Meat Tender: Tenderizing the Dating Pool

In response to Tinder and similar dating apps turning the internet into vapid flesh market, four Leiden University students have built a hilarious artistic and technological device called Tender. The piece, designed by Cors Brinkman, Jeroen van Oorschot, Marcello Maureira, and Matei Szabo, is set to debut at the exhibition Habitat at Radion Amsterdam this coming weekend.

For anyone who hasn’t seen the brilliant parody of Tinder yet, the concept is quite simple. Instead of a human brainlessly swiping right and left in the app, it’s a spinning hunk of steak, engineered to twirl in such a way as to always swipe right. It’s meat that’s treating the rest of the Tinder dating world as the app inadvertently intends, as tasty cuts, rather than fully fleshed out personalities.

Tender is the easy way to connect with new and interesting meat around you. Switch on and if someone likes you back, it’s a match!” says the tagline for the minute long video created to show off the machine.

You have to admire such a blatant commentary on how technology has given us the ability to be as hookup-oriented as creaturely possible.

According to coverage in engadget, the app used in the device is not actually Tinder, but a lesser-known app in the same vein called 6Tin. Most likely, Tinder won’t somehow set you up with a whirling piece of prime rib, but the concept is still very funny and relevant.

This artistic endeavor finds relevance in the fact that always swiping right on Tinder pretty much means you’re looking for a hookup, and not actually looking at the (very scant) information the app allows for. While there’s nothing wrong with desiring a one time tryst, automatically saying yes to every human on Tinder does in a way turn the app into a veritable meat market, every profile just a potential lay and not a complete person.

Also, the piece is just plain comedic, cause we’re all just meat in the end anyway. That’s the nihilist reading of the work, at least. Bravo, Dutch student artists, bravo.

Tender – It's how people meat from Marcello Gómez Maureira on Vimeo.

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