Cindy, a 27-year-old Bushwick graphic designer, became infatuated with the dating app Tinder after she downloaded it last May. She and her boyfriend of five years had broken up, and she was ready for new adventures.
「I’m super boy crazy, so it wasn’t surprising I got obsessed with Tinder really fast,」 said Cindy, who spoke on the condition her real name not be used. 「I get off on the high of matching with someone, meeting them and sleeping with them.」
The shapely pink-haired pixie’s phone began to blow up with 50 messages a day.
「It was thrilling to have a ton of people at my fingertips,」 she said.
Before long, she was 「swiping right」 on 150 men a day and meeting men several times a week.
She once slept with two men in a day — one in the morning and one at night.
「I didn’t really think about it,」 she said.
『As soon as the door shut, it was an instant make-out sesh. Then she told me to take all my clothes off.』
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Since Tinder launched in 2012, the number of dating apps — and the anonymous hookups they ignite — has exploded. And so has the number of sex addicts.
「It’s really the crack of our time. It’s an instant way of feeling better and it’s just a click away,」 said Puja Hall, a psychotherapist and director of the New York Center for Sexuality and Sex Addiction Treatment.
Hall says she’s treating more juveniles for sex addictions than ever before because of apps like Tinder.
「In the last few years it has spiraled completely out of control. It’s a real problem and it’s heartbreaking,」 she added.
From its inception, Tinder has been downloaded more than 100 million times and has spawned 20 billion 「matches」 worldwide, the company claims.
In the Big Apple, more than 60 percent of single women and more than 80 percent of single men between the ages of 18 and 24 have used Tinder.
The hugely popular program asks users to create a profile featuring up to six photos and a short bio. People can then scroll through other users who are within an adjustable geographical range, from 1 to 100 miles. A user swipes left for 「Nope」 or right for 「Like」 on each profile they view. If two users mutually 「Like」 each other, they are alerted to their 「Match.」 Then, they can begin a private chat on the app.
Spencer Nelson is a fan of the app, which allows him to have sex whenever he craves it.
On a recent Tuesday at 9 p.m., his iPhone pinged with a message from a stranger.
「Hey, I seriously want to have sex,」 the woman wrote.
Nelson, 25, met up with the sexy blonde at a Brooklyn bar. After just one beer, the two were back at her place.
「As soon as the door shut, it was an instant make-out sesh. Then she told me to take all my clothes off,」 the Brooklyn bartender recalled. The pair slept together and haven’t spoken to each other since.
Spencer Nelson is a bartender in Brooklyn.Angel Chevrestt「I like that I could put on a suit, take some selfies, go sleep with someone in the Financial District and disappear, never to be seen again,」 Nelson said.
Cindy has used Tinder to experiment sexually beyond her usual bedroom routine. One winter night, she met a 20-something in an open relationship.
「I spent the date finding out about the sex parties that [he] and his girlfriend go to. Our conversation sparked a mood between us, and we went back to my place after a few drinks,」 she recalled.
「We had sex with me bent over my kitchen stove. Then we opened up my curtains and had sex in front of the window,」 she said.
「We basically had sex all over the apartment.」
Unsurprisingly, many of these hook-ups feel more like cold business transactions than meaningful connections with fellow humans.
A Willamsburg doctor who invited Cindy over on a Friday night put on a Kevin Hart movie and then, without even a second of foreplay, dropped trou and placed her hand on his junk.
「We had agreed to hook-up so I gave him [oral sex] on the couch,」 she said.
Now, after less than a year on Tinder, she has at least 25 notches on her belt — but not all of her conquests are winners.
「One guy asked to sleep with me again and I had to flat out say, 『I’m not looking for a repeat of that』 and shut it down,」 she said. 「He was a bad lay.」
Texting and sexting before the initial meet is also a big rush.
「I like getting all of our sexual preferences out on the table before meeting so we can get right to it without any awkwardness,」 she says. 「The buildup also makes for really hot sex.」
But it’s the dependence on one-night-stands that can lead to obsessive behavior, depression, and issues maintaining real connections, therapists believe.
「We wind up having these sexual engagements that are fundamentally live pornography, where the person is basically masturbating with someone else’s body parts,」 said Paul Kelly, a psychotherapist and sex-addiction therapist. 「Having that kind of turnstile approach to relationships really wears down the idea of actually building long-lasting ones.」
Getty ImagesAt work, addicts sometimes waste hours mindlessly swiping through profiles, therapists say.
Quitting 「can be a very challenging process」 and it’s 「almost impossible」 to recover alone, Kelly said.
「Tinder really does feel like a drug,」 said Cindy. 「You get into this spiral where you delete it and re-download it over and over.」
Although Nelson says the app hasn’t turned him into a sex addict, he does admit to incessantly deleting and reinstalling the app.
「You get fed up and are like 『What am I doing? I should meet people in real life,』 but Tinder is fun,」 he said.
Nelson is attracted to the powerful feeling of being able to change his persona on a whim.
「I can reinvent myself every time I meet someone,」 he says. 「If you meet them through mutual friends, they』ll have an established thought about you.」
Online dating has existed since at least 1995 when Match.com burst onto the scene, but at the time it inspired more marriages and relationships than anonymous sex.
The technological speed and ease of Tinder made it a hit with the millennial generation, and inspired a new era of machine-made matching.
Dozens of dating apps followed Tinder’s model, including OkCupid, Hinge, Happn, Coffee Meets Bagel, Plenty of Fish, Tastebuds, Zoosk, Bumble and more.
Tinder itself has continued to expand the services it offers, including a new program called 「Tinder Select」 that caters to an elite group of the most desirable people on the app.
Little information is available about the exclusive feature, and it remains unknown how people are chosen to join the closed group.
In the past, Tinder has been criticized for making sex too easily available and encouraging the commodification of bodies — especially women’s — rather than facilitating real connections.
Some believe 「the extreme casualness of sex in the age of Tinder leaves many women feeling devalued,」 author Nancy Jo Sales wrote in her Vanity Fair piece, 「Tinder and the Dawn of the 『Dating Apocalypse.』」
「It’s rare for a woman of our generation to meet a man who treats her like a priority instead of an option,」 journalist Erica Gordon was quoted as saying in the article.
ShutterstockThe Tinder community reacted sharply on Twitter. 「If you want to try to tear us down with one-sided journalism, well, that’s your prerogative,」 a Tinder employee blasted back at Sales, joining other commenters who cried bias. (Asked for comment on this story, a Tinder spokesperson said: 「We know from our research that 80 percent of users are seeking a meaningful relationship.」)
Sales said she was puzzled by the extreme reactions.
「My piece was not only about Tinder, but about misogyny in the emerging dating-app culture,」 she tells The Post.
「It was as if no one wanted to talk about that. 『Dating apocalypse』 was not my assessment, but an ironic quote from a young woman I interviewed.」
Hall warns that dating apps encourage alter egos that can be detrimental to having meaningful relationships.
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「They don’t know how to be themselves anymore, and who they portray isn’t really real,」 the Manhattan therapist says of some users.
All three users interviewed by The Post have struggled with feelings of emptiness after too many Tinder dates.
「After a while you get disillusioned by the constant meat factory of swiping and meaningless encounters,」 Cindy says. 「Eventually, the dates all start to feel the same.」
Some experts wonder if addiction is precisely what dating-app companies — who usually charge for special features, even if the app itself is free — hope for.
「Do they really want you to find true love on a dating app? Or do they want you to just keep swiping and using their product?」 asks Sales, who is also the author of 「American Girls: Social Media and the Secret Lives of Teenagers.」
Cindy can’t imagine quitting, but wants to use the app much less.
「I really haven’t been on Tinder much these days,」 she proudly declares, as several Tinder messages ping her phone.
「Ignore that,」 she snaps. 「They don’t count.」
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