When Tinder launched in 2012, its creators didn’t think much of it. “We put together what would eventually become Tinder in about six to eight weeks and launched it,” says Jonathan Badeen, one of Tinder’s co-founders and inventor of the swipe. The swipe was kind of like Tinder’s secret weapon — it seems obvious now, but a decade ago, swiping transformed mobile dating by turning it into a kind of game.
Swiping was fun and compulsive, keeping users on the app for hours on end. It releases dopamine, a chemical in your brain that gives you a sense of pleasure, which, according to Dinesh Moorjani, another of Tinder’s co-founders, kept users hooked on the platform. “We had some users that were using the app north of 30 to 40 times a day.”
“You…
