If you get a message from someone you never matched with on Tinder, it’s not a glitch — it’s part of the app’s expensive new subscription plan that it teased earlier this year, which allows “power users” to send unsolicited messages to non-matches for the small fee of $499 per month.
That landscape, in fact, is largely populated by apps owned by Tinder’s parent company: as Bloomberg notes, Match Group Inc. not only owns the popular swiping app, but also Match.com, OKCupid, Hinge, and The League.
Match Group CEO Bernard Kim referred to Tinder’s subscriptions as “low-hanging fruit” meant to compete with other, pricier services, though that was before this $6,000-per-year tier dropped.
Yeah, this is all fair. I’ve just heard that online dating is bad so many times and so often that it’s become expected. I feel like it typically comes from people who either have never used it, or have only dated that way. Both groups have a less informed opinion than someone who went on a few mortifying “traditional” dates, and then started dating online.
I’m not trying to say I’m an expert but I do think people my age are in a unique position. We saw the world before and after the Internet, and since this change occurred in our youth we had enough awareness to process both versions of the world. If we put some laws into place that protected consumers on a basic level, I sure would drastically prefer the post Internet world. As it stands, some days I don’t feel like the Internet is such a great thing, but most days I do think it’s a better world, on balance.