Celebrities

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 that there was an increase of 1,850 percent of users accessing Passport to match with athletes in the Olympic Village. 

Raya Bans Kate Haralson

Image: Twitter

Celebrities are making their way onto dating apps, but lately it isn’t going so well. Actors Ben Affleck and Matthew Perry were matched with young female users of Raya, who outed them on social media. 

According to The Los Angeles Times, Affleck was matched with podcaster and actress Nivine Jay, who thought his profile was a fake account and posted a TikTok saying so, but then added a video Affleck sent her over Instagram saying, “Nivine, why did you unmatch me? It’s me.” She poked fun at herself for not recognizing his account as real, but over 8 million people saw her TikTok and went after the actor, making fun of his private plea.

Jay told media outlets that she’d meant to make fun of herself for not believing Affleck could be on Raya, and that she didn’t think he should have been shamed for it. She told E! “l was making fun of myself for thinking he was a catfish and it was just supposed to be funny.”

Dating app Grindr announced the premiere of its new comedy special called Gag Reflex, featuring a lineup of up-and-coming LGBTQ comedians, who share stories of dating and the queer experience.

The special originally aired as a livestream on April 1st on YouTube and the Grindr app, and is now available to watch anytime on YouTube. According to Variety, the featured comedians include Joel Kim Booster (NBC’s Sunnyside, Hulu’s Shrill), Sydnee Washington (Broad City), Jay Jurden (The Tonight Show), Jaye McBride and Zach Zimmerman.

Image: Tinder

Dating app Tinder partnered with star rapper Megan Thee Stallion for its “Put Yourself Out There” Challenge, a way to encourage Tinder users to be more authentic in their profiles. 

The promotion is helping users gear up for online dating’s most active day, the first Sunday in January also known as the dating Super Bowl, where people flock to dating apps looking for a new relationship. The campaign is to encourage people to revise their profiles to be more creative and to showcase their unique personality traits, according to Fast Company. Tinder is offering $10,000 to 100 users in categories such as most personality, most creative, most original, most real, and others.

To enter, participants must take a screenshot or video of their new profile and post it to Instagram by December 31st, tagging @Tinder, #PYOTChallenge and #contest.

Actress Sharon Stone was blocked on Bumble in late December, and took to Twitter to air her concerns publicly. Bumble responded and tried to restore her profile, but days later, Stone still wasn’t able to access it.

Stone signed up for Bumble to start dating again, according to reports. She was surprised when the female-friendly app quickly shut her profile down, claiming it was fake. She then posted about it on Twitter and Instagram, along with the screenshot of the message from Bumble saying she was blocked.

“I went on the @bumble dating [site] and they closed my account. 👁👁 Some users reported that it couldn’t possibly be me!” she tweeted. “Hey @bumble, is being me exclusionary ? 🤷🏼‍♀️ Don’t shut me out of the hive 🐝”

Badoo and Mel B Partners with a Podcast

Badoo is the latest dating service to venture into the world of podcasting with a new show that takes an honest look at the highs and lows of modern romance. “The Truth Flirts” is an eight-episode series hosted by Melanie Brown, aka Mel B or the Spice Girl formerly known as Scary.

Speaking to the British newspaper The Independent, Brown revealed that she doesn’t currently use dating apps because she is “perfectly happily single” but that she finds the concept “fascinating.”

“I was on a dating app a couple of years ago but that was because my friend set my profile up as a joke,” she said. “It was a picture of me and my friend and I would scroll through it on a Thursday or Friday night and see how people reacted. It was fun at the time. I understand why people find it quite addictive.”