Tinder Online

Tinder went online. Now you can swipe from your laptop, which sounds pointless until you hit the data limit halfway through the month and your phone can barely load a picture. Most carriers sell you plans like a con man—unlimited until you actually use it—so Tinder’s web version isn’t innovation, it’s pragmatism. They know how the real world works.

There’s also the thing about people who just don’t use smartphones. They exist. They’re weird (afraid of radiation, the NSA, whatever), but they still want to fuck strangers online. Now they can do it from their computer instead of a phone they don’t own.

The whole point of Tinder was frictionless, pocket-sized dating. A browser version kind of ruins that. But most of us aren’t swiping on the street anyway—we’re swiping at work, at night on the couch, at a desk where a laptop is more comfortable than a phone. So maybe this just admits what was always true: Tinder isn’t about dating on the go. It’s about dating online, and the phone was just where we happened to do it.