32 AMPERSAND | FEB/MAR 2014
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PHOTO BY EMILY SCHOONE
BY DANIEL FUNKE
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Wake up Athens; dating has changed since the
days of knights, chivalry, courtship and dowries.
Nowadays, in the fast-paced chaos of modern
life, young people use their smartphones for
literally everything. Anyone with a semi-firm
grasp on current events understands that. How
ever, the utility of Apple’s iPhone goes beyond
just listening to Beyonces new album or mind
lessly checking Twitter.
Dating apps, such as Grindr, Tinder or Lulu,
are becoming increasingly popular amongst the
18-24 year-old age group. Think of a mobile,
labor-unintensive Match.com; users create on-
line profiles with information such as relation
ship status, physical characteristics and goals
in hopes of meeting people for dates or hook-
ups. This means that iPhone users can actually
schedule a hookup for the night and pay for their
Starbucks with the same device at the same time.
The most well-known dating app is Grindr.
A location-based iPhone app that displays local
singles in a kind of profile picture mosaic layout,
Grindr is used by nearly 4.5 million gay men
worldwide. Users can browse the profiles of gays in
their area, view their pictures and chat with them.
As the name not-so-subtly suggests, the app
creates significant controversy among its users.
“It takes well-rounded individuals and funnels
down their persona into a sexualized image
that places more emphasis on one’s physical ap
pearance and less on one’s personal and emo
tional traits,” says Alex Merritt, a freshman en
vironmental economics major from Alpharetta.
“Grindr takes a large group of people and pits
them against each other while connecting them.”
An anonymous sophomore said that the util
ity of Grindr is largely up to the user.
“I think that with Grindr or any app like
that, you get out of it what you put into it. If
your intention is to solely hook up then that’s
fine, and you’ll get that out of it,” the source
says. “But I think Grindr also enables people
who are looking for other gay guys to make
friendships or quality relationships with.”
Tinder can be viewed as the heterosexual
counterpart to Grindr. In the app, users connect
to Facebook to find people in their area that are
similar to their friends. Then, they systematically
scroll through possible matches, choosing with
whom they want to chat.
Tinder is often trivialized as merely just anoth
er way for desperate college students to hook up.
“In college, I don’t think people take Tinder
seriously. Sure, some people may find success,
but I think it leads to more hookups than rela
tionships,” says Agne Stoskute, a freshman jour
nalism major from Chicago, Ill.
However, some find Tinder not only easy and
convenient, but essential.
“I am a musician which means I travel a lot.
I’m also bored and lonely in cities we have a lay-
over in,” said Frank Keith IV, a senior journalism
and music business major from Atlanta. “Tinder
has allowed me to meet some very memorable
strangers when I otherwise wouldn’t have been
able to.”
Perhaps the creepiest app out there is Lulu.
Originally introduced to sororities, Lulu allows
women to anonymously write reviews and make
comments about men that they have had roman
tic experience with by pulling information from
Facebook profiles.
“When you Google a guy, you don’t want to
know if he voted Republican or what he wrote
a paper about in college,” founder Alexandra
Chong told The New York Times. “You want to
know if mothers like him. Does he have good
manners? Is he sweet?”
Love them or hate them, dating apps are
growing in popularity. A study by the Pew Re
search Center found that seven percent of cell
phone users reported they had used a dating ap
plication. Before Grindr’s creation in 2009, that
number was virtually zero. And with the growing
number of cell phone users, dating and hooking
up via mobile apps has seemingly unbridled po
tential for lonely people in a digital age.
