Love is Blind, so is Tinder for Launching Tinder Select

It was near the end of 2023 when Tinder let one of its many cats out of the bag: Tinder Select. Perhaps they thought it was a good time to announce to the public the membership since people were finally comfortable with going out again and wouldn’t immediately regard someone as a COVID patient if they choked on their spit. The news spread like wildfire on Reddit and Twitter (yes, I’m still calling it Twitter). Before long, everyone had heard of the new 499.99 USD membership and they were ecstatic.

They couldn’t wait to see it flail and flop.

I can only imagine what went through the Tinder PR team’s head when they woke up to this mess. For all we know, they could be smirking and rocking in their chairs as they watched us fall for the greatest PR stunt in history. Realistically, however, they were probably panicking because they genuinely thought Tinder Select was even a semi-promising idea. What really added to the absurdity of the situation is that this thorny scheme didn’t turn up overnight; the seed of Tinder Select was planted about 6 years ago. According to TechCrunch, the company secretly invited presumably affluent individuals into a beta version of the membership, hoping it would grow into a go-to application for social elites who wish to enter the dating scene.

After 6 long years of supposed trial and error, Tinder Select was finally announced and was ready for public scrutiny, only that it really wasn’t.

Empty your Wallet, not your Heart

Money cannot buy you love, or at least that’s how the saying goes. As the leading figure in the dating app market, Tinder has a different view on love: money cannot buy you love, but it sure can buy you the chance to at least be noticed by your potential partner. And it is with that motto that Tinder has convinced many to pour their life savings and maybe a bit of their heart and soul into the app. At the third quarter of 2023, Tinder had garnered over 75 million active users, with 10.4 million of them being subscribers of either Tinder Plus, Tinder Gold or Tinder Platinum. Considering around 14% of the app’s user base has agreed to pay for some sort of membership (but still get ruthlessly swiped left for most of the time), it would appear that Tinder has been making wise business decisions.

Then there’s Tinder Select.

As aforementioned, Tinder Select costs its subscribers 499.99 USD per month. To illustrate the magnitude of that sum, just know that the average cost of a Big Mac in the US was 5.58 USD in 2023, meaning that someone could buy around 90 Big Macs with that subscription. But it’s not incomprehensible as to why Tinder had set this golden bar for Tinder Select. After all, this scheme is not intended for those who frequent McDonald’s three times a day when they’re running low on money at the end of the month.

And Tinder saw that all is well, except it overlooked one fundamental aspect of dating: power struggle.

Sign of Power or Sign of Vulnerability?

The launch of Tinder Select is truly curious, since not only does it come short in giving its target users what they want, it, in fact, goes against the basic rules to dating. For one, it makes me wonder if the company, like a child who has received their iPad for the first time, has gotten so absorbed into its little game of swiping that it forgot how dating works in real life.

Now, I hear what you’re thinking, “What is this? The 70s? There ain’t no hard and fast rules when it comes to dating.” While that might be true (and to that I’d also like to add that there was a lot more freedom in dating in the 1970s than most would anticipate), there are a few general rules of thumb in dating that, when followed, make the process much smoother and enjoyable for everyone.

So put this one down on your notebook with a red pen: NEVER APPEAR DESPERATE FOR LOVE. That being said, you should still express your care and appreciation for your partner, but showcasing an overly eager attitude when dating is often detrimental to the relationship itself as behaviors as such are sometimes associated with one being insecure and, worse yet, controlling.

Did you get that down? Well, Tinder clearly didn’t when they announced Tinder Select.

According to the official description of Tinder Select, users who are enrolled in this subscription tier would always appear unblurred on the “liked you” page of users they swiped right on. On top of that, users with Tinder Select may choose to flaunt their membership status with an exclusive purple badge as though to assert dominance. All of this, supposedly, would make the user stand out from the crowd.

And in a way, that is exactly what’s happening, but perhaps not in the way that Tinder expected. The unblurred profile pictures of those who have Tinder Select do wonders in exposing both their appearance and their desperation (let’s be honest, what else would compel someone to spend 500 USD on a dating app every month?). Now members who have received likes from them can accurately picture a future that they‘ll not be sharing with the person in the photo. The conspicuity of the badge doesn’t help the case in any way either. Instead of leaving liked users feeling privileged and honored, all it does is prove that if sighs and pleas had a color, they’d be purple.

The Road Not Taken

Or perhaps, there’s something bigger going on behind Tinder Select, this romantic fiasco that seemed to have come straight out of a terribly written telenovela.

Robert Frost once talked about how he took the path less traveled by when he saw two roads diverging in a woods. It could be that Tinder took inspiration from that idea and decided that it was time for them to dip their toes into new waters. The reason behind the awkward design of Tinder Select is clear: the membership is targeting two different groups of people with very distinct intentions. On one hand, we have corporate CEOs looking for someone who loves them while on the other, we have retired millionaires seeking out sugar babies who love them for who they are — the embodiment of money.

Suddenly, it makes sense as to why Tinder Select offers its members so many wacky features that the users, for some reason, can opt out from. In most sugar parents’ eyes, the badge that comes with Tinder Select serves a similar function to the FDA stamp of approval. However, instead of proving that they are up to food safety standards (as sweet as they are as sugar parents), the badge is there to verify the authenticity of their economic status.

But what Tinder may or may not have realized is that certain paths are less traveled by for a reason. Walking down a dark downtown alleyway alone because of a friend’s dare is not “exploring new possibilities” unless we count near-death experiences as new possibilities.

The truth is, a sugar parent doesn’t need Tinder Select to announce themselves as one. The arduous task of finding sugar babies, undertaken by only the most determined of sugar parents, have been going on for decades and honestly, they’re doing just fine even without Tinder Select. A short and simple “looking for a sugar baby” in the bio section, to a sugar baby wannabe, is just as eye-catching as that Tinder Select badge that looks more like an “on sale” sign than anything.

A Fair Trade Done

As irredeemable as Tinder Select appears to be, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that it’s still earned itself a small subscriber base. There are always going to be people who feel as though their desperation comes off as attractive (when it really doesn’t) or sugar parents who would rather spend half a grand more on an app rather than on their actual sugar baby. And Tinder Select, being arguably the most costly dating app membership ever, is still capable of generating more revenue than most of us can ever make throughout our lifetime, even if it has only a minuscule following. It isn’t all roses for Tinder though. With the launch of Tinder Select, the general public sees Tinder for what it really is, a company that doesn’t pay as much attention to its customers’ needs as they do to the numbers on their year-end report.

And it’s in that sense that maybe Tinder has spent too much time meddling in love and has accidentally picked up one of love’s many traits: blindness.