An unidentified Tinder employee went on an impassioned Twitter rant in response to a Vanity Fair article, which partially blamed the dating app for the current "hookup culture." The company has subsequently apologized for the tweets, calling them an "overreaction."
It began when Vanity Fair published an article by Nancy Jo Sales entitled "Tinder and the Dawn of the Dating Apocalypse." The article blamed Tinder and other casual dating apps for creating a hookup-oriented dating culture devoid of romance and focused instead on short sexual encounters. Sales interviewed a number of young women who lamented a lack of intimacy fueled by apps like Tinder, which they consider to elevate superficial qualities over meaningful connections. The article also claims that three out of 10 Tinder users are in fact married.
The article triggered a 31-message Twitter response from the official Tinder account, which began quite rationally:
"Hey @nancyjosales - that survey is incorrect. If you're interested in having a factual conversation, we're here."
The defense, however, quickly became enraged — one tweet sarcastically noted that "sex was invented in 2012 when Tinder was launched," and another fumed that the app is "about meeting new people for all kinds of reasons. Travel, dating, relationships, friends and a s*** ton of marriages."
One tweet also questioned the article's three in 10 married user claim, arguing that the number of married users on the service is just 1.7 percent.
The Twitter rant seemed to have the opposite effect of what was intended. It drew a huge amount of media attention to the article, along with heavy online criticism of Tinder's unprofessional response, which was likened to the rage of a jilted lover, as opposed to a measured and thoughtful reply.
Tinder ultimately issued the following statement apologizing for the tweets:
"We have a passionate team that truly believes in Tinder. While reading a recent Vanity Fair article about today's dating culture, we were saddened to see that the article didn't touch upon the positive experiences that the majority of our users encounter daily. Our intention was to highlight the many statistics and amazing stories that are sometimes left unpublished, and, in doing so, we overreacted."
