KATIE FREEMAN | OPINION CO-EDITOR | kmfreema@butler.edu 

CAITLIN SEGRAVES | OPINION CO-EDITOR | csegrave@butler.edu

Content Warning: Pictures of blood and what we presume to be a weird stick are included within this article. 

We’ll just go ahead and say it — if dating apps were people, Tinder would be like that guy you know who is virtually made of red flags but you just can’t seem to get away from. It’s persistent with its notifications, and the validation it provides you is somewhat addicting. However, does it provide you with any return on your investment? No. 

In fact, you’d be better off far, far away from it.

As a power duo, the happily committed Caitlin Segraves will join hands with the chronically single Katie Freeman to critically analyze the collection of Tinder user biographies Katie has collected over the course of her time at Butler. 

Before we really, truly get into these Tinder bios, we need to offer an additional content warning. We will be critiquing these bios and if you have a fragile masculinity, your feelings may be hurt. We don’t care, feel free to continue reading if you believe you can handle it. 

Norse Pagan Guy

Right out of the gate we’ve got complaints. Why is he insulting the same audience that he wants to message him? In the first part of this bio, this guy is complaining about not getting messages on Tinder. Then he straight up insults the use of “duck face” and … lake pictures? Like you can’t just insult people and think that it’s going to be attractive to the same group of people you just insulted. 

Literally nothing about this bio makes us want to swipe right; this guy’s affinity for putting down women is weird.

The Artistic Straight Man

While the immature side of us thinks the “depth of a banana” part is a little funny, it’s also incredibly sexist and patronizing, which overrides any possibility for humor because no, putting women down isn’t funny. 

We’d also like to point out that this bio claims that American women — not girls, perv — have short attention spans and have the depth of phallic fruit. Honestly, this bio is giving us the impression that all Russian men are misogynistic and gross. Oh wait, we don’t like to apply generalizations to a large group of people based on limited interaction.

Butt Guy

For the sake of keeping this article PG-13 — and your eyes untinged— we’ve decided not to include the actual photo of this Tinder user’s posterior. Just for the record, though, Butt Guy did include a very graphic image in which he was brightly mooning his audience.

We’re not sure why anyone would think an image of their overexposed butt would be an appropriate addition to a Tinder bio, but here we are. 

This photo raises an onslaught of questions: In what circumstance was this picture taken in the first place? Why does it look like something is coming out from his body? Is it a stick? A drawstring? …Urine? 

This certainly can’t be good for an aspiring musician’s image — we’d suggest a rebrand, Butt Guy.

Extremely Goofy Normal Guy

There are a lot of normal 20-year-olds out there, and apparently, this is one of them. After all, who doesn’t want to share pictures of their gruesomely bloody face with strangers on the internet? 

The way that he is aggressively clutching his phone instills a deep sense of anxiety in us. Is it going to fall? How, then, would he be able to respond to the Tinder messages garnered by this very normal biography?

We imagine this might be an attempted reflection of his “extremely goofy” side — but really, it’s just terrifying. 

The Comedian

On Tinder, jokes in biographies are abundant, which leads us to suspect the jokes being withheld from this super funny dude were not actually all that funny.

This is a prime example of false equivalence: women choosing to show off their beach pics or ‘half-naked’ outfits is not the same thing as the Tinder police issuing a cease and desist. Not to mention, being half-naked is literally fine? It certainly is not nudity and is pretty normal if you go outside when it’s hot. People are half-naked all the time my guy, calm down. 

If all else fails, I hope we at least exposed The Comedian to what humor actually is. 

Unfortunately, we could not include all the worthy contenders — a plethora of problematic profiles sitting in Katie’s camera roll await critical analysis. 

A quick scroll through Tinder makes us wonder: are these dudes even trying to snag a date, or are they just on the app to lower our expectations of men even further? The lack of effort here is astonishing, and the mere thought of being in the same five-mile radius as these individuals makes us shiver. We dare not entertain the possibility that Butt Guy’s picture was taken even in the same state. 

We certainly wouldn’t consider inserting extremely graphic images and insults towards women into a Tinder bio as an effective tactic, but to each their own. 

Godspeed to anyone looking to interact with men on Tinder. We’ve got your back — from way, way over here.