Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Tinder is the swipe, and the swipe is Tinder. But as we close out the decade, it might be time to retire the swipe we once knew. Tinder’s introduction in 2012 ushered in not only the beginning of an era in which seemingly everyone dates online, but also the beginning of the “swipe” as a design and interaction concept. A left swipe means no and a right swipe means yes — but of course, you already knew that.
While it feels rudimentary to explain the swipe, it once seemed radical. Before its existence, online daters built profiles, on a website, that took hours to perfect. OkCupid gave users seemingly endless questions to answer, and eHarmony focused on personality quizzes, all in an effort to assign people scores and offer compatibility…