of amazing experiences on Tinder.
— Tinder (@Tinder) August 11, 2015
It’s about meeting new people for all kinds of reasons. Travel, dating, relationships, friends and a shit ton of marriages.
— Tinder (@Tinder) August 11, 2015
Seriously. It just kept going.
Talk to the female journalist in Pakistan who wrote just yesterday about using Tinder to find a relationship where being gay is illegal.
— Tinder (@Tinder) August 11, 2015
Talk to our many users in China and North Korea who find a way to meet people on Tinder even though Facebook is banned.
— Tinder (@Tinder) August 11, 2015
Talk to the many Tinder couples — gay and straight — that have gotten married after meeting on Tinder.
— Tinder (@Tinder) August 11, 2015
Or talk to people that have made some of their best friends on Tinder.
— Tinder (@Tinder) August 11, 2015
We love ALL of these #SwipedRight stories. Tinder is simply how people meet.
— Tinder (@Tinder) August 11, 2015
The ability to meet people outside of your closed circle in this world is an immensely powerful thing.
— Tinder (@Tinder) August 11, 2015
Maybe they wanted to answer to an article with an article-length response of their own?
So we are going to keep focusing on bringing people together. That’s why we’re here. That is why all of us at Tinder work so hard.
— Tinder (@Tinder) August 11, 2015
If you want to try to tear us down with one-sided journalism, well, that’s your prerogative.
— Tinder (@Tinder) August 11, 2015
Tinder offered up tips on how they would have framed the story.
You could have talked about how everyone on Tinder is authenticated through Facebook. And how we show users the friends they have in common.
— Tinder (@Tinder) August 11, 2015
Or you could have talked about how everyone on Tinder is on an equal playing field.
— Tinder (@Tinder) August 11, 2015
Users can’t message each other unless BOTH people are interested in one another.
— Tinder (@Tinder) August 11, 2015
You could have talked about how users build a Tinder profile that expresses who they are.
— Tinder (@Tinder) August 11, 2015
Or how millions of Tinder users have connected their Instagram accounts, so potential matches can learn more about them.
— Tinder (@Tinder) August 11, 2015
This all creates social accountability so that Tinder users treat each other well.
— Tinder (@Tinder) August 11, 2015
Instead, your article took an incredibly biased view, which is disappointing.
— Tinder (@Tinder) August 11, 2015
But it’s not going to dissuade us from building something that is changing the world. #GenerationTinder
— Tinder (@Tinder) August 11, 2015
Sales, for her part, engaged with Tinder, responding to many of their Tweets…
@Tinder not clear: are you suggesting journalists need your okay to write about you?
— Nancy Jo Sales (@nancyjosales) August 12, 2015
…and adding some new thoughts of her own.
My article isn't even about @Tinder lol
— Nancy Jo Sales (@nancyjosales) August 12, 2015
This morning, after tempers had cooled, a Tinder spokesperson had this to say in a statement to the Huffington Post:
“We were saddened to see that the article didn’t touch upon the positive experiences that the majority of our users encounter daily. Our intention was to highlight the many statistics and amazing stories that are sometimes left unpublished, and, in doing so, we overreacted.”
Moral of the story: Communicating over technology is hard.
@Tinder are you ok?
— Nancy Jo Sales (@nancyjosales) August 12, 2015