By Sarah Murnane
Hinge has introduced a new update to their matching process. Now before you match with someone you can write a ‘note’. This is effectively a short message that will only be shown to someone if they choose to match with you. Then they have a chance to reconsider the match, either rejecting or accepting. Yet another opportunity for thirty year old men to assure you that they are still “looking for something casual”.
In any case, this new feature caused an unexpected problem for a friend of mine, we’ll call them Jay. Jay matched with a person, an American, whose location was set to Dublin. This person’s ‘note’ however indicated that they would only be in Ireland for a short period but ““love to meet new people”. Not exactly subtle. Jay soon discovered that this person would actually only be in Dublin for three days and they were on a trip with all their friends. Now suspicious, they enquired about a date to which the person replied asking for bar and restaurant recommendations.
Is this what the dating pool has come to? Have dating apps become so inherently useless and devoid of the possibility of romantic connection that we have now begun the great migration of using them as a trendy trip advisor?
The dating app world is of course, a paradox. If everyone was able to meet someone through a dating app, they would cease to exist. Arguably Hinge preforms the best in relationship matches as they overall have the lowest user base, of a mere twenty-three million. When compared to the numbers on Tinder, that has seventy-five million users worldwide, Hinge is one of the smallest. They still like to make money, and that means keeping you on the app for as long as possible.
Ultimately people find it difficult to connect with people online especially in the way that they used to. What strikes me from this particular interaction, is that this person clearly didn’t want to traipse through online articles that all recommend the same five restaurants the first of which is ‘Bambino’s’. Now even Facebook groups and dedicated food websites are filled with paid promotion and a general lack of human interaction. There is an information vacum not the internet, that apparently is being filled to some degree with dating apps. This is in some ways positive, as at least people out there are trying to connect, however bad for those who use dating apps for their intended purpose.
Multiple companies have been set up over the past five years to encourage friendship social interaction, notably “Timeleft” an app where you can go to dinner with five strangers in a city in order to hopefully make friends. The tools exist out there if you are struggling to make friends in a new city. These apps are useful and can be great for people, however there is something about the magic of meeting people in person, and finding a great restaurant on the recommendation of a stranger you meet while travelling that one simply cannot replicate online.
To those using dating apps to ‘make friends’ abroad or to get tips before coming to a new place I suggest you reconsider and use the true tried and tested classic method: go to the nearest local bar or cafe and ask the workers where they like to go. Be friendly and chatty and open and nine times out of ten you’ll end up somewhere interesting. Not necessarily good, clean or enjoyable, but always interesting. Leave the dating apps to the poor lonely souls of the world, or those trying to find someone to sleep with.