Premature April Fool's? Tinder introduces the vital feature of 'height verification'

Dating app Tinder is addressing the problem of users faking their vital stats on its platform with the rollout of a 'height verification' feature – but April Fool's is on Monday, and Twitter thinks they might not be sincere.

Tinder tweeted a video touting the new feature – "the thing you never asked for, but definitely always wanted" – accompanied by a blog post shaming users for "height fishing" and reminding them that "honesty is what separates humans from sinister monsters."

The clip shows a frustrated user attempting to lie about his height twice, only to be thwarted by the app. In the end, he finally accepts the reality that he is, in fact, 5'9" – on a scale that seems to confuse imperial and metric measurements by assuming there's 10 inches to a foot (which would actually mean he is below 5 real-world feet tall, thus explaining why he is so upset). For this, Tinder awards him with a "height verification badge." The blog further explains that all users need to do is post a picture of themselves next to "any commercial building" and their "state-of-the-art verifying" will do the rest.

A few (presumably tall) users thought it was a fabulous idea.

Others were less enthusiastic.

Many thought Tinder should have focused on weightier issues first.

or… other problems of misrepresentation.

But most figured they'd simply let fly an April Fool's joke a few days early.

Tinder's 50 million users have made it the US' most popular dating app, and its "Single – not sorry" tagline presents itself as a battle cry for the millennial generation, who make up 79 percent of users and are waiting longer than ever to marry and start families – if they choose to at all. But 2018 data from the General Social Survey suggest this brave new world isn't benefiting them in the bedroom: nearly one in four Americans aged 18 to 29 reported not having sex in the past year, a figure that has more than doubled in the last 10 years.

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