LOVE ME, TINDER

Meeting that special someone online used to be stigmatized, like falling for your future wife at a strip club or finding the father of your children on Craig’s List. Not long ago, saying “I met her online” led people to quietly wonder what’s wrong with her (and you). But times have changed, and the stigma is gone. Since 2019, more newlyweds reported meeting their future spouse on dating apps than any other place (in 2009, “mutual friends” was the most popular answer).

These days, if you’re single and ready to mingle, online dating is all but essential, and for Christians singles, there’s really no biblical reason why apps and sites should be considered off-limits. But we should also be aware of the dark side of online dating, which includes but is not limited to:

Ghosting: the art of ending what appeared to be a love connection by dropping off the face of the earth. The ghost stops responding to texts, blocks you on Tinder, etc. and you’re left wondering if they’re dead or just a lying coward.

Catfishing: luring someone into an online relationship by creating an attractive, fake profile.

Kitten-fishing: same concept as catfishing, but instead of using some model’s pictures she found on Google, the perpetrator uses pictures from 10+ years ago to appear younger.

Mask-fishing: “When a girl looks good in a mask, but when she takes it off at the lunch table, her mouth and nose don’t match the rest of her.” – Koen Huffman, 12 years old

Bread-crumbing: leaving just enough “crumbs” (texts, calls, emails, etc) to give someone hope that you’re interested, while you’re really just stringing them along as you play the field.

Other tactics like these include BENCHING, ZOMBIE-ING, and SLOW FADING. I won’t explain them all here, but researching them has offered me a fascinating (and horrifying) peek into the human psyche. That said, these deceptive strategies are mild when compared to the darkest side of online dating, which I’ve eloquently branded as PervWorld™.

PervWorld is the hyper-sexual sector of online dating, and it has so completely infiltrated the scene that it’s become the norm. Women these days basically expect the men they meet online to be sexually inappropriate. “The question isn’t whether a new guy who IMs you is a perv,” said one woman, 26, when I asked her about modern dating. “It’s more like, ‘OK, what kind of perv is he?’ Like, ‘How bad is it?’”

I asked a panel of about two dozen women what percentage of men online are “pervs” – defined as men who ask for nude pictures, send unsolicited pictures of their private parts, and make other kinds of unwanted sexual advances. One woman said, “They’re all pervs,” and the others laughed. When I said, “Wait – are you serious?” most of them nodded in agreement.

While it’s not actually the case that all men on dating apps are sexual deviants (I’ve also spoken with other women who claim they’ve encountered plenty of “perfect gentlemen” on the apps), it’s a problem big enough to grab the attention of dating app entrepreneurs like Whitney Wolfe Herd, a co-founder of Tinder who left the company after complaining of sexual harassment on the part of the other co-founder (Wolfe Herd filed a lawsuit against Tinder and eventually settled for a million dollars and some Tinder stock).

Wolfe Herd’s experience at Tinder led her to believe that the world of online dating was missing something: an opportunity for single women to have more control over who contacts them on the app. Enter: BUMBLE, which distinguished itself from other dating apps by forbidding men from making the first move. Instead of allowing men to send messages to every woman with an appealing profile, Bumble allows the woman to peruse the man’s profile and choose whether to initiate the conversation with him. Bumble has been wildly successful because it feels like a safer, more productive experience for women, which is great, but the women I talked to were also deeply sad about the need for something like this.

As one woman in her 30s said, “It’s basically like waving a white flag on romance.”

If you’re someone who’s trying to follow Jesus while dating online, I’ve got three super-practical suggestions for Christian best-practices on today’s dating scene:

1. Require Proof of Life on Day 1. You know how when terrorists kidnap a hostage and the negotiators ask for a picture of the victims holding today’s newspaper, just to prove it’s really them and they’re really alive and well? Same principle here. If your mission is to find someone real to potentially begin a God-honoring relationship, you’re well within your rights to insist on some bona fides from a new prospect. This will weed out the future ghosts and catfishers early, and it will guard your heart against the cynicism that takes root when you’ve been deceived one too many times.

2. Be crystal clear about your mission, identity, and ground rules in your online profile. I asked some engaged and married couples who met online to share with me about how they did it, and the simple summary of their responses is, “It’s all about the profile!” When creating your online profile, be open about your faith in Christ, declare your hatred for inappropriate chat/sexting/unsolicited pics (it’s advantageous for both men and women to make this clear), and making clear that your intentions are to find your future spouse and fall in love (as opposed to “Just here to have some fun”, “Let’s just see what happens”, or “Looking for new friends”).

3. Go exclusive early on. You won’t hear this from many secular experts, but if you’re talking to someone (let’s call her Kate), and you know Kate’s the real deal because she provided the Proof of Life that your pastor told you to ask for. Then you see her in person a time or two and you really start to like her. Guys, that’s the moment you stop talking to other girls (and yes, the same rule applies to a girl who starts dating a boy [let’s call him Leo]). It’s up to you whether you want to require the same exclusivity from Kate/Leo, but I encourage you to let her/him know that you’ve decided that, as long as you’re dating Kate/Leo to only talk to her/him and nobody else, at least until you and Kate/Leo figure out if there’s real hope for a future together. This accomplishes a few things:

Online dating can be amazing; one woman who met her soon-to-be husband online, wrote to me saying, “Don’t knock Tinder; it’s a gift from God.” I know that hasn’t been everyone’s experience, but there are ways to guard your heart against the darkness and cynicism in today’s online dating scene. It really comes down to this: before downloading that app and creating your profile, you need to know who you are (a child of God) and what you’re worth (Jesus’ own blood, shed on the cross). Start there and stick to your principles. You may not get as many “likes” or messages, but when it comes to online dating, it’s not the quantity of attention you receive, but the quality that counts.