The new smart phone application Tinder has sparked a wildfire of mobile romance on DePauw's campus.
Tinder, advertised as, "a fun way to break the ice," syncs itself with users' Facebook profiles and then refers them to others on Tinder in the area. Tinder users can then either "X" or "heart" those profiles that the app gives them access to.
"It's all anonymous," says their website, "until someone you like, likes you back."
Once a "connection" has been formed, the user has the option to "Message" or "Keep Playing": the goal being for users to meet and become romantically involved with these people who would have remained total strangers if not for the wonders of Tinder technology.
In the last few weeks, Tinder's popularity on DePauw's campus has boomed, and it has become the new app to have. However, has Tinder's true purpose, to romantically connect two people, been lost in the madness of shuffling through profile pictures?
"I just like meeting new people and talking to them. I use it more in a social kind of way; I'm not really looking for anyone," freshman Dalton Wheeler said.
Jonathan Nichols-Pethick, a communications professor at DePauw, said that from his perspective, most students aren't using Tinder with serious intentions.
"I get the sense that people see it mostly as a kind of game that's fun to do-and a little addictive," he said.
For Nichols-Pethick, what makes Tinder unique is not its purpose-using technology to "match" people together-but the users it has been aimed toward.
"As the demographics of Match.Com and eHarmony get older, we have this new app that's catering to the younger generations-they're really pushing it on college campuses," he said.
So far, the students have been eating it up.
"I've met a bunch of IU guys and guys from Indiana State: it's really fun to meet a Wabash guy and say you're from DePauw," senior Courtney Nelson said, whose Tinder usage began as early as last Thursday.
Freshman AJ Houk said, "It's just kind of funny seeing who you get paired up with."
However, none of these Tinder addicts have taken their romantic dalliances from the online world to the real world.
Sophomore Rachel Burriss said, "I wouldn't be comfortable going out of my way to meet someone that I only knew from 'hearting' them on an app."
Even Nelson, who admitted that she has "met a guy" through Tinder that she would be willing to meet in person, said that it would be too "weird" to actually suggest a face-to-face meeting.
"The anonymity that is involved makes it unsafe to meet these people in person," Nelson said. She then added, "Our generation knows better than to meet up with someone they met on the Internet."
While Nichols-Pethick does seem to have faith in students' caution when it comes to the dangers this app could potentially pose, he admitted to worrying about what apps like Tinder say about today's relationship between business and romance.
"I'm always worried about the commodification of everyday life: especially when we get into these personal issues of romance," he said.
It's a modern take on the old saying, "don't mix business and pleasure." Nichols-Pethick worries that as Tinder increases its user-base, the manufacturers will move to a more aggressive way of making money.
Through transitioning to in app purchasing, advertising, or even forcing users to pay for what is currently a free application, Tinder will build its revenue, and in turn increase the similarities between romance and commodities.
"Will your romantic life now become, not a product necessarily, but something within the commodity structure? In order to have a romantic life and participate in this thing you'll have to pay in," Nichols-Pethick said.
However, he did admit that the fault of this cannot be placed wholly on Tinder.
"It's where people have been headed anyway," he said.
Tinder is simply the latest addition to society's mediation of communication through the use of technology.
"We're moving away from actual interactions with people. More people text than they do actually call someone. You lose that intimate connection with people," Houk said.
"Apps like Tinder as well as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter have all redefined the notion of knowing someone," Nichols-Pethick said.
It is easy to access information about strangers on Facebook -- religious beliefs, interests, etc. But this information really only gets at the surface of what people are really about.
"What I know about them is what they're willing to put out there. I have no idea what they're like when no one's watching," Nichols-Pethick said of his own Facebook friends.
In part, this rise in mediated connections can be attributed to the growing mobility of society in general, and specifically the increased mobility of younger generations.
This modern mobility, Nichols-Pethick said, is two-fold.
"This might be less about checking your 'connections' on Tinder in the car, and more about a kind of interpersonal social mobility where you're making a lot of connections quickly."
"Mobility isn't just physical movement through space, but social movement through connections," he added.
Nelson also sees Tinder as a way to foster short-lived, superficial relationships, rather than anything more lasting and meaningful.
"It's just like a ten line conversation and then it's on to the next person," she said.
However, Nichols-Pethick added that he believes that as people grow old, they begin to have more of a propensity to "settle down," and that even apps like Tinder, which make long-term relationships seems less necessary than ever before, will not have a serious impact on human nature.
For now though, Tinder users are focused on the flirting and fun this app brings to everyday life.
"It makes it easier to meet people who are close to you and to find things to do," said Burriss.
So while Tinder maintains what is sure to be it's relatively short-lived popularity, it might be good to keep in mind the effects that Tinder and applications like it are having on society as a whole. Even those most cynical are not afraid to tell DePauw students to "keep playing."