Tinder Confidential
November 24, 2015 4:03 AM   Subscribe

Ashley Terrill was in hiding the first time I heard her voice, splitting time between her Los Angeles home and a $600-a-night room at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. Terrill had locked her laptop and phone in a secret vault, and would only contact me on disposable phones—all because, she claimed, the estranged co-founder of Tinder was trying to destroy her. And that fear was mutual.

Elsewhere: Vanity Fair's Nancy Jo Sales writes an open letter to Tinder CEO Sean Rad, after he made disparaging remarks about her in a recent interview. Rad is still smarting after an article Sales wrote in August, Tinder and the Dawn of the “Dating Apocalypse”, to which either Rad or somebody else on Tinder's team responded on Twitter in quite an over-the-top manner.

More on Tinder co-founder Whitney Wolfe's new(ish) dating app Bumble:
The woman always makes the first move, and if she doesn't say something to a new connection within 24 hours, that connection disappears forever!
(Taken from Bumble's about page.)
posted by rorgy (37 comments total) 10 users marked this as a favorite
 
My takeaway is that Tinder has generated more data for my long-term study "is drunk tweeting/texting/calling/posting a bad move?"
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:23 AM on November 24, 2015 [2 favorites]


@Tinder
Talk to our many users in China and North Korea who find a way to meet people on Tinder even though Facebook is banned.
7:42 PM - 11 Aug 2015

@Tinder
You could have talked about how everyone on Tinder is authenticated through Facebook. And how we show users the friends they have in common.
7:43 PM - 11 Aug 2015

posted by ardgedee at 4:36 AM on November 24, 2015 [7 favorites]


All of this does nothing to dispel the notion that everything to do with Tinder is absolutely toxic.
posted by Dysk at 4:40 AM on November 24, 2015 [4 favorites]


Or really, the techbro "disruption" model as a whole.
posted by zombieflanders at 4:42 AM on November 24, 2015 [7 favorites]


All tinder-politics aside, in my anecdotal experience I've seen tinder do nothing but empower all of my female friends in the dating and hook-up scenes.

So no, I don't think everything about tinder is toxic.
posted by mayonnaises at 5:14 AM on November 24, 2015 [11 favorites]


Wait, she has a FACEBOOK page? That sounds like marriage material.
posted by thelonius at 5:32 AM on November 24, 2015


Good post rory! I'll read more but that gawker article about their twitter "rant" seems pretty unfair. They may be over the top but (barring fact-checking) I have to agree that decentralizing and enabling easy and anonymous dating services is a major net good in the world and if that Vanity Fair thinkpiece was as inaccurate as they say the company has a reason to be pissed.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 5:59 AM on November 24, 2015 [1 favorite]


While I'm sure that WW's lawsuit had good merit, the aftermath reads like the worst possible melodramas of a clique of high schoolers, with money added. So, very Gawker.
posted by C.A.S. at 6:05 AM on November 24, 2015 [4 favorites]


All of this does nothing to dispel the notion that everything to do with Tinder is absolutely toxic.

That would be premature. I'm lousy at any social interaction beyond "shooting the shit with friends," and I didn't mind it. I met some genuinely nice people, and the idea that you can only interact with people who both swiped-right on each other is a good idea; I'm a dude, but I imagine it helps reduce the random creepers women have to deal with.

It's incredibly harmless, and aside from the high density of spammers (hookers and herbal viagra specifically), Instagram promoters, I have nothing bad to say about the app. No, I didn't find my soulmate; I'm actually still single; it was way less awkward and harrowing that other online dating attempts I've made.

I never experienced the "hook-up culture" aspect of it, I did have some good times meeting new people. I have no real opinion on the company itself, as I never directly gave them a penny.
posted by Dark Messiah at 6:34 AM on November 24, 2015


After reading the article I'm on Wolfe's side mainly because her enemies hashtag #haha in their Instagram photos. Bumble sounds pretty cool tbh, great idea. Hope it works out.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 6:48 AM on November 24, 2015


Talk to our many users in ... North Korea who find a way to meet people on Tinder ...

There's a rom-com in this sentence. (Or a Team America sequel, one of the two.)
posted by octobersurprise at 7:16 AM on November 24, 2015 [2 favorites]


New emerging trend of 20something privileged types setting the bar for professionalism and leadership?
posted by infini at 7:49 AM on November 24, 2015 [1 favorite]


"I'm just saying there are some discrepancies," is basically saying "It's about ethics in Tinder journalism."
posted by maryr at 8:09 AM on November 24, 2015 [1 favorite]


Wow. These people haven't gotten over high school have they? As I read through this I started to assume there is no good actor in this particular drama.

Interesting how narcissism and privilege can role up into a state of paranoia.
posted by elwoodwiles at 8:10 AM on November 24, 2015 [2 favorites]


My favorite part of the Evening Standard interview, which I first saw posted on Daring Fireball:
“She’s one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen but it doesn’t mean that I want to rip her clothes off and have sex with her. Attraction is nuanced. I’ve been attracted to women who are …” he pauses “… well, who my friends might think are ugly. I don’t care if someone is a model. Really. It sounds clichéd and almost totally unbelievable for a guy to say this, but it’s true. I need an intellectual challenge.”

He continues: “Apparently there’s a term for someone who gets turned on by intellectual stuff. You know, just talking. What’s the word?” His face creases the effort of trying to remember. “I want to say ‘sodomy’?”

Rosette shrieks: “That’s it! We’re going to be fired” and Rad looks confused. “What? Why?”

I tell him it means something else and he thumbs his phone for a definition. “What? No, not that. That’s definitely not me. Oh, my God.”

When he recovers he explains that Tinder is launching an education and workplace add-on that will helps users identify their intellectual equals.
posted by SpiffyRob at 8:36 AM on November 24, 2015 [23 favorites]


yep, it's possible to both despise these jerks & also attest that (as a queer girl in a new city) tinder has been absolutely instrumental when it comes to meeting people.
posted by changeling at 8:38 AM on November 24, 2015 [4 favorites]


yep, it's possible to both despise these jerks & also attest that (as a queer girl in a new city) tinder has been absolutely instrumental when it comes to meeting people.

Still, toxic founders have damaged the businesses they've created and owned. Chick-fil-A and American Apparel are two big examples that jump into mind. It helps a little that no money is paid for the app, but being a user still helps them out in terms of network effects and the possibility of floating an IPO.

And so I'm happy to push for Tinder alternatives, there's the aforementioned Bumble and also Coffee Meets Bagel.
posted by FJT at 8:56 AM on November 24, 2015 [3 favorites]


Am I a bad person (yes) for wanting everything in this story to be true? That Terrill indeed was covertly hired for a character assassination job. That Wolfe & Co. indeed are stalking her every move and plotting her demise.

And I want a dramatic follow-up of this article titled "Who's Afraid Of Whitney Wolfe?".

(I'll show myself out)
posted by playeren at 9:09 AM on November 24, 2015 [3 favorites]


Way-eo, waaaay-eo; daylight come and I want to go hom-eo.
posted by Oyéah at 9:31 AM on November 24, 2015


I feel like this is entire foofaraw is some sort of guerilla marketing campaign for some shitty new television show that features entitled, overprivileged sociopathic assholes and in turn makes me hate all of humanity when I watch the first 17 minutes of the pilot.
posted by Emperor SnooKloze at 9:38 AM on November 24, 2015


features entitled, overprivileged sociopathic assholes and in turn makes me hate all of humanity

saying "you like online dating" is like saying "sure cenobites, tear my soul apart, I'm having trouble meeting people anyway..."
posted by ennui.bz at 9:57 AM on November 24, 2015


That Wolfe & Co. indeed are stalking her every move and plotting her demise.

What else would you expect from a couple of demons?
posted by octobersurprise at 10:00 AM on November 24, 2015


The first article just read to me like "Cocaine is a helluva drug" and I'm having trouble understanding why anybody is taking this woman seriously. She is running around Beverly Hills carrying a basket, for pete's sake.
posted by queensissy at 10:21 AM on November 24, 2015


Having read the first Gawker piece, the whole thing sounds like exactly what I'd expect of William Gibson if he was heavily into coke and writing soap operas.
posted by octobersurprise at 11:19 AM on November 24, 2015 [1 favorite]


being a user still helps them out in terms of network effects and the possibility of floating an IPO.

Tinder's parent company IPOed last week, FWIW. And the founder's interview (the one that SpiffyRob's excerpt is from) may have violated SEC quiet period rules.
posted by asterix at 11:32 AM on November 24, 2015


Having read the first Gawker piece, the whole thing sounds like exactly what I'd expect of William Gibson if he was heavily into coke and writing soap operas.

It read kind of like a Bret Easton Ellis plot to me, which... yeah okay I guess you've got a point
posted by rorgy at 11:59 AM on November 24, 2015 [6 favorites]


This seems like as good a place as any to repost The Tinderizer, a robot which promises to automate the online dating process.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 1:45 PM on November 24, 2015


If you hang out on these apps enough, you just find the same people on them all.
posted by OwlBoy at 3:12 PM on November 24, 2015 [1 favorite]


It was like reading a "10 years later" script for 90210. This woman has nobody paying her, but hides out at the Beverly Wilshire? What?
posted by frumiousb at 3:29 PM on November 24, 2015 [2 favorites]


it's odd. Tinder I thought, when it was cool during the winter Olympics, was for hook-ups. But every, and I mean 100% of the interactions I've had with women there have all started with some variant of this:

Hi! I'm looking for a long term thing, no one night stands or hook ups!
posted by 922257033c4a0f3cecdbd819a46d626999d1af4a at 6:17 PM on November 24, 2015


Bumble sounds like a great idea. Irrelevant to me (spoken for, unappealing, etc.), but it's a good idea.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 7:13 PM on November 24, 2015


it's odd. Tinder I thought, when it was cool during the winter Olympics, was for hook-ups. But every, and I mean 100% of the interactions I've had with women there have all started with some variant of this:

Hi! I'm looking for a long term thing, no one night stands or hook ups!


I can't explain the LTR part of that (all of this sounds like information one puts in her bio, BTW) but "no hook-ups" is what I refer to as "armor of plausible deniability."

Unlike Grindr, where both parties are men, there is a vast, VAST difference between the way men and women are allowed to experience their sexuality. A man can hook up casually; a woman, even if that is what she wants, has to make a number of calculations regarding her safety and comfort. Society in general does not look kindly upon a woman who would willingly engage in a one night stand with a stranger, and that estimation of her value as a human being extends all the way to the stranger in question.

We certainly don't want to "hook-up" with the gentleman who, underneath the shirtless selfie of him holding aloft a fish, complains bitterly about all the stuck-up bitches who can't get it through their heads that Tinder is supposed to be for hook-ups, you idiots.

I would also say that in a not-insignificant percentage of my interactions, the gentleman seems to think I am going to "choke on his dick."

This is possibly because it contains small parts, but I am an adult and I think I can handle it.

When I tell them I promise to cut it into small pieces and chew thoroughly they don't seem reassured.


(What do y'all expect from someone whose bio starts with "Look, i'm just here to harvest organs.")
posted by louche mustachio at 7:34 PM on November 24, 2015 [6 favorites]


Tinder gets a lot of hate but to me it feels genuinely disruptive to the awful culture around casual dating that I've had to negotiate for a lot of my adulthood. As a woman it lets me meet men to maybe sleep with while 100% sober. I used to go to bars sometimes if I thought I wanted to meet a dude to maybe sleep with but that meant diverting a significant part of my attention to titrating my alcohol intake so I didn't get too impulsive and sometimes having my evening ruined by a total stranger who had the ability to monopolize my physical space by "not leaving me alone." After being actually assaulted one horrible night I stopped going to bars; Tinder has made it possible for me to enjoy meeting dudes "to see where it goes."

Dudes I meet will go to lengths to establish trust and mutual understanding of boundaries online or through texting first without defensiveness. If they aren't able to do this, I'm not finding out the hard way. Weirdly part of the reason seems to be that until we meet, dudes on guard too because they don't know if I'm who I say I am - my worries about safety are their worries too!

Its a weird dynamic. I don't like that the initial online interactions feel repetitive and alienating. I love that there's no script for Tinder yet, no hard expectations of how its supposed to go. I hate that the media is trying to create those scripts for Tinder (the Vanity Fair piece about finance people using the app in Manhattan was full of them.) No one I've met through the app seems to think of our meetings as dates, but they don't seem to have any other category in mind, so no one I've ever met seems to feel entitled to sex. There's a lot of awkwardness but everyone expects that so it's fine. I'm sure lots of folks on Tinder have a sense of entitlement but there's room to avoid anything but the briefest contact with them.

I hope the media fails utterly in its attempt to bring human interactions that start from the app into line with current patriarchal norms. My experience of Tinder is that it gives people space to be much more sex-positive and open and respectful, and a lot of people are making good use of that space. I don't think that's quite by design on the part of the Tinder team (they seem awful) but as emergent user behavior its fairly excellent!
posted by ProtoStar at 8:38 PM on November 24, 2015 [1 favorite]


the Vanity Fair piece about finance people using the app in Manhattan was full of them

Before that showed up here there was another article by a woman saying things sort of along the lines of your comment about Tinder giving women control over casual sex/dating.
posted by atoxyl at 10:21 PM on November 24, 2015


Joking aside, my experience with Tinder has been fairly positive; even the bad dates I have had have made for hilarious stories. It was really important to me to find people who were outside my immediate social circle and Tinder was invaluable in that regard. The limited scope of detail also meant that people aren't automatically eliminated by "deal breakers" that really don't matter that much, so I have ended up meeting a more diverse and interesting bunch of people than I would have otherwise.

I found I had the best results when I was the one that initiated the conversation, and established the tone of the rapport. The "just here to harvest organs" bio intro was stellar in that regard, since it let people know right away what sort of trouble they were in for. If the person wasn't interested in talking to me and didn't laugh at my jokes, then it wasn't worth and further pursuit.

In fact, the only really bad experiences I had were with guys who did an end run around Tinder and tried to get to me through their friends ("he saw you on Tinder and thought you were rilly pritty and he's a nice guy..." that I am not at all attracted to please nope) or via other social media (I saw your art on Instagram and you are super talented and also go out with me why are you such a bitch)
posted by louche mustachio at 2:08 AM on November 25, 2015


established the tone of the rapport= two weeks of cat jokes, in case anyone was wondering.
posted by louche mustachio at 4:14 AM on November 25, 2015 [1 favorite]


MetaFilter: Apparently, there’s a term for someone who gets turned on by intellectual stuff.
posted by ostranenie at 9:34 AM on November 25, 2015


« Older Maysles Meets American Psycho   |   ERROR - Rug Not Found - Abort, Retry, Fail? Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments