In its most recent update, Tinder has rolled out the Super Like to encourage users to be more selective. Instead of just swiping left or right to like or pass over someone, users can now swipe upwards to show they are super duper interested.
Users have to be selective when doling out those upward swipes, as the app only allows one Super Like per day. Being selective, however, pays off, as those who mutually Super Like one another have conversations that last 70 percent longer.
The Super Like seems to act almost like a monogamy setting in a dating realm that has been described as “ordering Seamless, but for people.” Coincidentally, the app decided to roll out this feature after it had been blamed for playing a significant role in the dating apocalypse.
To be fair, Tinder isn’t solely to blame for the demise of dating. A disproportionate ratio of college-educated men to women seems to have created an uneven playing field. For every three college educated men in the United States, there are four women. In other words, there’s a surplus of college-educated women, and men are taking advantage of it. Guys know they can play the field and don’t have to settle down, because for them there’s plenty of fish in the sea. Consequently, the dating culture has become more sexualized. So the Super Like could even the playing field for men and women, as neither sex has an advantage over the other.
A recent advertisement for the Super Like features a girl being harassed by a gang of men who use Tinder to bother her. To defend herself, the girl swipes furiously away at her screen in order to dissuade her harassers. She summons a boy to rescue her by Super Liking him on the app. He gets rushed to her side by the force of the Super Like, and his presence shoos the other bad boys away.
While the minute-long video makes the Super Like seem like the answer to all of one’s problems, it kind of villainizes the regular matches Now that the Super Like is available, who wants to get matched with a bum who can only muster handing out a regular old plain-o like?
Within an app that has economized affection, it’s interesting that monogamy-like behavior is clearly more valuable. Shockingly, mutual respect and selective affection seem to go a long way in the world of modern dating. Perhaps despite those curmudgeonly warnings of the dating demise, those timeless attributes of love will live to see another day.