The Seven People You’ll Meet on Tinder
Editor’s note: Dillan Passmore is a student life staff writer who created a male Tinder profile for the purpose of categorizing the types of people who use the dating app. Passmore used a technique called quantitative research analysis, which looks for key phrases and images to quantify information.
Tinder seems to be a legitimate form of meeting people, especially if you’re like most people, and too afraid actually put yourself out there. In light of Valentine’s Day coming up, and the impending loneliness associated with being single on that day, Tinder seems like a good option.
This article aims to introduce Tinder to someone who is a novice in the world of app-based dating. Moreover, reading this article will help new Tinder users brace themselves for the various users they will come across as they start swiping.
Tinder is a location based social media app, mostly used for dating and hookups. Users create profiles complete with pictures and short bios, which are subsequently liked (swiped right) or disliked (swiped left). If two users like each other, they are matched and can now chat with one another.
Needless to say, there is a whole myriad of people on Tinder.
Instead of using already existing research, I decided I wanted to discover the types of people on Tinder myself. I, along with two of my friends, Mike Wells and Spencer Peterson, started by creating a falsified Tinder account. We put up a photograph of a mutual friend and wrote one sentence on for the bio, “I am a nerd.”
All of us, being previous Tinder users, wrote down basic categories we felt like people would fall into.
We then started swiping and examining the different profiles, taking note of key phrases, number and types of photographs, etc.
Profiles were examined with the following setting: we were interested in women 18-25 years old and within a 50 mile radius. Overall, we reviewed 130 Tinder profiles.
Upon reviewing the separate accounts, information from bios took the leading role in determining what category individuals fell in. Pictures were secondary or supporting information in categorizing. Some people listed a couple or several phrases which placed them in multiple categories, at this junction, we placed them in a category based on the first phrase used in the bio.
Here are the Seven People you meet on Tinder:
- The Nerd: To fall into this category, users had to use the phrase, “I’m a nerd” in their bios. 10 percent of the sample fell into this category.
This phrase was generally proceeded with or appeared after a long list of “nerd” activities. Examples include Doctor Who, Harry Potter, computers, reading and a general disdain for football. Based on our research, these are the type of people that will only respond to messages if you mention something about their nerdy interests.
They’re nice, but will always love Harry Potter more than they’ll ever love you.
2. Something … Something … Dogs: If the phrase “If you have a dog, we’ll be friends,” or “Doggos are my favos” was used, people automatically fell into this category. People would usually have something else in their bio, but either the majority of the bio was about dogs or they had at least one picture with a dog in it. 13 percent of the sample fell into this category.
They weren’t on Tinder for dates, they were just there for the dogs.
3. They’re a mystery: These are the people who’s bio is non-existent and only seem to have one photo. The one picture they do have makes them out to be fairly attractive, but it’s hard to determine if these types of people are either simply private people or catfish bots meddling in your love life.
We speculate that 6 percent of our sample were Russian Tinder bots.
4. Did I mention my Tattoos?: People in this category made some reference to tattoos, generally instructing users who didn’t like tattoos to swipe left. They also usually stated the number of tattoos they had, what those tattoos are, and that they “aren’t done” and plan on getting more. In these cases, we found these individuals had at least one photo highlighting their tattoo(s). 19 percent of our sample fell into this category.
5. The Adventurer: These are people that “like going on adventures” and will say so in their bio. They will generally have a couple pictures of them hiking or doing something outdoorsy with their friends. People in the category were also likely to use the phrase “Dance like nobody’s watching.”
10 percent of the sample are these self described adventurers.
6. Molly Mormon: Of course, pulling from a sample from an area with such a large population of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we would imagine we would get some of these. These are people whose identity as a member of the LDS church and center their Tinder profile around it. Generally they will tell you that they’re LDS, what mission they served in, how much they love their family, their commitment to chastity, etc. They will also have pictures in front of temples or from their missions. 14 percent are these Molly Mormons.
The likelihood of this type of Tinder user being engaged in a month and married in three is very high. If you’re interested in meeting more Molly Mormons: hit up Mutual.
7. “Send Memes, Not Nudes.” : Meme culture has made its way to Tinder. Individuals in this category will often use a meme as one of their pictures. As far as bios go, expect “Office” quotes, references to Pepe or Ugandan Knuckles, or just a bio they stole from a meme-ified tinder profile.
9 percent are meme junkies.
Other interesting findings:
- The average number of pictures in a Tinder profile was five. With one being the lowest and six being the highest.
- 19 percent of people didn’t fall into the seven categories we wrote about. The categories we didn’t talk about include: Here for coitus, way out of your league, “No thanks, I have a boyfriend,” friend runs tinder, and basic.
- 32 percent of our sample believed it was acceptable to use a picture from their Snapchat as one of their pictures.
- 87 percent of those snapchat photos were of them using the dog filter.
- 14 percent of people in our sample made some reference to having children.
We hope this article will help you as you try to navigate through amazing world of Tinder. Happy Swiping!
—Dillan.passmore@aggiemail.usu.edu
@DirtyGhettoPass