Vic and Tinder, sitting in a tree
500 Vic students were surveyed about their experiences on Tinder. The results are in.
Janhavi Gosavi (she/her)
I formulated an online survey to investigate our student body’s dating habits on Tinder. The survey consisted of multi-choice and open-ended questions, and in a few hours it was filled out by a whopping 500 students.
Let’s start by discussing the demographics. 70% of the respondents were female, 27% were male, and 3% were gender diverse. 63% of respondents were straight, 26% were bisexual, 6% were gay, and 5% were pansexual. Students from every faculty participated in the survey, however the highest participation came from the faculties of Humanities and Social Science, Business and Government, and Law. Students from all levels of study participated, but mostly undergraduate students.
To understand how Vic students function on Tinder, we first have to understand the origins of the app. Tinder was founded in Los Angeles, CA in 2012, and has since taken the online dating world by storm. Its founders hated stock-standard dating websites, where the process of making a profile alone was gruelling and time consuming. They designed Tinder to be a dating “game” that singles could “play” in order to find themselves “matches”. There’s a lot to unpack here.
Firstly, there’s the matter of having “matches”. As in, multiple. Created by Americans, Tinder caters to American dating sensibilities. They foster a ‘plenty of fish in the sea’ mentality. Their dating habits aren’t driven by a scarcity mindset, but an abundance mindset.
New Zealand’s dating culture is vastly different. We lack a dating culture. From primary to high school, the process is the same: you like someone, they like you back, you start going out. Instead of confidently exploring the dating scene or casually seeing several people, we’re conditioned to get into relationships. Our young people aren’t accustomed to ‘shopping around’.
Except, that's exactly what Tinder is. A three-story outlet mall full of potential dates, where you can shop till you drop. Vic students, especially those who have recently left high school, may feel overwhelmed and underprepared when they hop on Tinder. Successfully dating—without directly entering a relationship—is a skill that requires honing. It calls for emotional intelligence, clear communication, and a strong sense of self. Maybe that's why a lot of us are so crude on Tinder. We conflate dating with having lots of casual sex. In fact, when asked what their go-to date activity is, 29 students wrote “sex”.
Secondly, the gamification of Tinder seems to be the key to its wide-scale success. It’s designed for short term entertainment; an app which you can pick up and put down at leisure. One straight, male Science student said “it's fun to swipe and judge with friends, it has this almost voyeuristic charm, and it's not like you're saying this to someone's face, so no harm done”. Many students get a kick out of piling together on a couch and ripping people apart, furthering the notion that Tinder is not to be taken seriously. Yet others disagree, reluctant to trivialise online dating. A bisexual male Arts and Commerce student said “the app felt reductive [...] it game-ified the process too much”, criticising the format for being incompatible with romance.
Part of a generation that grew up using social media, students at Vic are very critical of apps and their design. We love that making a Tinder profile takes little-to-no time, yet it's all you need to access a wide range of people from the tips of your fingers. Its minimal investment for maximum payoff. Several students specifically remarked on its user interface. They enjoyed the simplicity of the swipe feature, and complimented the pink, white and grey colour scheme for being “fun” and “straight to the point”.
Tinder is now being treated like a regular social media app, which is evident in the number of irrelevant images students fill their profiles with. Food porn, topical memes, and scenic views often plague profiles, yet communicate little about the person themselves.
The most common turn-off mentioned in the survey was when profiles solely contained group photos, which made it very hard to tell who the profile actually belonged to.
It's rather oxymoronic: students don’t care about their profiles enough to post a decent selfie, but are also too riddled with tall poppy syndrome to risk looking like a try-hard.
I then asked our student population what their favourite date activities were, hoping to be inspired. “Drinks” were mentioned 133 times, and “coffee” was mentioned 114 times. Other popular answers were walking, bowling, and seeing a movie.
I tip my hat to the waterfront and Oriental Parade, which were mentioned 90 times as go-to date spots. Midnight Espresso (sigh) and The Library (predictable) were tied for second place, with 18 mentions each. Dirty Little Secret got 12 shoutouts. And “their house” or “my house” got 10 mentions a piece. Honourable mentions went to: Rogue and Vagabond, Mt Vic, Te Papa, Kaffee Eis, and the Botanic Gardens.
Students prefer dates to be casual and lowkey. Our busy schedules and limited funds also mean that dates, particularly first dates, tend to be on the cheap side. Rather than a time-consuming expensive dinner, we opt for bevvies after class. Our demographic is broke and we have a deep rooted drinking problem, sue us.
It's then no surprise that only 17% of students said they paid for a Tinder subscription, such as Tinder Plus or Tinder Gold. We simply don't see financial investment as having a direct correlation to the success rate of our dates. We also, apparently, aren’t afraid to widen our geographic horizons. The survey said it was most popular to have your Tinder radius set between 10km-20km. A net that big covers suburbs as far as Porirua, Lower Hutt, and Eastbourne. Only 9% of students set their radius to less than 5km. I was heavily impressed that students, many of whom would not have their own private transport, would travel so far from the CBD for romance.
When asked why they were on Tinder, there was a fairly even split for the most popular answers. 25% said casual dating, 25% said relationships, 23% said hookups, 19% said meeting new people, and 8% did not know.
A considerable 35% of respondents had been on Tinder for over a year. Unlike Hinge, Tinder doesn’t brand itself as an app “designed to be deleted”. If making a profile on Tinder was easy, letting the app rot on your phone for years is easier. Students seem happy to let their profiles sit idle and gather dust as their willingness to date fluctuates. Many wind up deactivating their accounts or deleting the app, neither of which shuts down their account. It's just a tactic to buy time.
With indecisiveness and complacency galore, I was then surprised to learn that 36% of students had actually been in a relationship with someone they met off of Tinder. Which brings me to my big question: for students at Vic, is online dating conducive to love?
The first step would have to be curating a killer profile. I asked students what their profile turn-ons were, and the answers were initially wholesome. Having good music taste and shared interests were a must, and the most sought after features were “a nice smile” and “good hair”. Then the answers got concerning. Students really loved profiles with a funny bio… but they were also just turned on by the presence of a bio in the first place. Having high-resolution pictures, or simply more than one picture, was considered drool-worthy.
I’m sorry to report that love is dead. It must be, because the bar is so goddamn low. Uploading a picture that isn’t 4 years old and doesn’t look like it was taken on a Nokia should be the bare minimum. And any student who writes a whole-ass cover letter about why they want some poxy internship can also muster up a few sentences about why they want a partner.
66% of students did manage to state in their profiles that they were a student at Victoria University. Furthermore, 69% said they were more likely to date another university student. 13% of respondents had even met someone on campus for a date.
Furthermore, 69% said they were more likely to date another university student. 13% of respondents had even met someone for a date on campus.
Joanna, a Communications and Arts student, stated she went to Vic because “it is a personality trait, I have nothing else to add to my bio because I am boring”. She wants to date students because there would be similarities in their lifestyles, social circles, and mindsets. “Also, like, study dates, how sweet and romantic”. Reuben, a Music student, felt dating a student would mean similar schedules and work ethic. “We can also bond over our displeasure with Grant”, he added.
Students’ Tinder profile turn-offs proved more entertaining. The statement “here for a good time, not a long time” was explicitly called out for being flaky and banal so often, it made me cackle. Holding a dead, butchered animal in pictures was another eye-roller. No one had told these poor men that gone were the days women could be wooed by a freshly shot deer or a snapper dangling by its tail.
Other obvious yet commonly found turn-offs were selfies with Snapchat filters and pictures of cars. It’s painfully clear that there are gaps between what is perceived to be attractive, and what students are actually attracted to. This gap could be closed with good-old-fashioned honest communication, but that would require students to enjoy online dating.
Detached, superficial, objectifying, asynchronous, dehumanising. A selection of popular words Vic students used to describe Tinder. No matter how amusing students found this app in the short term, it often left a bitter taste in the long run. When asked what their least favourite thing about online dating was, the most common answer was “creepy people”. Women, particularly, cited sexual violence as a tangible danger, with one straight female Arts student refusing to sugar coat the truth. “The possibility of getting murdered”, she said.
Despite Tinder not exclusively being a sex app, mundane interactions are often over sexualised. I was recently hit up by a stranger, who opened the chat with “fuck me if I'm wrong, but you look like you give bad head". After I shut him down, he promptly unmatched me. Tinder gives students a false sense of anonymity that makes them feel untouchable. But Welly is a small place: I’ve now figured out that he’s my friend’s flatmate’s ex, and he’ll get what's coming to him.
Other shitty things Tinder has to offer include being ghosted, getting catfished, and assholes who cannot gracefully accept rejection. One gay male Arts student perfectly equated being on Tinder to “being in a toxic relationship with someone, but I’m just trying to find the right time to call it quits”.
So, despite all of this, why do Vic students continue their Tinder expeditions?
The most common justification is to meet new people and widen their social circles. Students expressed their excitement towards accessing a diverse pool of people without having to commit themselves to overwhelming social environments.
This is especially true for queer students who could not meet each other without having to explicitly out themselves in daily life. A gay female Arts student said “when you’re a shy lesbian, the odds are that most people you meet won’t want to date you, but if you’ve matched with someone online, you’re over that initial hurdle”. In instances like these, Tinder is removing barriers by eliminating the ambiguity of sexuality.
Matching on Tinder is also a great way to confirm a person is at least somewhat interested in you, before you make a move on them.
A bisexual male Arts student raised a valid point about how our culture no longer permits us to randomly ask people out. “I’d never ever ask a stranger out on a date in a coffee shop or in class for fear of being accused of behaving inappropriately”, he said. Some may say we’re an insecure generation who requires online validation to function in person. But I can see the flip side—this is a clear and consensual approach to dating.
And hey, a couple of crazy students even justified their Tinder use by admitting they were on a quest to find love. But, at this point, what the fuck even is love?
My flatmate Phaedra and her boyfriend Isaac have one of those sappy meet-cutes that people make movies about. Back at our hall of residence, there was an event called “Secret Admirers”, where you were randomly assigned a resident to shower with affection for a week. Isaac was assigned Phaedra, and the rest was history.
She makes him chicken and leek pie, and they bicker over whether or not he’s allowed to help in the kitchen. He leaves love letters on her bed that she reads when she comes home from work. In the letters, he reminds her to breathe. They remind me that love isn’t dead, but that online dating will kill me.
By the time you read this, I will have celebrated my one-year anniversary of being on Tinder. I downloaded it coming out of lockdown in 2020, to make the most of my new-found freedom. I went on a string of fun first dates that turned out to be dead ends. I made a lot of wonderful platonic friends—unintentionally. I gained roughly 40 thirsty Instagram followers. And with neither love letters nor pie to show for it, I can finally admit that dating is fucking exhausting. Love is not something you can conjure up through swipes and Super Likes. Believing Tinder could help me find The Love Of My Life is giving it too much credit. It’s simply not that deep.
Would I recommend downloading Tinder? Absolutely. I learned more about myself as a dater in my first few months on Tinder than I have in my entire life. But after hustling away for a year, I’ve earned a break. I’m going to cherish the time I get to spend with myself, because being a single university student is a gift.
And if you ever see me on Tinder again, no you didn’t.