Astral Codex Ten

Tinder

6 min read

Tinder

Article

Tinder is a recurring brand in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 8 times across 8 issues between May 10, 2021 and January 13, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as “Is it just “swipe right on Tinder”?”; “Long live Tinder”; “pitching Tinder to sororities and fraternities”. It most often appears alongside Twitter, facebook, Reciprocity.

Metadata

  • Category: Brands
  • Mention count: 8
  • Issue count: 8
  • First seen: May 10, 2021
  • Last seen: January 13, 2026

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

The Rise And Fall Of Online Culture Wars
May 10, 2021 · Original source
I regret having to bring this up again - it probably brings back really bad memories on both sides. But I think it's important because - they are just memories now! For some reason this topic, which absolutely dominated a lot of the Internet spaces I hung out in when I was younger, has just disappeared. Did creepy men stop asking women out? Did women stop complaining about it? Did both sides get so traumatized that they tacitly agreed to a mutual cease-fire line wherever the last argument ended? Did anyone ever figure out a nonthreatening way to ask women out? Is it just "swipe right on Tinder"? Was that the solution this whole time?
Highlights From The Comments On Culture Wars
May 18, 2021 · Original source
Dating apps have their own slew of problems, but at least as far as I can see in my social bubble, asking out randos in bars or clubs, or other public spaces is deader than dead. Long live Tinder.
When I was dating more, I had some success using OKCupid, where most people would write long essays about who they were and what kind of relationship they wanted. Tinder was always more of a mystery; usually just a photo plus a one-sentence cryptic description like “25, Aquarius, hit me up! <3” I sometimes considered lowering my standards enough to “swipe right” on one of these people, but was never actually able to sacrifice that amount of dignity. Then OKCupid became a much worse Tinder clone and my useful options collapsed to zero (don’t worry, I’ve since found someone great through my community). While in theory dating apps are a great solution to this problem, in practice they’re surprisingly terrible.
Universe-Hopping Through Substack
September 29, 2022 · Original source
Whitney Wolfe and Justin Mateen would basically run around USC pitching Tinder to sororities and fraternities. The hook of seeing other single people on campus for the first time (and knowing if they’re interested in you) went viral.
23
February 14, 2023 · Original source
Somehow this never happens. OKCupid managed it for a few years, and then Match.com bought it, murdered it, and gutted the corpse. Now it’s just a wasteland of Tinder clones, forever. Sure, Luna’s rectification of the financial incentives is clever, but it seems like there’s been some kind of more fundamental failure. Why can’t we have the normal low-tech version? Why are things so bad that the people I know have been reduced to manually making profiles on Google Docs and listing them on an online spreadsheet?
Inline links: and listing them on an online spreadsheet
23: Room Temperature Superforecaster
August 01, 2023 · Original source
Justin Mateen is a co-founder of Tinder. His comment is short and generic, but I’m excited to learn a Tinder co-founder is prediction-market-pilled. Forecasting-based dating app when?
Inline links: Justin Mateen, Forecasting-based dating app
In Defense Of Describable Dating Preferences
August 16, 2023 · Original source
I've got to agree. No offence to this woman, but similar things I've seen on Twitter give the impression of being more like an ostentatious display of sexual capital rather than a genuine attempt to fill a vacancy. Perhaps that's not the case in this situation, but I can't help feeling like this is a poor solution to the problem of being single. While many people have minimum standards for partners like appearance, height, and profession, the criteria that can be captured on paper are blunt tools only effective for a very early filtering process. I don't see how this stands to be any better than Tinder, unless you consider intellectual compatibility to be of such high importance that you want to find a select group of potential suitors who are perfectly tailored to your way of thinking. That seems like a poor idea for productive dating to me.
Today there are lots of options for people who only care about attractiveness. The most popular dating apps, like Tinder, almost push you into that mode. I don’t know if their designers were going off of research suggesting that nothing else mattered. If they were, I think they should give the research a second look. If not, I think that leaves a hole for someone else to fill. Until someone does so at scale, dating docs are a good first-pass solution.
Inline links: dating docs
Quests And Requests
November 03, 2023 · Original source
Some financial structure ensuring that it doesn’t have perverse incentives and won’t become a Tinder clone.
A checkbox/swipe feature like on Reciprocity or Tinder, where if you were too chicken to ask someone out directly, you could click a box saying you liked them, and if they clicked the same box on you, you would match. I’m a little skeptical of these for reasons described here, but maybe you could fix it by having separate “excited to date this person” and “willing to try dating this person if they were excited about dating me” levels of box-tick.
Inline links: here
SOTA On Bay Area House Party
January 13, 2026 · Original source
Max grimaced. “Dating docs are terminally cringe. You don’t need to know everything about a person before you ask them out. Just use their photo and a three sentence Tinder profile, the way God intended.”
Andreas has joined the conversation. “Tinder is cringe too. You need to be picking up people in dimly-lit clubs where you can’t hear them and aren’t even totally sure what they look like.”