By: Jonathan Franklin, Senior Writer
Want to order food for dinner this evening? There’s an app for that! Want to check your bank account for your online banking? There’s an app for that! Looking for where to find your next love interest? There’s app for that, too. While you can find romance the traditional way by making casual conversation with one another or having your parents (or even your grandparents) set you up with who they think is the perfect match for you, the dating app Tinder matches you with interested users’ profiles all from the luxury of your smartphone.
Introduced to the world in 2012, Tinder lets users pick whether they like someone’s profile by either swiping left – swiping left means they are rejecting the person – or swiping right – indicating that if you were to swipe right on someone and if that personal so swipes right on you, then it’s a match, and you can then chat with them.
“I currently do not have a Tinder. However, I have used the app, and I met my current boyfriend through it. I first decided to use Tinder as sort of a joke but found that it can be used to meet new people, which is always interesting,” says sophomore Lynzi Hammett.
Senior Justin Dyer uses Tinder for similar reasons. “I chose to get it to try and meet new people who aren’t necessarily located right on campus,” says Dyer.
Taking college campuses by storm, Tinder has the capability of setting a particular radius ranging from 100 miles away to right here on Wofford’s campus. Settings also can be tuned to search for people based off of gender and age. Many students partake in this social discovery app to find a relationship, meet new friends or even for ‘no-strings-attached’ or ‘friends-with-benefits’ relationships.
“Tinder really is what you make of it – if you want to meet new people or, what it is most widely known for, hooking up,” says Hammett. “Tinder is what you make of it. If you are looking for a relationship, there are other people looking for the same. If you are looking for a hookup, double the amount of people are looking for the same. My mindset using the app was ‘What kind of cool people could I meet?’”
With Tinder now being the replacement of online dating, many may have hesitations in regards to it based off of the negative connotations associated with it.
“I feel like it’s considered normal in this technological age. I know a lot of my friends and I have talked about how we only swipe people that are on campus if we know them and do it jokingly. In general, I think it’s a pretty acceptable thing to use dating apps while in college if one chooses not to go to bars or clubs,” says Dyer.
Regardless of the situation, Tinder can either make a spark for future connections or be an excellent way to meet new, but interesting people.
“Do it, but use your brain. You have nothing to lose,” says Hammett.
