Swipe Right From the Office, Why Not

Tinder is now available in the browser, which means the particular low-grade existential activity of flicking through strangers’ faces can happen on any device with a screen and a wifi connection. Laptop, desktop, the work computer you’re technically supposed to be using for something else—doesn’t matter. Tinder Online is here.

The stated reason is practical: mobile data limits mean that by mid-month a lot of people are crawling along at reduced speeds, and the app apparently requires more bandwidth than a life of quiet desperation should demand. The browser version sidesteps that. There’s also the small but real population of people who don’t own smartphones—whether from anxiety, ideology, or some ongoing dispute with the concept of the future—who, the logic goes, still want to meet someone. Or at least swipe toward the possibility.

What I find interesting is what it changes about the texture of the experience. Tinder on a phone has a particular intimacy—it’s something you do in bed, on the toilet, in the back of a taxi at 1am when your judgment has been reduced to almost nothing. Tinder on a laptop at a desk feels different. More deliberate. More like filling out a form. Whether that’s better or worse probably depends on what you were looking for in the first place.