Tinder Creator: 'Fundamentally, Women Aren't Wired' For Hooking Up

BREAKING: a minute sliver of the Tinder using populace seems to be laboring under the grave misconception that the known husband-locating app is meant to be used… for arranging casual sexual encounters?!!?!?? How these confused individuals managed to buck millennia of hardwired chaste woman-thinking remains a mystery.

Yes, it’s true: in an interview with the Huffington Post, Tinder creator Justin Mateen expressed his surprise at the “stereotype” that Tindr is “an app for hooking up”:

“It was never meant to be used for hooking up. We just did a poll
recently, and a tiny percentage of our users think that’s what Tinder is
for. Fundamentally women aren’t wired that way, right? So even if we
had tried to create it for that, it wouldn’t have worked.“

Uh… ok, first, what does this silent majority of users think Tinder is for? The app allows you to anonymously judge people, based mostly on their appearance (and also on mutual friends and shared Facebook likes, but those are much less prominent on the Tinder interface). If you and a potential match rate one another’s faces positively, you’re allowed to chat and, presumably, to meet up if you’re so inclined. It is unlikely that the meet-up will take the form of a book club, a prayer circle, or a new business venture. It is likely that it will involve sex things.

In a piece written earlier this year at The Cut, Ann Friedman argues that Tinder appeals to women precisely because it’s fast, casual and easy. “It didn’t feel like offering yourself on a plate to a
collection of the world’s ‘lonelies,'” says one woman she interviewed. “It also allowed for the more casual type of connection without
seeming totally sleazy.” I don’t know of anyone who doesn’t think of the app as casual. So whether or not it was created for casual hookups, that’s what it’s being used for — and, guess what! It’s become very successful doing just that. This is why Mateen’s statement that women “fundamentally aren’t wired” to want or enjoy casual sex is supremely baffling. Not only is it a remarkably antiquated sentiment, but it also directly contradicts the idea that’s made his product so marketable — i.e., women like casual dating (and the sex that accompanies it), too.

If the creator of noted sex app Tinder thinks women are unflappably monogamous and necessarily relationship-oriented, then, guys, I just don’t know. I thought that the idea that women had rejected monogamy dogma was fairly ubiquitous by now, at the very least in extremely banalized forms. Should we mail a copy of Cosmo and a Sex and the City DVD to Mr. Mateen’s offices or something? Ease him in a bit?