Features

At his flatmate’s behest, Dunedin photographer Alex Lovell-Smith signed up to hook-up app Tinder. After one pleasant but uneventful date, Alex got bored, and decided to use Tinder for an art project-cum-social experiment. Could he convince any of his Tinder “matches” to meet him, not for casual sex, but for a photoshoot?

I’m walking down Princes Street, southbound, with St Clair beckoning me in the distance. I have the usual mix of nerves and excitement that accompanies meeting a girl. A simple exchange of text messages has led me to Mojo Cafe at 2pm to meet Heidi*.

So far, it’s all pretty normal. But there’s something different about Heidi: all the while, a little monkey is jumping up and down in my brain, screaming, “you met this girl online! What are you up to, bro?!” Heidi is the first person I have ever “met” online, and in only a matter of seconds will become the first person I have ever dated using an online dating app. Confession time: I have dipped my toe in the somewhat suspicious and murky waters of the iPhone and Android app Tinder.

Heidi, 23, is working as a radio DJ in Dunedin for a couple of days, and is keen to meet some new people while on the road. She looked pretty hot in her five profile photos; plenty of Instagram filters in effect, but cute nonetheless. After some flirty banter I suggested a mid-afternoon caffeine hit.

Nerves were in full effect, and following an awkward “wow you are a real person, holy shit I should probably shake your hand or hug you” moment and a hilarious mix-up involving me forgetting my PIN number (it wasn’t actually that hilarious), I managed to engage this real-life person in some conversation. It was all very PC and above-board: what we did, what we were interested in, which famous Dunedin landmarks she should see while in town. It was just nice, simple chat, and within minutes I was thinking, “shit, this online thing dating thing isn't so bad.”

30 minutes rapidly passed by and then she was off, heading to Larnach Castle for a quick visit (complete with hand-drawn map by yours truly) before turning her feet homeward. We exchanged a few texts later on – “thanks that was nice” (me), “sorry for spilling coffee on you” (her) – but it was pretty clear there was nothing substantial there. Online date number one over; cherry popped.

I am fairly sure that many of you reading this will have downloaded Tinder, and I am also sure that those of you who have mainly did so “for the lols.” Heck, I know I did. But my God is it a freaking addictive app! As I was walking down Princes Street I asked myself, just why is it so addictive? Is it the ease of use? Is it just because it is app-based rather than on a website? Or is it because of the emphasis it puts on image when matching you up with potential partners? What has Tinder managed to do differently to, say, findsomeone.co.nz?

Ease of use is definitely part of it, as is the fact that it takes online dating into a familiar app-based format. But most importantly, it has tapped into our collective obsession with the visual aesthetics of our potential sexual partners. It has harnessed this tendency to make snap decisions based on physical appearance – the decisions that are often impeded (or heightened) at 3am by copious amounts of booze – and condensed it into a simple, and familiar, swiping action of the index finger. Does Mr X. look hot in that snazzy suit and tie number? Swipe right for a “like.” Too many images of duckface selfies in bathroom mirrors? Swipe left and that person is gone from your list of possible matches forever.

Simple, right? No wading through screeds of emails, messages, notifications and alert icons, let alone actually having to talk to someone for more than 10 seconds over an ear-splitting dubstep remix of “Wrecking Ball.”

The other thing Tinder has over apps that have done this before (such as Growler and Grindr) is the fact that it works from your Facebook account. Not in a creepy “Jane Doe liked 17 new men on Tinder!” kind of way, but by allowing each user to only upload photos that currently exist in folders on their Facebook account. In one simple masterstroke, Tinder has removed your ability to have a bunch of dick pics as your five profile photos.

This Facebook integration has gone a long way towards reducing the creepiness that seems inherent to online dating. Once you have swiped to the right on that sexy-looking someone you wait and see if they have done the same to you. If so, not only do you get a massive and instant ego boost (ZOMG that hottie thinks I’m hot too!) but Tinder then allows you to chat directly with this person in a simple format that resembles regular text messaging. From there, the magic is supposed to flow.

Supposed to. Yes, this is a shortcut version of online dating, and yes, it’s simple, easy and a little cleaner than some of the alternatives, but judging from my experiences (and the anecdotes of others) it seems that people still feel the need make things easier for themselves once they have the chat box open. The most common complaint from the females I spoke to was that many guys’ opening gambit was “DTF?” Simple, yes. Classy? Errr …

The laziness of casual pick-up lines aside, what I really want to focus on here is the fact that while Tinder has certainly streamlined the “hooking up” process, it has, in doing so, raised the importance we attach to physical appearance. We are asked to make split-second decisions on the basis of five photographs that users themselves have selected for their profiles. The visual element has always been important with regards to online dating, sure, but Tinder seems to get straight to the core of how we pick our causal sexual partners.

This got the wheels whirring in my head, and before long I could sense the genesis of a project. Serendipitously, it seems, just as I began to think about Tinder’s social experiment potential I was offered the opportunity to travel to Christchurch for an “ultra-short term artist residency.” This wasn’t as flash as it sounded: I was to live for six days in a tiny caravan run by A Place to Build Art Projects at the site of the former Convention Centre, in the heart of Christchurch’s reconstruction zone. (Alone in a caravan in an abandoned-by-night part of Christchurch … totes not creepy.) I was given a simple, open-ended brief: my project had to involve some sort of “community engagement.”

So I came up with a plan: while in Christchurch I would use Tinder with all of the settings maxed out – age range 18-50+, both the male and female boxes ticked, and the location fence set to 100 miles. Oh, and I would also “like” everyone that I encountered, which, as you Tinder pros will know, meant I would only get in contact with those who liked me back.

The theory was simple: once I had a few chat dialogues going with other Tinder users I would try to convince them to come down to where I was working and pose for a series of portrait photos. I would then give participants their five best images and allow them to use them for whatever purpose they saw fit – they could even replace their five Tinder photos in the hope of increasing their perceived physical attractiveness! My goal was to answer three questions: whether my images would increase participants’ Tinder “appeal,” whether anyone would actually agree to approach the creepy bearded guy in the caravan, and whether people would be annoyed that I was using the hook-up app for something other than casual sex. The answers to at least two of them turned out to be “yes.”

I arrived in Christchurch at 5pm on the Tuesday night and, after dumping my stuff at the caravan, immediately hit the pub. And so it began. Things got real very rapidly: within the first 30 minutes of the ol’ “swipe and giggle” I had over 40 open “matches” with other Tinder users. In other words, 40 conversations to start, and 40 people to convince to come down to the heart of Christchurch and have their photo taken amongst the city’s rubble. No big deal, right?

Wrong. 40 in the first half an hour seemed manageable, but by the time I awoke the next day I had more than 70 matches, with no end in sight. It quickly became apparent that while some people understood the importance of an attractive image, approximately two-thirds of those on Tinder did not. There is nothing attractive about shovelling cake (and a whole cake no less) into your mouth.

Additionally, it is a pretty intense task to initiate (and then maintain!) a conversation with over 70 people simultaneously. Imagine being at a BYO at The Asian with 70 other people. You have never met any of them; in fact, the closest you have come is looking at each other’s photos. You now have to work the room and make conversation with all of them, all while dodging the cheesey one-liners and dealing with the stubborn few who fail to respond to any communication. Now add the fact that you not only have to chat with these 70 people, but must convince them to come down to the caravan you are staying in and pose for a series of photos.

At this point I realised that I may have been just a touch insane and/ or naive when thinking up my project. Oh, and a quick pro-tip: “DTF?” does not count as good chat if you want someone to come and pose for photos amongst piles of rubble.

Wednesday consisted entirely of writing messages to my (increasingly numerous) “matches” and entering their names and details into a spreadsheet. By the end of the day my number of matches had ballooned to over one hundred, and I was making entries in the Excel document based on various tracking criteria: their age and location, whether I had initiated a conversation with them, whether they had replied, and whether the conversation had reached the point where I had pitched the project to them. It was early on in the first full day of the project that I had my first success.

Jane*, 21, had not only been quick to reply but had chatted with me for long enough that I felt comfortable outlining my real intentions. Much to my surprise, she was also willing to get amongst, and agreed to meet me at the caravan the very next day. Not upset that I was after neither a date nor casual sex, she was more than happy to participate in the project, and even expressed enthusiasm at doing so. Win! Suddenly it began to feel like the whole thing might work after all.

Thursday morning. After showering at Les Mills (the caravan lacked such luxuries) and making myself look halfway presentable, I waited nervously outside the caravan for Jane to show up, trying to look as unthreatening as possible. “Dammit,” I kept thinking, “I should have shaved.”

Jane arrived right on time. She was elegantly dressed, and had obviously spent a bit of time preparing for the fact that she was going to be photographed that day. The easy conversation we had enjoyed through Tinder continued, and we talked about her studies (she was an architecture student). The first shoot location was on the vacant lot next door, and we rapidly worked through 90 minutes and six locations. With a quick signing of some paperwork my very first Tinder shoot was all but over. Jane was lovely and pleasant throughout, even confessing that she had done a spot of modelling back in her native Holland. “All of the success!” I thought to myself as we bid each other farewell. “This could actually work …”

For the sake of not boring you all to tears I shall summarise the rest of the week in one short paragraph. Jane was easily the best of the (tiny) handful of people who responded to my Tinder approaches, and I had but one other success (Sarah*, 26). I spent six days on my phone and laptop, tirelessly cajoling people to come and meet me, and of the 128 people that Tinder “matched” me with, only five (four female and one male) made some sort of commitment to participate.

Perhaps this was due to the general public’s uncertainty regarding non-traditional (read: non gallery-based) art. Or perhaps it was because the females I encountered were less overt in their online advances then their male peers. Whatever the reason, the outcome was depressingly obvious: after six days of living and sleeping in a caravan, tirelessly chatting to people at all times of the day and night, I managed to convince only two people to come and meet me for something other than casual sex.