Designing A Seduction On Tinder
I’ve always had a flare for the dramatic, but never had married my personal life with my design skills. I was in a new city, with a new job, newly gay, and no one to talk to. So I did what any lonely boy would do. I opened a bottle of rosé and got on Tinder.
After scrolling through a few scandalous conversations from old flames, I decided it was time to update my half-assed, basic, white boy profile.
And this time I was going to give it my best effort.
Rosé Brainstorm
I brainstormed for a few minutes. As I nursed a bottle of rose, I pondered the age old question — “What do guys want?”
“They want to see you naked, they need man fleshhhh.”- whispered my sexual creative genie.
Initially, I was appalled by the thought, but I knew my genie was right. I would need to show some skin.
But in an age of endless, shirtless, mirror pics how does one stand out amongst the crowd? We have become so desensitized to all this skin, but nudity is still necessary.
I wasn’t going to use the old adage of a bathroom mirror selfie. I was going to give my Tinder viewers the power to take my clothes off. By allowing myself to become vulnerable, maybe they would see the real me and like me for that?
So I was gonna take off my clothes. I was going to need more rosé.
The Process of Losing Clothes
I began by putting on some clothes (I was in my undies) and setting up a tripod. Tinder allowed six photos, so I had six images to go from school boy chic to full on birthday suit.
I setup a black sheet and some studio lights to create a background I could turn into a seamless composite.
Adding a message on a board was necessary. I wanted these boys to know exactly what I was thinking. Tinder doesn't allow full nudity, so I would use the sign to imply nudity.
In reality, I just rolled up my underwear behind the sign:)
I then set the tripod timer for ten second intervals, turned on some Linkin Park (for angst), polished off the the rest of the wine and gave the boys what they wanted. My fleshhh.
After losing most of my integrity and capturing the images, I brought them into Photoshop and started to piece the pics together.
Once all the post-production was completed (2 hrs), I placed them in the app, added a sassy bio, swiped through a bunch of boys, and called it a night.
The next day I awoke to dozens of matches and messages!
I was so giddy, it was working! As I swiped through these guys every day, I found more and more matches and more and more guys initiating the conversations.(One guy even offered me a design job at a local agency lol)
I can’t include the actual screenshots without violating the Medium rules, but here are some quotes from a few matches.
Your photos are legendary.
— Guy with a cute smile
You seriously have the best display pictures of any profile I have ever seen!
— Guy with a dog
Your photos are amazing I had to show other people!
- Guy who likes Evanescence
Visualizing Tinder Data
After a year of using this profile I aggregated some data and compared it to my previous tinder profile just for fun. I found some surprising statistics.
These graphs follow a year of Tinder before and after my profile launch.
Super likes are the most telling piece of data, since my bias was not included in these metrics. Which was some nice validation for me. I was 16x more likable.
The matches almost doubled from my previous profile.
Was I swiping right on more guys? I don’t think so, I like to think my standard of men was unaffected, but with all those super likes my ego was a little inflated.
My number of dates also sky rocketed. I think this metric also had many contributing factors outside of my beautifully designed profile. Like the fact that I wanted to go on more dates.
So if you find yourself needing to seduce men. Show a little skin, be confident and take some pics? I don’t know, that sounds like a terrible idea. Never mind.
How about be yourself and show who you really are and maybe just maybe someone will like you for that.
