Dating app Tinder has had a meltdown on Twitter, tweeting a chain of strongly-worded responses to a journalist who criticised its dating culture.
A writer for Vanity Fair wrote a piece arguing that the app was bringing about the “dating apocalypse” by damaging relationships. In response, the Tinder Twitter account unleashed a huge barrage of tweets, calling out both the author of the piece and the idea that Tinder is a hook-up app at all.
The normally fairly relaxed Twitter account — which largely tweets memes stolen from the internet — began a hours-long blast of updates that began with factual corrections and ended with an impassioned defence of Tinder’s contribution to dating culture.
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The site issued a response to a claim in the article that 30 per cent of Tinder users are married. “If you're interested in having a factual conversation, we're here,” read the first tweet, directed at the article’s author, Nancy Jo Sales.
But it then became a run of sassy tweets, attempting to take down the broader criticisms in the article, the tone of many of which gave the impression that Tinder, fittingly, had just been broken up with.
-@VanityFair Little known fact: sex was invented in 2012 when Tinder was launched.
— Tinder (@Tinder) August 11, 2015
If you want to try to tear us down with one-sided journalism, well, that’s your prerogative.
— Tinder (@Tinder) August 11, 2015
Sales criticised the “Tinder generation” — what she said was a group of people looking for instant gratification and hook-ups. But Tinder responded to say that the “Tinder Generation is real”, but “not what you portray it to be”.
Tinder creates experiences. We create connections that otherwise never would have been made. 8 billion of them to date, in fact.
— Tinder (@Tinder) August 11, 2015
The site claimed that it had users in China and North Korea, who had got around the bans in those countries to get access to the dating site. It also made reference to the story of a lesbian journalist in Pakistan, who used the app to get around the country's same-sex relationship ban.
Talk to our many users in China and North Korea who find a way to meet people on Tinder even though Facebook is banned.
— Tinder (@Tinder) August 11, 2015
In all, Tinder wrote 31 tweets.
Sales responded to the barrage, to ask whether Tinder was requiring journalists ask its permission before writing a piece about them.
My article isn't even about @Tinder lol
— Nancy Jo Sales (@nancyjosales) August 12, 2015
