Dating later in life brings its own unique challenges, the good news is that there are some 21st century solutions. The bad news is that these solutions are mostly limited to dating apps, for example, Tinder.
So if you were morbidly curious about what a dating app looks like in the forty-plus range, we’re here to satiate that feeling as we’ve gathered some of the best posts from the “40 and Dating” IG page. So get comfortable as you scroll through, upvote your favorites and be sure to share your own experiences in the comments section down below.
More info: Instagram
#1
Image source: 40anddating
#2
Image source: 40anddating
#3
Image source: 40anddating
Dating apps feel like a permanent fixture of modern life now, but Tinder wasn’t always the giant it is today. It started as a scrappy side project inside a startup incubator, and the road from there to becoming a verb in its own right is full of twists most swipers have no idea about.
The story begins in early 2012 at Hatch Labs, an incubator in West Hollywood owned by IAC. Sean Rad was actually there to build a different app entirely, something called Cardify. During an internal hackathon, he pitched an idea for a dating concept called Matchbox, built with engineer Joe Munoz. The name got scrapped fast once someone pointed out it sounded a little too close to Match.com, and by the time the app officially launched that fall, it had a new one.
#4
Image source: 40anddating
#5
Image source: 40anddating
#6
Image source: 40anddating
What made Tinder different wasn’t really the concept of online dating, since that had existed for a while already. It was the interface. Swiping right or left removed all the awkward decision making that came with older dating sites full of questionnaires and long profiles. You looked at a photo, you made a snap call, and you moved on.
#7
Image source: 40anddating
#8
Image source: 40anddating
#9
Image source: 40anddating
Rad has talked about this directly, describing the original problem as people either feeling like the hunter or the hunted, with way too much noise in between. The team also leaned hard into college campuses early on, hosting parties at places like USC where attendance required downloading the app, which sounds almost quaint compared to how apps market themselves now.
#10
Image source: 40anddating
#11
Image source: 40anddating
#12
Image source: 40anddating
It worked almost too well. By 2014 the app was reportedly processing around a billion swipes a day, and usage numbers just kept climbing from there. Tinder patented its double opt-in system, meaning two people had to like each other before any messaging could happen, which became one of its defining and most copied features.
#13
Image source: 40anddating
#14
Image source: 40anddating
#15
Image source: 40anddating
Of course, no origin story this big stays clean forever. In 2014, Whitney Wolfe, an early Tinder employee and one of its co-founders, left the company and filed a lawsuit alleging harassment and discrimination, a case that was eventually settled, according to reporting from Bloomberg. She went on to start a little app called Bumble, which flipped the format by having women send the first message. Tinder and Bumble have had a genuinely complicated relationship ever since, including a patent lawsuit Tinder’s parent company later filed against Bumble over the swiping mechanic itself.
#16
Image source: 40anddating
#17
Image source: 40anddating
#18
Image source: 40anddating
#19
Image source: 40anddating
#20
Image source: 40anddating
#21
Image source: 40anddating
Behind the scenes, ownership stayed with IAC through its subsidiary Match Group, which eventually spun off as its own publicly traded company and folded Tinder in alongside brands like Match.com, OkCupid, and Hinge. As the user base exploded, so did the monetization. Super Like arrived in 2015, letting people signal extra interest before a match even happened.
#22
Image source: 40anddating
#23
Image source: 40anddating
#24
Image source: 40anddating
Tinder Gold followed a couple years later with perks like seeing who already liked you, and Tinder Boost promised your profile a temporary spotlight for a fee. There was even a strange and fun detour into original content with Swipe Night in 2019, an interactive choose your own adventure style video series baked directly into the app.
#25
Image source: 40anddating
#26
Image source: 40anddating
#27
Image source: 40anddating
These days Tinder looks a little different than the campus hookup app it started as. Its core user base has aged up over the years, and a growing share of people using it now are well past their early twenties, some navigating divorce, some just tired of meeting people the old fashioned way, all of them discovering that the swipe hasn’t gotten any less chaotic with time. Which, honestly, brings us right back to why you’re here.
#28
Image source: 40anddating
#29
Image source: 40anddating
#30
Image source: 40anddating
Below is a collection of the funniest, most relatable, and occasionally unhinged posts and bios from people doing exactly that in their forties and beyond, proving that the app may have changed a lot since that hackathon in 2012, but the universal experience of dating is still just as weird as ever.
#31
Image source: 40anddating
#32
Image source: 40anddating
#33
Image source: 40anddating
#34
Image source: 40anddating
#35
Image source: 40anddating
#36
Image source: 40anddating
#37
Image source: 40anddating
#38
Image source: 40anddating
#39
Image source: 40anddating
#40
Image source: 40anddating
#41
Image source: 40anddating
#42
Image source: 40anddating
#43
Image source: 40anddating
#44
Image source: 40anddating
#45
Image source: 40anddating
#46
Image source: 40anddating
#47
Image source: 40anddating
#48
Image source: 40anddating
#49
Image source: 40anddating
#50
Image source: 40anddating
#51
Image source: 40anddating
#52
Image source: 40anddating
#53
Image source: 40anddating
#54
Image source: 40anddating
#55
Image source: 40anddating
#56
Image source: 40anddating
#57
Image source: 40anddating
#58
Image source: 40anddating
#59
Image source: 40anddating
#60
Image source: 40anddating
#61
Image source: 40anddating
#62
Image source: 40anddating
#63
Image source: 40anddating
#64
Image source: 40anddating
#65
Image source: 40anddating
#66
Image source: 40anddating
#67
Image source: 40anddating
#68
Image source: 40anddating
#69
Image source: 40anddating
#70
Image source: 40anddating
#71
Image source: 40anddating
#72
Image source: 40anddating
#73
Image source: 40anddating
#74
Image source: 40anddating
#75
Image source: 40anddating
#76
Image source: 40anddating
#77
Image source: 40anddating
#78
Image source: 40anddating
#79
Image source: 40anddating
#80
Image source: 40anddating
Follow Us
