Online Dating and the Death of the 'Mixed-Attractiveness' Couple
Tinder is not an app people seem to use to find &quot;the one&quot;.<p>From speaking to people who use Tinder (I settled down some years ago, so my experience of online dating was limited to OKCupid and PoF which were big back then), that the traditional route of finding a future spouse is still open, and Tinder is for hook-ups, one night stands, short relationships or maybe finding &quot;friends with benefits&quot; type relationships.<p>None of them are thinking they&#x27;re going to find their future spouse on Tinder, that would be a nice bonus. Tinder is an app for getting laid.<p>When I was single and I went to a bar because I wanted to get laid (and I&#x27;m prepared to admit I was shallow enough to want to do this on occasion), my search parameters were very, very different than when I decided I wanted to settle down and find somebody to share my life with.<p>I don&#x27;t think I&#x27;m unusual in this.<p>This article takes a slim premise and develops a hypothesis as fact that is too large a burden for it: that because on Tinder people are making flash judgements based on attractiveness, long-term relationships will change in their fundamental structural nature as relates to attractiveness.<p>This is nonsense. Tinder is an asynchronous singles bar.<p>It&#x27;s the same behaviour that has been going on for hundreds - perhaps thousands - of years, but you can raise the bar of what you&#x27;re looking for in terms of attractiveness if you yourself are attractive because you are not time-bound to last orders at the bar, and you are less likely to drop inhibitions because you are hopefully not constantly drunk whilst using it.<p>Sure, people might get married after meeting on Tinder, just as they do after a hook-up from meeting drunk in a bar. But falling in love at work or based on a long social relationship is not suddenly going to stop happening because of Tinder.