Tinder Reddit Tip #4: 'Your opening photo has to be a good one.' Your photos (especially the first one) make a huge difference in the way matches 'hear' your messages. In fact, you could say the same thing to the same person — just with a different main profile pic — and get a completely different reaction. 793 votes, 19 comments. 4.2m members in the Tinder community. A community for discussing the online dating app Tinder. Sharing conversations. Tinder takes some steps to prevent these kinds apps scams by kik profiles to Facebook and Instagram, but this isn't always enough. Once you match with a scammer, they will probably be very teens to suggest moving to another chat platform such as Skype. They may even talk reddit you tinder the phone and suggest starting a relationship. 1 type of bot in my area now has 4 pics plus job and school details. Usually PT or speech therapist, at a university within a few hours drive. The 2nd type have 3 stock type pics and no job or school details. They're still rilla easy to spot, though. And the real people still far outnumber them.
The popular dating app Tinder connects more users now than ever.
Unfortunately, its popularity has also attracted Tinder scammers and spammers who are looking to take advantage of users by creating fake Tinder profiles.
The biggest Tinder scams used to always involve automated spam bot accounts, but that's changed. Today, malicious schemes based in far-flung places around the world are even using real humans to scam people on Tinder.
Want to spot and avoid all these Tinder scams in 2021? Here's our guide for what to look for.
#1 Single, Suggestive Photo
If you are scrolling through Tinder and notice a glamour shot or very sensual profile pic with no additional photos, this could be a warning sign of a scam account.
Does the single Tinder photo look professionally done, Photoshopped, or obviously altered? Scammers will use sexy photos they find online to increase the chances you will swipe right. If that sexy photo happens to be of a celebrity, run for the hills. You've found yourself a scam.
#2 Empty Bio
#2 Empty Bio
Another red flag of a potential scam is a completely empty bio.
A Tinder bio offers a chance not only to write a few words about yourself but also fill in your job title, company, school, and display linked accounts, such as Instagram and Spotify.
If all of these opportunities to prove you are a real (and awesome) person are left blank, you have to ask yourself why? One reason could be that it is a scammer.
#3 Immediate and Suggestive Convo
Are you getting messages from someone that feel even faster than a human would be able to type?
Are the messages sexually charged right off the bat?
This could be a sign of a Tinder scam. Scammers are looking to get you hot and bothered and swept up quickly to create a situation in which you're more likely to give them personal information.
#4 Excessive questions
A normal give and take is great, but if you notice they are asking an exorbitant amount of questions about your past, this should be a red flag for a potential scammer.
Repeated questions about your past relationships could be the scammer strategically trying to create an appealing persona based on your responses.
If they are asking specific questions about your past, they may even be looking to find out security answers to hack financial accounts. For instance, some banks use security questions regarding your first pet, job, or car.
#5 Suspicious links or downloads
This may seem obvious, but avoid clicking on links or downloads in user bios or ones that are messaged to you which seem unconnected to the conversation you're having.
Especially suspicious links would be ones that appear oddly short or incoherent, but your safest bet is not to click on any until you've met IRL and confirmed you're talking with a real person.
#6 Inability to answer specific questions
This specific tip won't always catch human scammers, only Tinder bots, but it's an important one.
Because Tinder bots are not sophisticated or advanced enough to recognize and respond to complex and nuanced questions, their response may ask another question or simply be completely unrelated. Often these messages are riddled with spelling and grammar errors.
So don't cut your match slack on not answering your questions if you suspect they might be part of a Tinder scam. Consider asking the question again instead.
#7 Avoidance of meeting in person
Even if the conversation has been going well, an aversion to meeting in person for [insert lame or vague excuse here] reasons should be taken as a warning sign that you're actually talking to a Tinder scammer.
A scammer will avoid meeting at all costs, and they may try to prolong online interaction by suggesting you switch to a different chatting app instead. For instance, they might ask for your phone number so you can text off of Tinder.
Frankly, even repeated hesitation from a real person should give you pause and question why they don't want to meet and progress the relationship. Because even if the person isn't involved in a legitimate Tinder scam, there's a good chance they could be lying about who they really are.
#8 Asking for money
Finally, both Tinder spam-bots and human scammers are ultimately looking to get their hands on your cash.
It may seem obvious and avoidable when you're asked for money or account numbers, but scammers are savvy at creating an extremely realistic sob story or explanation for why they need the funds or credit card info.
Be on the lookout for even hints at financial trouble as a red flag, as they might be testing the waters with you. Mentioning financial woes one day can lead to requests for money days or weeks later.
All that said — one or two of these points alone may not necessarily mean you're interacting with a Tinder bot or human scam, but if you notice several warning signs, you may be best off confronting then, unmatching on Tinder, or even blocking and marking the profile as a Tinder scam.
Only matching with Tinder scams? Want more real matches?
There are sooo many people on Tinder struggling to get even a single match who isn't a bot or scammer. But it doesn't have to be this way.
It's proven that just changing your profile can completely turn everything around — specifically, swapping out your Tinder pics for better ones can 10x your matches overnight.
The easiest and most sure-fire way to optimize your Tinder profile pictures is by testing them for free on Photofeeler.
Go to Photofeeler.com now and give it a try!
Alex is 27 years old. He lives in or has access to a home with an enormous kitchen and granite countertops. I have seen his face dozens of times, always with the same expression—stoic, content, smirking. Absolutely identical to that of the Mona Lisa, plus horn-rimmed glasses. Most days, his Tinder profile has six or seven photos, and in every single one, he reclines against the same immaculate kitchen counter with one leg crossed lightly over the other. His pose is identical; the angle of the photo is identical; the coif of his hair is identical. Only his outfits change: blue suit, black suit, red flannel. Rose blazer, navy V-neck, double-breasted parka. Face and body frozen, he swaps clothes like a paper doll. He is Alex, he is 27, he is in his kitchen, he is in a nice shirt. He is Alex, he is 27, he is in his kitchen, he is in a nice shirt.
I have always swiped left (for 'no') on his profile—no offense, Alex—which should presumably inform Tinder's algorithm that I would not like to see him again. But I still find Alex on Tinder at least once a month. The most recent time I saw him, I studied his profile for several minutes and jumped when I noticed one sign of life: a cookie jar shaped like a French bulldog appearing and then disappearing from behind Alex's right elbow.
I am not the only one. When I asked on Twitter whether others had seen him, dozens said yes. One woman replied, 'I live in BOSTON and have still seen this man on visits to [New York City].' And apparently, Alex is not an isolated case. Similar mythological figures have popped up in local dating-app ecosystems nationwide, respawning each time they're swiped away.
On Reddit, men often complain about the bot accounts on Tinder that feature super-beautiful women and turn out to be 'follower scams' or ads for adult webcam services. But men like Alex are not bots. These are real people, gaming the system, becoming—whether they know it or not—key figures in the mythology of their cities' digital culture. Like the internet, they are confounding and scary and a little bit romantic. Like mayors and famous bodega cats, they are both hyper-local and larger than life.
In January, Alex's Tinder fame moved off-platform, thanks to the New York–based comedian Lane Moore.
Moore hosts a monthly interactive stage show called Tinder Live, during which an audience helps her find dates by voting on who she swipes right on. During last month's show, Alex's profile came up, and at least a dozen people said they'd seen him before. They all recognized the countertops and, of course, the pose. Moore told me the show is funny because using dating apps is 'lonely and confusing,' but using them together is a bonding experience. Alex, in a way, proved the concept. (Moore matched with him, but when she tried to ask him about his kitchen, he gave only terse responses, so the show had to move on.)
When I finally spoke with Alex Hammerli, 27, it was not on Tinder. It was through Facebook Messenger, after a member of a Facebook group run by The Ringer sent me a screenshot of Hammerli bragging that his Tinder profile was going to end up on a billboard in Times Square.
In 2014, Hammerli told me, he saw a man on Tumblr posing in a penthouse that overlooked Central Park—over and over, the same pose, changing only his clothes. He liked the idea, and started taking photos and posting them on Instagram, as a way to preserve his 'amazing wardrobe' for posterity. He posted them on Tinder for the first time in early 2017, mostly because those were the photos he had of himself. They have worked for him, he said. 'A lot of girls are like, ‘I swiped for the kitchen.' Some are like, ‘When can I come over and be put on that counter?''
Hammerli shows up in Tinder swipers' feeds as often as he does because he deletes the app and reinstalls it every two weeks or so (except during the holidays, because tourists are 'awful to hook up with'). Though his Tinder bio says that he lives in New York, his apartment is actually in Jersey City—which explains the kitchen—and his neighbor is the photographer behind every shot.
I had heard from women on Twitter, and from one of my offline friends, that Alex was rude in their DMs after they matched on Tinder. When I asked him about this, he said, 'I'm very narcissistic. I own that.'
Hammerli works in digital marketing, though he would not say with what company. He uses Tinder exclusively for casual sex, a fact that he volunteered, along with an explanation of his views on long-term relationships: 'Idiotic in a culture where we move on from shit so easily and upgrade iPhones every year.' When I asked whether he's ever been in love, he responded: 'lmao no.' Monogamy, he said, is 'a fly-over state thing.'
Hammerli's methods aren't exactly harassment, but they do border on spam. They violate Tinder's terms of service, and the company is supposedly cracking down on the account-reset hack that he so diligently employs. (Tinder did not respond to a request for comment about Hammerli's account.)
He's not the only one using this strategy. 'I have hundreds of photos of this one guy Ben on LA's Bumble scene,' one woman told me over Twitter, adding that he seems to have a new profile 'literally' every day. She's been seeing Ben's photo—always accompanied by a new straight-from-the-box bio, such as 'Looking for a partner in crime'—for at least a year, and says 'MANY' other women have told her they've seen him too.
Tinder Fake Profiles Reddit
'Ian in NYC who claims to be a lawyer would show up for me and my roommate at least once a week,' another woman wrote. 'It was so frequent that I began to think he was a bot account. So I matched with him out of curiosity once and he was real!' Another woman asked whether I had seen a guy named Craig, who was extremely muscular, was always standing in a swimming pool, and had given his age as 33 for 'at least the past five years.' (I had not, because I will date only people who are my exact age or up to 18 months younger.) 'I've run into him so many times, and so have several of my friends,' this woman told me. Guys like Craig, she hypothesized, 'just think they're being persistent and have no idea they are minor internet legends.'
These legends seem to be more common in large coastal cities, but smaller cities have them too—I heard from a woman in Des Moines, Iowa, who told me about a terrifying profile that had haunted her and her roommates (the bio was about how 'girl's [sic] are shallow'), as well as women from Durham, North Carolina, and Toronto who had recurring figures of their own ('Tights Guy,' a guy who was obsessed with pantyhose, and 'New to the City,' a guy who was perpetually in need of navigation help, respectively).
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There is something alarming about these persistent men: We live in a culture where persistence is often a euphemism for more dangerous types of male behavior. But there is also something fantastic about them: While the easiest mental response to dating apps is to conclude that everyone is the same, men like Tights Guy and Craig take up space in local cultures, and remind bored daters that people are specific and surprising. It's odd, and somewhat thrilling, to feel so curious about someone who is only a pile of photos on an app. Hammerli's stunt didn't make me want to date him, but it did make me want to know everything about him.
While I was delighted by Hammerli's theory that love is only appropriate for people who live in the Midwest, I was a little disappointed by the simple and mostly inoffensive reality of his shtick. I feel a bit like I've ruined something. The thrill of a Tinder celebrity is the moment of surprise and recognition among people who are accustomed to drudgery. Finding that hundreds of other women had the same fascination with Granite-Counter Guy provided me with a brief reprieve from the bleak, regular chore of looking for someone to date. But talking to the man himself was not the same fun because, in that conversation, I was alone again.
Tinder Fake Profiles Reddit Free
I haven't seen Hammerli on Tinder this week. It may be because Tinder has finally caught on to him, but Hammerli also told me he was thinking of taking a 'sabbatical' from the app. The kitchen wasn't fun anymore, because everyone expected it. It was time to work on a new gimmick.
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