When it came to using the smartphone dating app called Tinder, I purposely held off for about a year. I don’t like being an early adopter. I prefer a technology to be nice and tested before I start using it to create real results in my life. In addition, I’m a big Android guy and Tinder was only available on iOS for quite a while.

A few weeks ago, it was time to get rocking with this. I added Tinder to my regular dating site repertoire (even though Tinder is not a site, it’s an app) and did regular blitzes with it just like it was any other dating site.
My results were spotty but okay. I quickly got two first dates, had sex with one of them, plus as of this writing there is another highly likely lay from a third woman. The good news is it took me only a few minutes of actual “online opening time” to get to the point where I was messaging these women, and that’s where Tinder really shines.

Regardless, even though there’s a lot of good about Tinder there’s also a lot of downsides. A lot. My overall opinion is that the technology is mildly useful, but it’s still new enough where the kinks aren’t worked out yet. I think that over the next few years, when other dating apps go into competition against Tinder, we’ll start seeing much better systems than the “smartphone swipe” system of dating we have now with Tinder and similar apps.

I think of Tinder as Betamax/VHS, which were really great when they first came out…but DVD and Blu-rays are just around the corner.
In this post I will lay out all the pros and cons of using Tinder, as well as techniques to overcome or take advantage of these things.

1. Tinder is extremely time efficient.

Like I said, this is the one area where Tinder is mind-blowingly awesome. All you do is swipe pictures of women left or right based on if you like them or not. You can literally blast through 100 women in just a minute or two.
Women are doing the same, and if any women you swipe also swipe you (and swipes don’t have to happen at the same time; they can even happen days or even weeks apart), then you’re notified, and you can then message that woman and vice versa.
This is really powerful, especially if you live in a larger city. Never have I been able to “sort” such large amounts of women so fast and so quickly.

2. Tinder is not very good for men dating outside of their age range.

This disadvantage is a huge one, probably Tinder’s biggest, but it won’t affect a lot of men out there even though it affects me a great deal.
When you start using Tinder, it limits you to just seeing pictures of women in your own age range, based on whatever your age is stated in your Facebook profile (Tinder is Facebook-based.) The good news is that you can modify this age range in the settings. The bad news is that most women don’t do this, and probably don’t even know this is an option.

So if you’re trying to date much younger women, you have a big problem using Tinder. You will see these younger women as swipe choices, but the vast majority of these women won’t ever be seeing you, because they’re not going to know (or bother) to change their own settings to find much older guys. The vast majority of matches I got were women around my age (including the one I had sex with).

I know what you’re thinking: “Just change your age!” You can’t, because you’d have to change your age in Facebook, and Facebook is very pissy about that sort of thing.

My thought is to set up a second Facebook account using my same good photos, then making that account look like I’m 21 years old, then stating in my Tinder profile that “I’m not 21 obviously, I’m much older than that. Hit me up if you’re curious.” or something similar. The problem with doing this is it will seriously screw up the amount of hot women I will be swiping through, since my fake FB profile will have a small amount of Facebook friends (more detail on that in a moment). Regardless, I might experiment with that after the first of the year.
Of course if you are already dating women your own age, none of this will be an issue for you. Just install the Tinder app and go crazy.

3. There are flakes and non-responders on Tinder just like any other dating site.

Just because you get a match does not mean she’ll respond to you if you text her. Many matches you get will never talk to you even after you send them an opener.
This surprised me. Why would they not talk to me if we matched and she clearly liked my photos? It could be many reasons. Maybe she was a fake. Maybe she found a BF. Maybe she was just screwing around. Maybe she lives too far away (more on this below). Maybe she’s scared. Whatever. Just don’t be surprised if your openers to some of your matches go unanswered. This is normal.

4. Tinder’s system for finding women “near you” is all fucked up.

This is the second big problem with Tinder. Let’s say some hot chick on Tinder who lives 2000 miles away from you is visiting her family who lives just 10 miles from you. You swipe that you like her, and later she swipes you after getting back to her home town. Now you’re a match, and start talking. When you pitch a date, you both figure out that you’re 2000 miles away from each other. Then you throw your phone across the room because of all the time you just wasted.

This happens on Tinder a LOT. Whenever you start talking to a new woman, the very first question you need to ask her is what city she lives in. I’m serious. Just get into the habit of doing that; you’ll waste much less time. (You’ll notice some women will ask you this question right off the bat…that means you’re dealing with a seasoned Tinder user.)
There’s a ray of sunshine behind every cloud, however. I found a very cute flight attendant like this…she lives very far away but visits my city often. She could work out to be a great occasional FB. We’ll see.

5. All the usual photo techniques not only apply to Tinder, but they apply more so than on a dating site.

Everything I have ever said on this blog or my ebooks about proper online dating photos go double for Tinder. Tinder is 100% photo-based. You can write a little text for a “profile” of sorts but most people don’t do this and even fewer will read it. No, it’s all about your photos baby. My strong suggestion is to put just ONE or TWO of your BEST photos on your Tinder profile and that’s it. Then get swiping.

If you don’t have any REALLY good photos, hit up Craigslist, find a cheap photographer, and get some taken. Messing with Tinder when your photos aren’t the best they can possibly be is going to be a waste of your time.
6. Because Tinder is so new, women don’t know how to use it correctly, and this will cost you some potential dates and lays.

There are several stories I could tell to explain this, but I’ll give you my favorite so far. There was a really hot blonde who was very interested in meeting up with me. We had a brief conversation over Tinder. The next day she sent me a message that started “I’m closing my Tinder account. If you want to get a hold…” and that’s all I saw on the preview pop-up on my Android phone. When I clicked the message to bring up Tinder to read the rest, her name and all of our messages were gone from my list of women. Why? Because she deleted her Tinder account, so it blew her away from my list!

She had sent me her contact information in a Tinder message, then deleted her Tinder account. She didn’t know doing that would make it impossible for me to read her last message to me. I lost out on a potential new FB/MLTR. Grrr….
Just realize that until people get the hang of this new system, there will be screw-ups like this along the way, with either you or the women as the cause.

7. There are scammers on Tinder. Be careful.

Apparently this is less of a problem than it used to be, but it still happens regularly. Sometimes on Tinder you’ll get some cute girl who matches you, and as soon as you start the conversation she gets really, really sexual very quickly. Just block her and move on. These are webcam girls trying to score cash. There’s quite a few on there but the amount has gone way down (in terms of as a percentage of total profiles), and will continue to go down as time goes on.

8. You can check other photos on a woman’s profile if you’re not sure if you like her, or if she has pictures of other women on her profile and you don’t know which one she is.

Instead of swiping left or right, you can tap on a woman’s photo and it will bring up other photos of her that you can swipe through, then you can click a like or dislike button at the top of the screen.

With about one out of every seven or eight women you’ll have to do this, because a lot of women are dumb enough to have their primary photo be of them with female friends, so you’ll have no idea which one is the actual Tinder girl. Some women go the extra extreme and have ALL their photos be with the same girlfriends, meaning you have no idea who she is even if you look through her photos. Pretty funny.
Again, as smartphone app-dating becomes a more normal thing in society, less and less women will make these kinds of mistakes.

9. Because Tinder is Facebook-driven, the hotness of women is based on the hotness of your Facebook friends and their Facebook friends.

I don’t have that many Facebook friends, but many of the ones I do have are very attractive women and men who know a lot of attractive women. As a result, there were (and still are) hordes of super hot women on my Tinder, far more so than on any other dating site I’ve ever used in my life. This is a very nice, unexpected benefit of having a “hot” Facebook social circle.
Given this, it might make sense for you to friend request a bunch of attractive women on Facebook, and/or women or men who know a lot of attractive women (like DJs, bartenders, photographers, musicians, and models) and do this BEFORE you start going crazy with Tinder. Doing this will make a really big difference in the quality of women you can comb through.

For you older guys, notice that this element will severely limit you if you make a fake Facebook profile to overcome the age issue. What you’ll probably have to do to make the most of this is to create a fake Facebook profile that uses your real name, just one or two great photos, then friend request as many hot people as you can without getting banned or suspended from Facebook. (A dicey procedure.) Once done, then go crazy with Tinder once you’ve built up a decent amount of Facebook friends.

If you’re thinking that sounds like a lot of hassle just to use Tinder, you’re right. It might not be worth it for us older guys.

10. Every other Blackdragon online dating rule and technique works great with Tinder.

Everything else I talk about regarding online dating, like being outcome independent, pitching the date very fast, getting her off the dating site (or in this case, app) to some other form of communication as fast as possible, Comfort Bombardment, etc, works great with Tinder. Once a woman is even mildly interested in you, just treat Tinder like any other dating site….there’s no difference.

As a matter of fact, the date-flaking women are actually lower on Tinder, since the mere fact she’s talking to you on Tinder already proves that she really likes your photos. On a dating site, often this is not the case.

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