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Men are throwing tantrums over Tinder’s height verification joke
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Men are throwing tantrums over Tinder’s height verification joke

Samira Sadeque—
| Last updated

Tinder / Twitter

Some just don’t get it.

Men across the internet are fuming after Tinder announced it was introducing “height verification” to stop men from lying about their measurements on the dating app. Tinder dropped the news on Friday and seemingly ruined the weekend for many dudes who have no sense of humor or understanding about double standards.

“It’s come to our attention that most of you 5’10ers out there are actually 5’6. The charade must stop,” Tinder’s press statement read from Friday. It said it was only applying this in the U.S., as it predicts “a huge decline in the 80% of males on Tinder who are claiming that they are well over 6 feet.”

What people (i.e., angry men) didn’t seem to realize was that it was an early April Fools joke. And their reactions are priceless. Like many men tend to do when they feel attacked, they chose to pick on women.

Others were just very, very angry.

Some at least understood the hypocrisy of body-shaming even if they didn’t get the joke.

https://twitter.com/Suffragentleman/status/1111840861267128320

Some actually did have a sense of humor.

Some just wanted to correct Tinder for showing a foot equaling 10 inches.

If anything, it really revealed what people apparently lie about on Tinder.

And some deep-seated prejudices.

“To celebrate April Fool’s Day, we wanted to raise awareness that really only 14.5% of the U.S. male population is over 6′ despite the many Tinder bios claiming otherwise,” Jenny Campbell, CMO of Tinder, told the Daily Dot. “This caused quite a stir among our users, and while we aren’t really verifying height, we do encourage people to stand proudly in their truth when filling out their bios. And conversely, we encourage all Tinder users to keep an open mind while swiping. Sometimes your most unexpected match can lead to amazing things.”

While there’s virtually no data on women’s preference for height in their male partners, anecdotal reports show it varies—for some women, it matters, and for many, it doesn’t. Not that it’s just a women’s preference thing, either. As seen in these recent surveys by VICE and Elite Daily, some men freak out about their partner’s height if they’re taller and ask them to tone it down.

Samira Sadeque

Samira Sadeque

Samira Sadeque is a New York-based journalist reporting on immigration, sexual violence, and mental health, and will sometimes write about memes and dinosaurs too. Her work also appears in Reuters, NPR, and NBC among other publications. She graduated from Columbia Journalism School, and her work has been nominated for SAJA awards. Follow: @Samideque

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