Tinder to offer verified profiles with one catch

Tinder introduces a new feature

Tinder facilitates more than 26 million matches a day. People undoubtedly enjoy the platform and are using it quite regularly. Tinder enables millions of people to meet because they have so many active users. Now, they are rolling out a new feature, but there’s one small catch: it’s only for celebrities.

Taking a page from Twitter’s book, Tinder stated that they will display a blue check mark next to those profiles who have been verified. This will allow users to quickly see who is verified and who isn’t. Currently, this feature is only available for “celebrities.” While this feature is certainly helpful, I’m not sure how relevant it is when it is restricted to “celebrities” only. How many celebrities are actually interested in going out with non-celebrity individuals? It doesn’t seem like they comprise a very large portion of the Tinder user pool (albeit they do exist).

In fact, it would be more helpful to offer a way to verify non-celebrity Tinder users. Many other dating websites offer this service and it helps eliminate users who enjoy creating problems. If Tinder invested the time and money to advance the verification process, all users could benefit from the service, not just celebrities. I think, singer Ed Sheeran, said it best, “It’s so people know it’s you I guess, but it just sounds quite creepy doing that because then you’re just using your celebrity status to hook up with chicks.” So why offer it just to celebrities, when they comprise such a small portion of the Tinder population?

What this says about technology and our relationships as a whole, however, is a bit more disconcerting

No longer are dates arranged through friends or chance encounters; we no longer converse vocally, instead we prefer the often misconstrued messages we type. We prefer quantity over quality. This is true now of business relationships and intros, not just personal.

We surf endless images deciding someone’s worth based on the first image we’re shown. We know nothing about the person, but somehow this helps us decide if we want to spend time with them. I’m not making a judgment here; I’m a Tinder member. I just think the way our culture has evolved into technology-driven interaction, is getting out of control. I long for long talks on the phone, letters and emails that contain more than 140 characters, and conversation that involves more than swiping; or perhaps my inner Romantic is showing and I need to adapt to the times.

#LegitTinder