Smokers preferred to Vapers on Tinder
According to a recent survey, smokers are more attractive than vapers.
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by Dave Cross
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Despite years of graphic anti-tobacco campaigns and government support for vaping, Tinder users are more likely to “like” (or swipe right) a smoker than a vaper, new research reveals, according to a press release from GoSmokeFree.
Is it possible that Tinder users didn’t see our article before Christmas and spent £128.16 on the pointless book ‘Bioenvironmental Issues Affecting Men's Reproductive and Sexual Health’? It is a tome that propagates invented fears regarding toxins due to poor science involving the dry burning of wicks.
Tinder is a location-based social search mobile application. The app allows users to like or dislike other users (prospective partners) by swiping right or left. If both users like each other and ‘swipe right’ the app allows them to chat. The app links into some of the users other social media accounts. It is almost exclusively used by people aged up to 34yrs. It is available in over 40 languages, and users make one billion swipes per day, resulting in 12 million matches.
GoSmokeFree created three identical Tinder profiles for a 26-year-old woman in London, with the only variables being names and the photos used: one with a cigarette, one with an e-cigarette, and the final profile they had neither.
After 1,000 indiscriminate right swipes on each profile, there was a wait of four days to see how many matches would accumulate – and the results are surprising.
- The smoking profile gained 340/1000 matches, or 40% of overall swipes
- The vaping profile gained 217/1000 matches, or 25.5% of overall swipes
- The profile doing neither gained 293/1000 matches, or 34.5% of overall swipes.
- In total, 56.7% of swipers preferred the smoker to the vaper
GoSmokeFree forwarded the information from this informal study to anti-smoking charities to raise awareness of the issue and examine the possibility of carrying out further research into the perceptions of smoking.
In the similar survey conducted by Vice magazine, Hannah Ewens played out a number of scenarios by using juxtaposed photographs. In one she held a mod, calling herself Vapour Gurl.
Her vaper won with 81 matches, compared to the smoker that gained 69 matches. Despite that, she gives an insight into possibly why user preferred smokers in GoSmokeFree’s study.
Ewens writes: “Name me anything worse than a human who's actively into vaping. Not people who buy the things to help them quit smoking, but: my younger brother, who bought an e-cig despite never smoking before, or people who envelope you in great bubblegum-scented clouds outside train stations, or anyone describes their vape as a ‘rig’.”
Do you use Tinder? What has been your experience?
Photo Credit:
Chart from GoSmokeFree
Dave Cross
Journalist at POTVDave is a freelance writer; with articles on music, motorbikes, football, pop-science, vaping and tobacco harm reduction in Sounds, Melody Maker, UBG, AWoL, Bike, When Saturday Comes, Vape News Magazine, and syndicated across the Johnston Press group. He was published in an anthology of “Greatest Football Writing”, but still believes this was a mistake. Dave contributes sketches to comedy shows and used to co-host a radio sketch show. He’s worked with numerous start-ups to develop content for their websites.
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