This Guy Built an App to Crowdsource His Tinder Replies, and It’s Working
Since the dawn of dating apps, men and women alike have consulted their friends for help when sending those first few risky messages to a potential love interest. Now, one brave man has carried that to its logical furthest conclusion: he’s handed total control of his Tinder responses over to a bunch of strangers on the internet.
When Nathan, a web developer living in the southern US, broke up with his then-girlfriend, he decided to try Tinder for the first time. He quickly discovered he had the most fun asking his friends what to say in response to his matches. That’s when he first thought of the idea to crowdsource his Tinder responses in a global way. The result is Tindergarten, an app he launched Monday that allows users to decide exactly what Nathan messages to his matches.
You can submit messages to any of my matches that you think would be (ideally) funny. Every ten minutes the highest upvoted comment automatically gets sent to the match,” he explains. “The iPhone window is the actual conversations that are seen between my Tinder account and the match’s account, the middle chat window is how you submit responses and upvote them.”
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Tindergarten’s existence is the fact that Nathan already has a girlfriend. Yup, you read that right. They started dating about six months ago, after they both swiped right on Tinder. She’s not too fond of Tindergarten (Nathan’s already gotten three phone numbers in the 48-hour lifespan of his app) but he maintains he doesn’t act on any advances. It’s become a social experiment at this point.
“There have been a ton of responses that have made me laugh,” he says. He’s also made a few observations. “There are certainly some assholes that say terrible things, but then some angels that come in and try to undo the damage. They’ll either downvote those assholes to hell, or, if they’re too late, say ‘Sorry, my friend got my phone and he’s an asshole, how are you?’ to try and save face.”
“Also, men think I’m a lot sexier than women apparently.”
Just two days after its creation, Tindergarten already has about 1200 users, all trying (and many failing) to woo Nathan’s matches. It’s like a quasi-real-life online dating simulator where you can practice talking to real girls. And after all, practice does makes perfect.
