Tinder Might Feel Like a Dating Wasteland, but It's Not Entirely Useless

It's a widely accepted fact--at least in my circle of recent college grads--that Tinder, and the world of online dating writ large, is a wasteland. The lure of carefully curated profiles, relative anonymity, and endless swiping seem to bring out the worst behavior--catfishing, terrible bios, and misogyny abound. And even when motives are pure, the nagging idea that there's a better match one swipe away tends to make Tinder interactions feel like placeholders. This, combined with the fact that men swipe right on anything that moves (meaning women are forced to second-guess every single one of their matches), makes the entire situation feel like a huge time suck with little chance of romantic reward. An Oxford study revealed that about half of conversations between matches were one-sided, meaning the other person never responded.