Six thousand dollarized units of central bank fiat currency.
Not for a lifetime subscription and a complementary vacation to Italy. Not for a decade. For a single, solitary year.
This is just really sad dystopian horror that makes Orwell’s vision look pedestrian in comparison.
Related: WEF Leader Klaus Schwab Worried About Peasants Waging ‘Revolution Against the System’
Via Bloomberg (emphasis added):
Tinder has rolled out an ultra-premium subscription tier to its dating app users, charging $499 per month to access features like exclusive search and matching.
The new plan announced Friday, called Tinder Select, was only offered to less than 1% of Tinder users who are among the app’s most active, the company said.
For nearly $6,000 a year, users will be able to access new features, such as “VIP” search, matching and conversation, that aren’t currently provided with its existing paid plans, it said, without providing further details.
Tinder said it will open up applications for Tinder Select on a rolling basis. It offers three other subscription tiers that start as low as $24.99 a month, according to its website.
If you’ve enjoyed the good fortune, or good judgment, to never have used Tinder in your life, consider yourself either blessed or wiser than the norm, respectively.
I have no idea what I would say to my child or friend, or anyone for that matter, upon learning they had paid $6,000 for a single year’s membership to Tinder.
Someone could buy a decent used car for that money – or at least that’s how the market used to be when I still lived in the U.S. I imagine they’re much more expensive now.
But you take my point.
That Tinder user could get a really nice blender, or a super-fast specialized road bike with the fancy handlebars and 36 gears and tires that glide on pavement like butter on ice, or hours and hours of much-needed therapy, or any number of material goods or services that would provide more rewarding recreation than scrolling through similarly desperate loners’ profiles on a cringe dating app in a quixotic quest for love.
Or he or she could also relocate and buy a literal house in some Third World countries with that kind of cash.
The alternative possibilities are nearly endless.
Continuing:
Tinder parent company Match Group Inc. has experience with high-priced subscriptions for some users. In 2022, it bought The League, an invite-only dating app that targets “ambitious, career-oriented singles.” The League has a VIP plan that costs $1,000 per week. The company previously said the success of The League’s high-price subscription made Match Group rethink how it could address “high-intent users” on its other apps like Tinder.
Match Group President Gary Swidler said at a Citi conference earlier this month he expects Tinder Select to only attract “a relatively tiny amount of new payers,” but he said it will have a significant impact on revenue. Tinder’s current “power users” — the top 10% of users by time spent on the app — contributed an average 53% of total time spent this year, according to research firm Apptopia.
There’s nothing “high-end,” “exclusive,” “elite, “powerful,” or anything like that about techno-slaves with too much disposable income (a problem Klaus Schwab and Co. will likely soon remedy at any rate) wasting their lives looking for love on the internet at a cost of $1,000/week.
What it speaks to, instead, is a human tragedy, the depressing depths and scale of which are almost unfathomable.
