I was talking with someone about Tinder the other day, and she said, “I don’t want to use that to meet men.  It’s filled with guys looking for sex.” I replied, “and how is that different from the guys you meet elsewhere?” In fact, while it was created as a hook-up app, it is filled with people who have a variety of different reasons for looking for a partner. As a site for meeting people, it’s actually produced several of the most treasured friendships I have.

What Tinder did, that no other matching site had done, is to require that both people express an interest in each other before they are matched. This goes a long way to reduce unwanted interest, like middle aged men looking for twenty year old women. To be fair, you can set your age range so if you are a twenty year old girl looking for a daddy you can set your search to 50+ men. 

Geographically relevant matches

The other thing I like about Tinder is that it allows you to set a radius for your search. In that way, you can make sure you are getting results from within a geographically desirable area, because no one wants a relationship that requires a two hour commute in order to see each other. When I’m traveling, it allows me to find people who are close to my hostel. 

The radius restriction can fail in some cases and be manipulated in others. For example, I have a friend who is looking for a long term relationship, but she lives near the airport, so all the men presented to her are either pilots or men looking to hook up at their airport hotel. I guess Tinder needs to look into excluding an area within that radius.

The radius search has also failed for me on occasion. The problem is that my neighborhood is filled with popular restaurants. On several occasions, I’ve swiped “yes” to someone thinking they lived nearby, just to find they were only having dinner in my neighborhood at the time, and they actually live miles away.

I don’t know if anyone has actually done this, but I’ve joked about it several times: If you were looking for a sugar daddy or a sugar mama, you could drive to a wealthy neighborhood and set your radius to include only that neighborhood. 

Making life long friendships

My first Tinder connection was made when traveling through San Francisco. We went for a walk around the city and found out we had a lot of similar travel interests. Though we have yet to travel together, we’ve known each other for 7 years now, and not only do I have a comfortable place to stay when I visit San Francisco, I have a walking and dining partner to explore with.

Several years later, I met Karey in Portland. Though we were not very compatible, we really enjoyed each other’s company. I snuck her on a couple of my tours, telling people she was a trainee, and she came with me to scope out a couple tours for my business. 

A couple years after we met, she moved to San Diego, but I always looked her up when I went to there, and we’d come up with some new adventure. Unfortunately, she passed away last year, but she remains one of the most quirky and enjoyable relationships I’ve made through Tinder.

This past year, while staying in Taxco for awhile, I decided to see what the Tinder landscape looked like. Mexico is different because most women my age are only interested in getting married. As part of your profile, you can include what expectations you have. Many people do not fill in their profile, so it’s hard to know what to expect, but if all their profile pictures are of them dressed in heels and wearing a lot of makeup, I am pretty sure they’re not going to want to go climbing stairs with me. I want to see a picture of someone in the outdoors, and not just bikini shots on the beach. That just sets up a different expectation.

My best mistake

A few days after I’d swiped in Taxco, I got a message from Tinder that I’d been matched. I was a little surprised since the match had been a mistake. The way matches work on Tinder is that you are presented with a person’s photos and profile. If you are interested, you swipe right; if not, you swipe left. I wasn’t interested in any of the people being presented so I was quickly swiping left when I accidentally swiped up. An upward swipe in Tinder indicates a “Super like”. It also communicates to the recipient that someone has super liked them. 

Unfortunately, I’d been swiping so quickly, I didn’t notice who I’d inadvertently Super liked. Though I was notified of the match, I wasn’t sure what to think because she hadn’t filled out her profile. I didn’t take any action, but a couple days later, she sent me a message.

We met for lunch, and I told her that the match had been a mistake. She promised it would be a good one. She and her teenage son lived in a community just north of me. There were eight houses in the community, but they were only used as vacation rentals, which meant they had the community pool to themselves and there were few other visitors so the risk for Covid was low. 

She and her son came to visit with me in Taxco, and it turned out to be a good break for a teenager who had cabin fever. I walked them up and down all the stairs I’d found in Taxco, which proved a bit challenging since their town was relatively flat.

We ended up visiting a few times during my month and a half stay and even went to work on her apartment rental in Mexico city one weekend. Traveling alone gives you the freedom to not have to answer to anyone, but there are times that you do want to interact with others, and Tinder can be really good for that.

People are the same wherever you go. Some are cruel and some are kind. It doesn’t matter where you find them, but I have found Tinder to be a reliable place to make some lifelong friendships.