Member-only story

Sex and Dating Turned You into a Product?

Tinder Sells You Dreams While Stealing Your Authenticity

Mary Carter
6 min readDec 16, 2024
Photo by Carlos Santiago pexel

I look at these Tinder numbers and see much more than statistics about “hot hamsters” or “black cats.” I see a disturbing mirror of our current society, where the search for human connections has transformed into a personal marketing game, a constant self-promotion exercise that exhausts me just thinking about it.

During my two years on Tinder, I experienced the full emotional rollercoaster these apps provide. The matches that gave me butterflies, conversations that died after three messages, surprisingly good dates and disastrously bad ones.

I particularly remember a guy who seemed perfect on paper — lawyer, yoga practitioner, dog lover — but spent two hours of our first date talking about how his ex was “emotionally unstable.” The irony is that his meticulously curated profile promised “emotional intelligence and maturity.”

I perfectly remember what it was like being on this digital carousel. It was like being in a people supermarket, where everyone tried to have the best label on the shelf.

Men with photos in Bali to appear adventurous, women with deep philosophical quotes to demonstrate spiritual depth, everyone trying to sell a premium version of themselves.

--

--

Responses (3)