Mystery of No Tinder Results (In A Small City)

Once in a while while reviewing Tinder profiles, I come across mysterious cases. The guy is attractive, his photos are interesting and make him look natural and confident, and his bio enhances his photos. In other words, he does everything well to stand out. A great profile all in all.

But. The guy has the typical problem. He still doesn’t get matches.

After scratching my head for a while, I realize that he has his living location written. So I put it on Google Maps and… voilà! The mystery has most likely been solved.

They live in a small town that has some thousands of residents. Not tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands, singular thousands.

I’m originally from a small town, so I know painfully well how empty Tinder is in those kinds of places. And I also know the typical solution guys out for in this case.

So, what do these guys do when they realize that there are no girls using Tinder in their area?

They make the correct assumption that the nearby larger cities do have girls on Tinder. So they increase their swiping range from their town to the larger city. “It’s a short drive from here”, they think. And now their Tinder gives a ton of girls to swipe through!

But they get zero matches even if they swipe right tons and tons of profiles.

Why increasing swiping range is the wrong solution

This problem is best explained through visualization. Below you see how you, a guy living in a small (randomly picked) town, have increased your swiping range to cover the neighbouring cities. This gets girls from cities to be swiped in your Tinder feed.

But now focus on the girls in those cities (the small red circles). They have already tons of guys to swipe through even if their swipe range is less than 5km i.e. barely covers the city. See the problem here?

You aren’t within girls’ swipe range. So the girls that you swipe right on your feed never even see you on their feed. Of course, some girls might swipe enough that you are shown. But in general, you both need to be within your swipe ranges for there to be even a possibility to match.

Solution: Either focus on other forms of dating or move to bigger city

There’s essentially two ways to solve the problem of being in a small village far from larger cities. One is to focus on other forms of meeting girls like through parties, friends, and talking to them on streets. In other words, accept your life situation and focus your energy to meeting girls through means that are available to you. Tinder doesn’t work well in small places so ditch it.

The second way is to change your life situation so Tinder works for you. You go to the bigger cities where girls are using Tinder. Either you travel to hang out there or you move permanently to the cities. Now you are in the area where girls are, so you aren’t fighting an uphill battle.

I personally chose to move to a larger city. Then again, I moved because I enjoy larger cities, so it was a no-brainer.

If you don’t like large cities, then it might make sense to focus on other forms of dating. Only you can make that decision. Any decision is OK as long as you’re honest with yourself what you actually want.