On Monday night, two hours after Indy storyboard ended, I downloaded Tinder. I chose my favorite photos that I felt depicted my best features: my silly personality and cheeky smile, obviously. Having heard the Tinder horror stories from my girl friends, I opted to make it clear in my bio that I was on the app for investigative journalism, not for a fast hookup.
Within a few hours of swiping right on every man that appeared, with the exception of those with profiles that made me physically revolt, and fielding meek “hi” dms, I received my first egregious message. A 22-year-old self-proclaimed “Harvard Dropout” with two shirtless photos in his profile chose to capitalize on the “i’m on this app bc i’m writing an article for the Harvard Independent” in my profile to say with no introduction, “come interview this di..” Not one to be discouraged, I continued swiping, hoping to engage in more intellectual conversations about the discrepancies between Harvard men and women on dating apps.
Out of every five men that came up on my feed, at least two were from Harvard. I recognized close friends, classmates, TFs, and even a few Indy members. I swiped through entire friend groups that had all used the same film photo in their profiles. But according to a 21-year-old Pforzheimer man who claimed I had “lev girl energy,” Harvard guys do not experience the same phenomenon with their female counterparts. He “definitely notice[s] a major lack of Harvard women on Tinder.” In his words, “I’d be lucky to see 1 or 2 out of every 20 women I swipe through be Harvard affiliates.” David, who agreed to be interviewed anonymously and identified by a pseudonym, also admitted that although he only sees 1 or 2 profiles from Harvard girls out of 20, a much higher percentage of his matches end up being from Harvard, even if he swipes right on all schools equally.
So why does it seem like Harvard girls aren’t on Tinder? A 20-year-old Harvard man, who has the hots for girls who “know how to dress,” explained that most of his Harvard girl friends are on Hinge. He once matched with someone who ended up deleting Tinder because “too many guys were asking her for nudes,” which he only learned later on when she found him on Instagram and messaged him. David explained that he thinks there is less stigma around apps like Hinge and Bumble because Tinder is more well-known for encouraging hook-up culture. His girl friends that are on Tinder, however, aren’t too shy about their presence on the app, though he attributes that to the fact that they are all bisexual and use Tinder mainly to find other women.
On the contrary, another bisexual senior, Jenny, who also agreed to be quoted anonymously under a pseudonym, only uses Tinder to find guys. While she didn’t find that there was much of a stigma around being on Tinder within her friend group, she explained that she noticed a general anti-hook-up culture attitude among women at Harvard. For them, being on Tinder doesn’t necessarily correlate with engaging in hookup culture. In her words, Tinder is “so meaningless. I feel like so many people have Tinder and don’t really use it, like you could see someone’s profile and not really know if they’re active.” Yet when it comes to actually meeting up with people from the app, people generally “think hookup culture is worse for girls than it is for guys.”
During my freshman year, I felt like there was a stigma around girls having Tinder profiles (and by assumption, engaging in hook-up culture.) When people found a female friend on the app they’d make comments like, “She’s too pretty to be doing this,” or “Wow… I can’t believe she’s fucking random guys.” But when we encountered one of our guy friend’s profiles, the responses were more along the lines of “He’s confident and putting himself out there!” or “A boy will do what he’s gotta do.” It wasn’t surprising to find a guy on any app, but screenshots of girl’s profiles circulated.
As my peers and I have gotten older and more comfortable with both sex and our fellow students, it seems like finding other Harvard students on the apps has become universally normalized, regardless of gender. Many of the boldest men in my Tinder DMs tended to be older, and I noticed significantly fewer freshmen on the app, with most, if not all of the Harvard girls tending to be upperclassmen. It’s no longer taboo to be looking for a primarily sexual connection with someone, especially because we’ve gotten busier and less able to commit to time-consuming relationships. In comparison to freshman year, more people are looking to break their celibacy and find somebody to match their freak.
It’s fine to get with someone that you’ve never met before because as we spend more time at this school, we get more involved in the social web which provides a certain notion of assurance about someone’s character. Truly unknown people become rare because anyone you might match with is likely at least a friend of a friend. Anyone unsafe or secretly crazy has probably been identified by the time sophomore fall comes around, so your chances of ending up on a first date with an unfortunate partner significantly decrease.
So if you can save time and energy by finding someone eligible and interested in you on an app rather than having to put in all the work in person, Tinder is an attractive option. At the same time, many people are on Tinder for reasons other than pure hook-up culture. For the fashion-oriented 20-year-old, he’s “looking for a connection, not a hookup, but obviously not a relationship, because [Tinder] is too unserious for that, but a secret third thing [he has] yet to define.” Jenny’s friends use Tinder when they are bored and just want to swipe and chat, often without any intention of actually meeting up with people. David thinks Tinder is a great way to melt awkward social barriers. “A lot of the times you match with someone, you don’t necessarily [message them] immediately, and then you run into them at a party… [then] it’s a lot easier to go up and talk to someone you don’t know.”
My recommendation? Download a dating app, even if you aren’t looking for a hook-up. I’ve had plenty of casual conversations with people who had insightful takes on everything from age gaps in relationships to the perfect consistency of ice cream. It’s a fun opportunity to be inspired by creative pick-up lines and get to know the rest of the Harvard (and Greater Boston) community. And who knows? You could very well launch your next situationship at a party after lurking on their profile and introducing yourself with the classic: “Hey… You look familiar! Did we match on Tinder? HAHA—let me buy you a drink.”
Mia Tavares ’27 (miatavares@college.harvard.edu) was appalled, flabbergasted, and frankly disconcerted by some of the Harvard Tinder profiles she encountered.