Eight Hundred Pages

Sure, I do everything I can to look as fuckable as humanly possible on Tinder. Carefully calibrated photos, a bio engineered to seem accidentally charming, jokes that took longer to write than I’d ever admit—all of it designed to spend one night with another equally desperate human being so I don’t have to sit alone with the particular flavor of psychological wreckage I cart around in my head. The problem is: Tinder knows everything. All of it.

If you’re scared of Google because they’re the data octopus of the internet and they’ll one day hurl every depraved search term you’ve ever typed back in your face—but you’re still happily displaying your body on a dating app in search of some vigorous intercourse—maybe put the phone down for a moment before the next swipe.

British journalist Judith Duportail once asked Tinder to hand over the personal data the company had stored on her. EU data protection law meant they had to comply, so Tinder sent her eight hundred pages. Eight hundred pages of private photos, intimate messages, and assorted personal information she had no idea was being kept.

Facebook likes. Photos from a since-deleted Instagram account. The age range of men she’d expressed interest in. Every conversation with every match, in full. Comments, images, search queries, shared posts—as Markus Reuter reported at Netzpolitik.org. An entire archive of a person’s desire and loneliness, neatly compiled and delivered on request.

So the next time I spruce up for a new profile photo, presenting the most flattering, socially legible version of myself to the world, I try to keep this in mind: whoever I end up bringing home tonight might not yet know what kind of person I actually am. But Tinder does. Tinder has always known.