Final Answer: Is Tinder for Hookups?

The online dating world has a lot of major players and up-and-comers, but few are as ubiquitous as the almighty Tinder. This dating app changed the very language of online dating in 2012, and its swipe-right system has become the status quo for pretty much all popular dating apps and sites.

By now you’re probably aware of Tinder as a notorious hookup app. Grindr for straight people. A place for superficial matches and quick sex.

I met one of the founders of the app and he was very open about the fact that swiping powers the casual encounter. Dating apps are hyper local, they’re available 24/7 at a single person’s fingertips, and they’re not going away. But are they only for hookups? We’ll see.

The common question on many people’s minds is, “Is Tinder just for casual hookups? Can it work for relationships too?” Look, Tinder is just an app, and it can spark all types of romantic connections, depending on where you are and how you use it.

It’s rumored one of the founders stated that Tinder wasn’t for hookups because women tend to be less likely to look for hookups online than men.

A gay man once told me that when it comes to sex, men are the gas pedals and women are the brakes. “Imagine two gas pedals together,” he said, referring to gay hookups.

While it may be a stereotype and a generalization that women are less inclined to seek hookups, maybe it’s true — maybe Tinder is too full of “brakes” for it to ever be a straight hookup platform.

Tinder is open-ended, and singles can take any path they want at any speed they like. They can start a mutual match, send a couple messages, and set up a date in real life. Or they can take longer to build a real romantic connection and find a compatible partner.

We’ve heard of plenty of Tinder relationships happening over the years, so it’s clearly possible — just perhaps not as common as the hookups and one-night stands.

“Tinder has a lot going

for it for a lot of reasons.”

The great thing about Tinder taking off as huge as it has (over 60 billion matches and counting!) means that all kinds of people have joined: those curious sex seekers, monogamous daters, hopeless romantics, queer singles, poly people, and everyone in between. Yes, many are interested in physical chemistry, but that isn’t the only thing that matters.

Tinder is a combination of a dating app and a hookup app. It has optional dating profile sections that singles can use to tell potential partners more about themselves.

On the other hand, some Tinder users prefer to leave a little mystery and stay relatively anonymous while swiping online. Hooking up tends to be an anonymous game, one where you don’t have friends in common who can tell tales.

While on Tinder, I came across a man who had a mutual friend with me on Facebook. This made it disgustingly easy to find out he was actually married.

I think Tinder has a lot going for it for a lot of reasons, regardless of the hookup parentage via Grindr.

The shared Facebook friends and shared Facebook interests point to setting foundations/conversations for commonality, which is a key to creating relationships more than just hookups.

YES. Tinder is known for being pretty superficial because the photos are the main aspect of the Tinder dating profile. It’s a swiping game. You get to see a bunch of new potentially interested faces in an instant. It’s addictive.

The Tinder app is designed to show you the next new face over the ones you’ve already matched with, which makes it easy to get distracted and burnt out lasting connections. It’s a potential ego boost for those who are on the receiving end of a lot of right swipes. It’s a potential stress ball for those who are getting rejected and ghosted by flaky people all the time.

I know many women enjoy Tinder over traditional dating sites because the only men who can contact them are the ones they’ve already given “permission” to since it requires both users to swipe right.

This eliminates a lot of what women feel is creepy about online dating: getting unwanted messages from men they aren’t interested in.

For men, it can be a game of just getting to see hot chicks, which many men find enjoyable in itself. It can be difficult to get women to swipe right on them, so they may literally swipe right on every woman they come across just hoping one will reciprocate.

For some men, Tinder is great in the sense that they don’t have to list any information about themselves that can potentially get them dismissed by women on traditional dating sites.

For example, height, income, education and employment are things women have no knowledge of unless men volunteer it on their Tinder profile.

As a result, many singles may find themselves getting a chance at women they wouldn’t get access to otherwise.