I let my friends choose my Tinder dates – here’s why I wish I hadn’t…

The hook-up app has announced its new ‘Matchmaker’ function, which allows others to swipe left and right on your behalf. Don’t let them, pleads Olivia Petter

Tinder’s new Matchmaker facility allows users to invite up to 15 friends to help them choose a date (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

One of the joys of modern life is that we can outsource almost anything. Weekly supermarket shop? You can automate it online. Need to get somewhere quickly? Leave it to Uber. Fancy a life partner? Ah, there’s an app for that. That last one might sound strange to anyone who isn’t au fait with the online dating world – but today, it transpires that even the responsibility of your love life can be relinquished to someone else.

This week, Tinder launched a new tool called Matchmaker, which enables users to invite up to 15 friends, family members, and late-night bathroom BFFs to join their online dating world. While they can’t send messages on your behalf (thank goodness for that), they can view profiles and make suggestions without needing to have their own account. The Tinder user can then review their matchmaker’s suggestions before deciding whether to swipe left or right on them.

Tinder has explained that the feature was born out of the common practice of single people giving their phones to friends and asking them to swipe on their behalf. “For years, singles have asked their friends to help find their next match on Tinder, and now we’re making that so easy with Tinder Matchmaker,” explained Melissa Hobley, chief marketing officer at Tinder. “Tinder Matchmaker brings your circle of trust into your dating journey and helps you see the possibilities you might be overlooking from the perspective of those closest to you.”

Look, I get it. Dating is hard enough as it is, why not ask your friends and family members to help you out a little? After all, they’re the ones who know you best. The ones who’ve likely held your hand through countless heartbreaks and romantic disappointments. The ones who’ve seen you get burned by the same types of people over and over again. Surely, they’ll be able to make good choices for you, right?

I’m not convinced. Having been a seasoned dating app user on and off for several years now, I know that these so-called simple solutions (which I suspect are often dreamed up by people who are happily coupled up) are often far more complex than people might think. The thing is, the world of dating apps can be tricky to get to grips with if you aren’t involved in it yourself. In short, you need to have skin in the game.

How else will anyone understand that, when you see a man put 5ft 11 in his bio, it really means he’s 5ft 8? How will they know that a mirror selfie is an instant red flag, for example, or understand that just because someone says they’re looking for long-term love, it doesn’t necessarily mean they are?

The language of love is significantly different online to offline – frankly, I wouldn’t trust anyone with my dating app activity unless they have skin in the game. The irony, of course, is that it’s the ones who don’t that will probably be the keenest to help. “Oh, please let me have a play!” cooed one of my married friends at a recent dinner party in that all-too-familiar patronising tone that feels like it’s been pulled straight out of Bridget Jones’s Diary.

I say this as someone who has tried before. There have been endless occasions when friends have nabbed my phone to “have a play” on whatever dating app I’m using at the time. There was the time my best mate’s brother started swiping right on people purely because he knew them (“he’s a great bloke”). Or the time a fellow single friend swiped left on someone because she’d just been on a date with him (“you wouldn’t like him”). Then there was the time another married friend swiped right on a man she found attractive (“please just date him so I can live vicariously through you”).

And so, with all this in mind, I’m not sure Tinder’s new Matchmaker service will make much of a difference to what is already an incredibly arduous and painful process. In fact, based on some of the suggestions people have made on my behalf before, I suspect it will only make it worse. Who said romance was dead?