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By Ella Gauci

If someone asked me where the most revolutionary writing I’ve seen recently is, I would stop them as they walked over to Waterstones and direct them to the App Store. Tinder has created a new genre of writing: the Tinder Bio. 

Succinct, concise, often deeply disturbing, the Tinder bio is an art form in itself. Handcrafted to the nth degree, meticulously mulled over, and often peer reviewed it is quite possibly some of the most important writing my generation has ever done. Swipe right on the perfect person and you could end up with a soulmate for life. Or an STI. Who knows? 

Google is inundated with advice articles about how to craft such a bio, but most read as if they were written by an alien. Even Tinder founder Sean Rad’s tips on creating a bio seem out of touch at best as he advises that ‘it’s not a bad idea to show how strong your emoji game is’. 

97% of bios seem to be carbon copies of each other. Most tend to stay safe with the most practical information on display. Where you live. What you study or where you work. Occasionally a height measurement. Maybe even a star sign if you’re lucky. This in itself is not particularly interesting or subversive, but the ability for an entire generation to be herded into such a similar box is symptomatic of social media’s ability to make us into clones. 

There’s the 1% that make your fingers curl in cringe as they hash out any awful dad joke or pick up line that they have found from a three second Google search. In the words of Sophia Benoit : ‘Stop putting clichéd shit here’. 

Some of my personal favourites are the ones that are bluntly honest about their intentions. In the new age of the ‘pick me boy’ there is something oddly refreshing about someone opening just admitting they want casual sex and nothing more. Tinder is also a space to be educated on new slang and lingo, whilst simultaneously creating new vocabulary and codes.

With a 500-character limit, Tinder offers a space where every word counts. But if you use all of them you’re probably doing something wrong. There’s nothing worse than being confronted with a full memoir detailing someone’s early childhood. Then again a lack of bio can also be interpreted as a red flag. 

While a picture may paint 1,000 words, a good Tinder bio shows the true essence of a person. So get out the spell-check, engage your brain, and try to avoid blending into the noise of the crowd. If you do this right, you’ll never have to go through the painfully long process of filling out your Hinge profile prompts.