London’s Evening Standard has published an interview with Tinder’s chief executive, Sean Rad, in which Rad apparently plays the part of the living embodiment of his service.
The co-founder and CEO, who is “addicted” to his own service (“every other week I fall in love with a new girl”), has a confession to make: a supermodel has, he says, been “begging” him on the app for sex. But he’s said no every time.
The piece, by the Standard’s Charlotte Edwardes, continues:
“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 … well, who my friends might think are ugly. I don’t care if someone is a model. Really. It sounds cliched and almost totally unbelievable for a guy to say this, but it’s true. I need an intellectual challenge.
“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 [with] the effort of trying to remember. “I want to say ‘sodomy’?”
Rosette [Pambakian, vice-president, communications and branding] 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.”
Rad is doing the rounds as a doting interviewee following his re-promotion to chief executive in August this year.
He had been the company’s founding CEO until November 2014, when he was demoted after a lawsuit alleging harassment and sexist treatment from Tinder’s former president of marketing, Whitney Wolfe.
That lawsuit was settled without admission of fault on either Wolfe or Tinder’s part, but it reportedly provided the board of the Tinder owner Match.com the leverage they needed to remove Rad as CEO.
