Tinder and my 50 Shades Of Green

Wing Puah
Wing Puah
Sep 1, 2018 · 4 min read

Have you ever used Tinder and wonder if romance is dead? More importantly, have you ever associate Tinder with general life advice?

Recently, I have gotten good financial advice from Tinder, the last thing that I expect from this app. All it takes is to achieve whatever objective you have for the app is to have a sound game plan.

The game plan

Step 1: Change the matches age range to 30–50

Step 2: Swipe left on profile that are sparse. Swipe right on semi-retired, retired, banker, finance, investment and crypto related profile.

Step 3: Initiate conversations and steer it towards investment.

Step 4: Write a blog post to share my findings (which are at the bottom of the post if you are not interested in the process).

My first few encounters

Although almost committed to the idea of becoming an eternal cat lady as a complementary lifestyle to my perpetual single-hood, I decide to re-download Tinder. I know, Tinder has its reputation as a hookup app. But OkCupid bans my account for sending surveys out to my matches previously.

Yup, I have an unique way to make friends.

While not entirely enthusiastic about mindless swiping and awkward small talks, it is a relatively therapeutic task to just swipe, swipe, swipe. Sort of like a windshield on a rainy day.

One of the dudes starts to share with me on his disappointments in his life due to the lack of career progression. And this becomes a nurturing ground for an experimental idea, what if Tinder actually allows me to understand the route to uncover people emotional baggage?

Becoming productive on the app

From a mindless repetitive act poring through multiple sparsely filled, boring profiles born a mission.

A mission to uncover the deep and complex human mind. Although a few do prove to have otherwise.

While I openly state that I’m mainly on Tinder to test out an idea, I got matches who are curious about what I’m testing. And matches who probably just don’t give a damn about profiles. I never quite manage to replicate the route to get another dude to share about his emotional baggage in life.

Instead, I found something better: Investment tips.

Executing the game plan

My game plan works. While I could probably learn to trade options (my current goal) more systematically through Option Alpha, it was fun to receive tips from real life examples. Here are the tips from my Tinder matches:

Guy, 38, trading Forex, crypto and stock

Guy, 36, retired or rather doing mainly trading as a livelihood

It’s not always as rewarding and productive as some probably think that I am a gold digger and didn’t reply.

Guy, 30, with a profile picture beside a Porsche (he mentions that it is his in his profile)

That’s it. There are still many decent souls on Tinder. So for those looking for love, all the best to you. And if we ever matches, please tell me your opinion on one issue I have in mind: 7 years from now, will it be worth it if I buy a resale 4 room flat as a single?

Maybe I should just focus on becoming a crazy cat lady instead.

Wing Puah

Written by

Wing Puah

Frontend dev. I like my coffee with milk. Obsessed with the construct and potential of human. The Geek at www.thegeekwing.com.

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