Earlier this week a thread on Twitter described how one guy’s attempt to find a date on Tinder led to almost becoming part of some kind of dating game/publicity stunt. Here’s how that thread started:

I am about to tell you an epic tale about subterfuge, dating in the 21st century and the fall of human civilization. This actually happened to me and it could happen to you too. Get some popcorn. *Thread*

— миша (@bvdhai) August 19, 2018

The tale is pretty epic but it boils down to this: A young woman named Natasha Aponte interacted with hundreds of men on Tinder and, without telling them why, convinced all of them to meet her at the same time and place in New York. Once the crowd of guys showed up, Aponte stepped up onto a stage and announced she had decided to host a kind of real-world dating game to see who would get a chance to be her date out of everyone who turned up.

Then she says I've invited you all here for a chance to go on a date with me and proceeds to give a hunger games speech about what its gonna take to date her

— миша (@bvdhai) August 19, 2018

I went home.

— миша (@bvdhai) August 19, 2018

Some of the men, like the guy above, realized they’d fallen for a trap and left. But quite a few stuck around and agreed to participate in various competitions including pushups and a foot race. Meanwhile, men who didn’t meet Aponte’s arbitrary standards (height, weight, etc.) were told to leave while those who did were told they could stay.

Why would anyone put up with this?

Well, it turns out that question was the whole point. Natasha Aponte wasn’t just a girl looking for a date, she was a girl who, along with the help of a producer named Rob Bliss and a team of people, were looking to make a point about Tinder and other dating/hook-up apps. Today, Bliss released a video about the stunt called “The Tinder Trap”:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rz_2VYeHAx4

Aponte and Bliss appeared on ABC’s Good Morning America to describe a bit more about the stunt and people’s reactions to it. Aponte claims a lot of the men who were duped are angry but many of them still want to date her:

I see what they were going for here: Ladies, maybe your one true love isn’t 6′ 2″ with great hair and an important job. Maybe there’s more to relationships than sex appeal. Maybe it’s not great that dating is reduced to swiping right or left in an instant. Fair enough, but I’m not sure many of the guys who turned up got the point or are likely to do anything different in the future. But I guess the stunt does start some kind of conversation about it.

So what do you think? Did the “Tinder Trap” make a good point about dating apps relying too heavily on shallow physical characteristics? Or does this just show that a pretty girl can get the attention of hundreds of men and get many of them to do almost anything, even when they know it’s a stunt? Is this undercutting Tinder as a dehumanizing experience or just proving why it exists?