Life

Dating App Hinge Will Now Expose Its Cheaters

by Kristine Fellizar

Similar to dating out there in the real world, you will come across truly genuine people who are awesome and have good intentions on dating apps. You will also come across people who just simply aren’t. Take a group of individuals from Tinder, for example. As you may have heard by now, 42 percent of people on Tinder are already in relationships and a third of them are even married. Since you’re on Tinder and not some other app specifically catered to those looking for alternative forms of relationships, it’s safe to assume that you’re not jumping at the chance to be the other woman. Now, the dating app, Hinge, has solved that problem for you by calling out the users who are not-so single.

The creators of Hinge have seen the same statistics you have and are aware that many people abuse dating sites. Because of that, they turned to their own users to see if that very same problem was happening to them. They found that 1.6 percent of their users were either married or engaged, while an additional two percent were already in relationships. While this is definitely a far cry from the 42 percent on Tinder, Hinge wants to remain a “trusted place for finding relationships.” Thus, Version 3.5 of Hinge was created. In this new version, users whose Facebook statuses say “married,” “engaged,” or “in a relationship” will be published on their Hinge profiles in an effort to shame cheaters everywhere.

Hinge works similarly to Tinder. After you sign up, you’re given a list of users matching criteria that you checked off, and if you like them and they like you back, it’s a match. Additionally, a lot of information is pulled from Facebook such as pictures and other personal information. Unlike Tinder, Hinge prides itself as being a relationship app, and only gives you matches that are solely based off mutual friends. As one user told The New York Times, “I’ve met up with someone on Hinge because you have mutual friends, so you can be 80 percent sure they’re not a full-on wacko.”

Dating and meeting people can be a lot of fun. I like the process of getting to know a person. I especially like the quirky little surprises that you find out along the way, like the guy is secretly a big 90s fan girl and knows all the words to every popular Spice Girls song. What I don’t want to be surprised with is the fact he’s already married with two kids and has two other internet girlfriends on the side. There are over 2,500 online dating services in the U.S. today, and an estimated 8,000 worldwide. That means a lot of different options to choose from, as well as a lot of different people out there to meet.

It’s a big pool. If one dating site can make it easier by weeding out potential problems and calling out the cheaters, then sign me up.

Images: Hinge