In a Gawker article entitled “Tinder is Dead,” Dayna Evans goes out on a limb attacking a superficial dating app. Funny that someone so anti date-advertising (I’m going to go ahead and label Tinder as such—advertising) , decides to give the title of her article a completely wide sweeping statement such as “Tinder is dead,” enticing readers to continue. We can substitute anything for “Tinder” really. Dating is dead. Television is dead. McDonald’s is dead. VCR’s are dead. Okay, well maybe some of those are easier to argue than others.
The point is: Evans is actually very astute at what she finds so unappealing in the world of Tinder (advertising). For example, her prior Tinder “About” statement read: Ghouls, magnets, milksteak. Oooooh, how mysterious, how clever, how different. Evans starts off her article chronicling how she enticed several men to come meet up with her even though New York happened to be in the middle of a snowstorm. While yes, there’s something amusing to the idea of clueless men willing to risk safety for the sake of meeting a woman, this goes exactly counter to the rest of Evans argument---that men are predators, and Tinder is just hyper exaggerating their rabid, brainwashed minds. Sorry Dayna, but perhaps your clever tagline had them genuinely hooked?
As proof for her argument that men have fallen entirely to the dark side, Evans recounts a story in which a man physically threatens her at an outing by saying, “I would sock you if you weren’t so pretty.” Tasteless? Sure. Relevant? I’m not so sure. Evans continues, “I don’t think it’s image-focused setup is the app’s greatest offense. Its enormous flaw is in the way it has further trivialized the communication between potential sexual partners.”
“Communication between potential sexual partners”? Something already seems inherently superficial here—perhaps it’s the sexual partners part.
Tinder is dead