No one wants to deal with installing yet another app anymore, so it seems like we’ve just started to use the same five apps for everything. Sell your stuff on Instagram. Find dates on Twitter. In New York, at least, the addictive dating app Tinder has adapted to become a general purpose hub for drugs, club promotions, and people asking you to adopt their cat.
Tinder as Couchsurfing — check. Tinder as a black market for food stamps — check. Access to services like HBO, Lynda, and Amazon — check. Tinder for drugs — very much check. We can only hope that “Brooklyn-based delivery, limited Manhattan service” swiped right on “Looking for a solid weed connect and nothing else.”
I reached out to some of these Tinder users to find out how well the app works as a more general marketplace. Lindy, a drug dealer whose Tinder bio said “NYC LIVIN Cali dank trippiN,” said her friends suggested she set up a profile to get new clients. “It’s like networking,” she said. She told me I was her first Tinder customer — “although I’ve got a bunch on my Instagram.”
Nicole, a 29-year-old who lives in Brooklyn, responded when I changed my profile to reflect that I was a journalist. (Tinder only lets you message people if both parties swipe right on each other, so it can be tough to find sources.) “I’m writing a story about non-dating activity on Tinder, wanna chat?” my bio said.
“I have over 1,000 matches on Tinder, but I mainly use it to find dealers these days,” Nicole said. “Finding a dealer is hard, on Tinder it’s not that perfect, but it kind of works.” Tinder is more like lead generation: Once you make a connection, you take the conversation off-platform.
Nicole said she’d also seen other non-dating profiles on Tinder, including club promoters and rappers promoting their mixtapes. “I get invited to this thing called Skirt club where they host sex parties,” she said. “So weird.”
Tinder is also a job board. I found a barbershop looking for stylists, and a producer looking for reality show guests who want a “2nd chance with your ex.” A user named Courtney met her boyfriend on Tinder, she told me, so she thought it would be a good idea to try using the app to find models for a photography project.
“I have over 1,000 matches on Tinder, but I mainly use it to find dealers these days.”
I also came across fundraising requests for rehoming horses, supporting white rhinos, and adoption. “I did see someone getting rid of a cat once but that was many months ago,” Nicole said.
One animal profile stuck out: Kogi, a black cat whose bio encourages users to ask questions about cats. The user running the account said she made it just for fun and to learn insightful things about people. She gets a lot of messages from lonely men, she said. The most striking one was about a guy who fell in love with the girl who had a heroin addiction. “After a party, they shared their first kiss. He decided after that night he was going to confess his love to her. Only he found out the following day she relapsed, overdosed, and passed away,” Kogi’s owner recalled. The saddest thing about it was that the guy couldn't really vent about it to his friends or family, so he talked to an unknown Tinder character, she said.
Tinder’s terms of service do not explicitly say you have to use the app for dating, but the company does prohibit spam and soliciting money, and has fought back against guerilla ad campaigns in the past. Tinder declined to comment for this story, but I’m still interested in learning more about the weird ways people are using the app; please do tweet at me if you get a job or adopt a pet.
