There is no greater feeling of ‘fuck you’ than the one attached to swiping on Tinder only to find that your ex — who is, of course, single and free to do whatever they please — has re-downloaded the apps too. Well, if the idea of stumbling upon former flames on Tinder makes you feel physically nauseous, you’re in luck! The dating app has finally announced a feature that will let you block your contacts from popping up as potential matches.
According to a recent study conducted by Tinder, 40% of users have found their ex on the app, nearly a quarter had encountered a family member, and 10% had seen their professor, so there’s definitely a market for the function. After all, did you really need to know what your immediate family members’ romantic (or worse, sexual) interests were? Absolutely fucking not.
The feature will allow you to choose which of your contacts you’d like to ban, but you can go ahead and throw the whole list on there if you’d prefer. It’s been trialled in Korea, India and Japan, where users have, on average, blocked a dozen contacts.
“We may not be able to save you from awkward run-ins at the coffee shop, but we are giving you more control over your experience on Tinder,” Bernadette Morgan, Group Product Manager of Trust & Safety at Tinder said in a statement. “We’re rolling out Block Contacts as an additional resource empowering members with peace of mind by helping create a worry-free space for them to spark new connections.”
It does have a two-pronged purpose too. For those escaping violent or toxic relationships, this means you have one less outlet to worry about when it comes to that person stalking you online.
In order for it to work, you do have to hand over your contacts list to Tinder, so be wary of data privacy issues. Tinder claims they only keep this information for the purpose of blocking contacts, but other social media apps have been called out for passing on user’s data to third parties.
But maybe you don’t care about that, and are just happy that you can finally put that pic of you in your pants as your main image without the fear of family and coworkers seeing it. Go off, fellow sluts! It’s summer-slash-post-pandemic uncuffing season, after all!