But “it really is sifting through a lot of crap to be able to find somebody.” “I have a boyfriend right now whom I met on Tinder,” says Frannie Steinlage, a 34-year-old straight woman who is a health-care consultant in Denver. It’s great to just talk to people and meet up with people.”
“I haven’t been looking for a serious relationship in my early 20s. “I think the way I’ve used it has made it a pretty good experience for the most part,” says Will Owen, a 24-year-old gay man who works at a marketing agency in New York City. “I have not had luck with dating or finding relationships.” “I have had lots of luck hooking up, so if that’s the criteria I would say it’s certainly served its purpose,” says Brian, a 44-year-old gay man who works in fashion retail in New York City. The question is not if they work, because they obviously can, but how well do they work? Are they effective and enjoyable to use? Are people able to use them to get what they want? Of course, results can vary depending on what it is people want-to hook up or have casual sex, to date casually, or to date as a way of actively looking for a relationship. In 2016, dating apps are old news, just an increasingly normal way to look for love and sex. Older online dating sites like OKCupid now have apps as well. Tinder arrived in 2012, and nipping at its heels came other imitators and twists on the format, like Hinge (connects you with friends of friends), Bumble (women have to message first), and others. The gay dating app Grindr launched in 2009. It doesn’t do to pretend that dating in the app era hasn’t changed.
I don’t believe hookup culture has infected our brains and turned us into soulless sex-hungry swipe monsters. I don’t believe technology has distracted us from real human connection. I thought that last fall when Vanity Fair titled Nancy Jo Sales’s article on dating apps “ Tinder and the Dawn of the ‘Dating Apocalypse’” and I thought it again this month when Hinge, another dating app, advertised its relaunch with a site called “,” borrowing the phrase from Sales’s article, which apparently caused the company shame and was partially responsible for their effort to become, as they put it, a “relationship app.”ĭespite the difficulties of modern dating, if there is an imminent apocalypse, I believe it will be spurred by something else.