Tinder Users Changing Location to Match with Olympic Athletes
Contributed by: kellyseal on Monday, August 02 2021 @ 07:40 am
Last modified on Monday, August 02 2021 @ 07:58 am
Tinder has noticed a popular trend emerging in the past week – users from around the world are changing their location to match with athletes staying in Olympic Village.
Tinder’s popular Passport feature was made available to all users at no cost for limited times during pandemic lockdowns, and many members took advantage. Passport allows users to switch locations to match with anyone in the world, regardless of where they currently live. And recently, Tinder users began changing their location to match with athletes participating in the Olympics.
There’s no current tally of the number of Tinder users setting their romantic sights on 2021 Olympic athletes, but referencing 2018 numbers, Tinder confirmed to Newsweek[*1] that there was an increase of 1,850 percent of users accessing Passport to match with athletes in the Olympic Village.
One Tinder user posted a video of himself on TikTok using Tinder’s Passport feature, placing himself in the heart of The Olympic Village and finding athletes as matches. Likely the more than two million views the video has received so far has made an impact.
"I paid for Tinder Plus so I can swipe in the Olympic Village and date an Olympian," wrote Reed Kavner in a post on social media of his now-viral video. "I'm a comedian and a software developer and I love finding fun and unexpected ways to use technology.”
However, after the video went viral, more people seemed to follow his lead, making it more difficult to match with these athletes. According to Newsweek, when one user got frustrated at his lack of matches, he tried to use the same location-changing feature on Hinge and found that people were flooding that platform for Olympians, too.
Newsweek points out that while Olympians might be on dating apps, and the Olympic Village has a reputation for being a hotbed of sexual activity, they likely won’t hook up as much as they have in past years because of Covid safety regulations. Organizers have also been actively discouraging this behavior, hoping to stem the spread of the delta variant which has already infected some athletes and prevented them from competing.
Still, 160,000 condoms were distributed to athletes this year as a precaution. Organizers noted that they advised the athletes to take them home and “use [the condoms] to raise awareness of HIV and AIDs” according to Newsweek. However, at the rate athletes are using dating apps that might not be happening.
For more on this dating service, you can read our Tinder app review.