[imagesource: Creative Commons Zero – CC0 / Max Pixel]

I sincerely hope your friendship group has that one friend who still dabbles on Tinder.

There’s nothing like a good swipe through what’s available to remind oneself that the grass isn’t always greener on the other side.

That’s before you take into consideration having to strike up an awkward conversation using only the fact that the person has a) a pet and b) a shortage of t-shirts.

Enter Instagram and women telling The New York Post that they’re ditching Tinder and Bumble in preference of meeting men through the social media platform:

Young singles are tiring of traditional dating apps such as Tinder, which saw downloads decrease by 5% in 2021, according to the Financial Times. They’re looking for new ways to find dates online, and Instagram, with its 1 billion active users, is an easy, obvious alternative.

Image: Instagram / victoria.alario

Victoria Alario [above], a 27-year-old from Hoboken, calls Instagram a “dating hack” and sees it as having both an old-fashioned and new-fangled appeal.

Alexia, a 30-year-old entrepreneur from Connecticut, had a similar experience after posting a photo and tagging the bar she was at.

Nothing creepy about that at all.

She says she’s been on at least five dates with men she’s met on Instagram this way and far prefers it to traditional dating apps.

“You see that you have similar interests and they get to see your profile right off the bat. It’s not fake,” she said. “You have your family and friends on there and I just think it’s more effective.”

Maybe having your mom commenting on your Instagram profile for others to see leads to a reduction in the sending of unsolicited dick pics. It’s just a theory that I’m not interested in studying much further.

If you’re going to meet somebody at a bar, it may as well be someone whose profile you can stalk, right?

“It kind of just removes the middleman and makes [online dating] a whole lot more simple,” Alario agrees. “We’re all actively on social media anyway so if you use it then use it to your advantage.”

The countdown clock to The Instagram Swindler begins.

My biggest concern with Instagram is the number of ads that appear on my feed. That’s actually set to worsen in the coming months after Meta announced it’s increasing its ad load on Instagram with the launch of two new ad slots.

Earlier this week, Meta shares slumped nearly 20% and an additional $67 billion was slashed off Meta’s market value.

Mark Zuckerberg, once estimated to have a net worth in excess of $140 billion before he became obsessed with the Metaverse, is now worth $36 billion.

[source:nypost]