Tinder is going to the ends of the earth to help people hook up – seeing its first ever match in Antarctica.
An American scientist had been using the app back in the US, and when he was stationed out to Antarctica’s McMurdo Station, curiously logged in.
Nothing happened at first, but when he increased his search radius, another user popped up.
She was camping in the Dry Valleys – a 45 minute helicopter ride from his location – had also logged on, swiped right, and they matched.
The scientist told his story to The Cut, but didn’t want his name printed for fear of possible repercussions of using sparse broadband for a hookup app.
He said: “She was quite literally camping in Antarctica, went on Tinder, and found me. It’s mind-blowing.”
Tinder said that it was almost certainly the first match in Antarctica.
And although the two did met up, it was only briefly, as the woman had to leave the following day.
“I have yet to become the first Tinder hookup in Antarctic history,” the scientist said. “But she is actually coming back, and we may overlap. There’s still hope.”
Another area seeing a sharp increase in Tinder traffic is Sochi.
On the first day of the Winter Olympics an American athlete said she had been on the hookup app, and since then, stories of its use have been rife across the American media.
Speaking to Today, US skier Gus Kenworthy said: “I guess it was the first thing people did when we got to the village – we checked Tinder.”
And gold-medal winning snowboarder Jamie Anderson told US Weekly that: “Tinder in the Olympic Village is next level.
“It’s all athletes! In the mountain village it’s all athletes. It’s hilarious. There are some cuties on there.
“There was a point where I had to be like OK, this is way too distracting. I deleted my account to focus on the Olympics.”
During the London Olympics – held a year before Tinder was released – there were many tales of the sex and partying that went on in the Olympic Village, most notably Sam Alipour’s piece for ESPN.
But apparently it’s not just the athletes trawling the app, US luge competitor Kate Hansen saying she has seen TV and media interns getting in on the action.
Tinder CEO Sean Rad said they have seen a 400% day-on-day increase of new users in Sochi since the Olympics started.
Grindr, which reports 55,000 monthly users in Russia, said their number of users in Sochi rose from 185 to 541.
Tinder CMO Justin Mateen said to TMZ that while the app is great to help people in a new city, “for now, focus on giving it your all while competing.”