Club Owner Thinks Tinder Is Killing the Music Scene, May Just Own a Bad Club

There are many reasons a person might want to avoid a nightclub in Australia, but a bar owner in Melbourne named James Young has come up with a “new” one: Tinder.

From NME, here’s a club owner and a club promoter reporting live from the club about the kids no longer needing the club to find someone to go home with:

“This is how young people ‘pick up’ these days,” Young says his fellow promoter argued. “They’re not going out to clubs and pubs to pick up any more. They’re just picking up their phones. Tinder is killing off clubs and pubs all over Melbourne and Australia. And when they take their dates out for the first time, they try to impress them with some chic-dining experience, rather than a rowdy live-music experience.

Young’s promoter friend also told him that, unless owners and promoters can find a way to get people off their phones and onto the dance floors, the entire club scene will soon be a thing of the past. Well, they could play better music for one, but also, Young—who obviously has a stake in people showing up to guzzle overpriced Amaretto Sours—doesn’t take into account other reasons why young people may be choosing Tinder over going out.

Unlike meeting someone at a club, Tinder is easy and fast; unwanted flirtation is less of an issue, and rejection is quicker and, more importantly, safer. It’s also cheap. If someone never wanted to be at the club in the first place, they shouldn’t have to get all dressed up or pay lots of money for the possibility of meeting someone. And being able to say “no” to someone without the major possibility of them harassing you in person for the rest of the night? That’s priceless.

But blaming Tinder for any phenomenon in full is short-sighted, and according to electronic group 2manydjs, clubs are also closing due to shitty sound systems and the fact that club owners are cutting corners and not providing the “kind of party we would want to go to”:

It’s like if you have a lot of shitty restaurants close down, then that kind of makes sense. But if the good remain, then that’s a good thing.

“Clubs are closing down worldwide, and part of it is because of the restrictions being placed on them. In Switzerland the volume limit in clubs is 99dB, which, if you were to turn the music down and just have people talking, that’s already maybe 96dB, 97dB. There’s some insane sound levels going on in Europe. Obviously the best ones will find a way around it, but the sound police are gradually taking fun away from kids.

This isn’t to say that Tinder has no influence. Going to a club is fun, but it’s no place to get to know anyone; it’s also a long precursor to what people are warming up to. And, if you’ve already traded preliminary information on Tinder in order to ascertain whether “Netflix & chill” is a viable option with the person you’re talking to, why bother with the actual “going out” part of going out? Chipotle’s a much chiller option.