Swiped examines two tumultuous years in the life of Whitney Wolfe Herd, one of the most powerful women in the tech industry today. But this shallow biopic is filled with plenty of content concerns, including a few obscene pictures, plenty of strong profanity and a lot of vile behavior.
Swipe right.
The phrase is a part of our 21st-century lexicon now. We like something, we “swipe right.” Not so much? “Swipe left.”
You can thank the dating app Tinder for that little bit of phraseology. And while you’re at it, thank Whitney Wolfe.
Seriously, thank her. Because if it’s early 2014, Whitney could use a kind word or two.
Tinder wasn’t even a thing just two years earlier, when Whitney joined Sean Rad’s fledgling business incubator, Hatch Labs. Her hiring as the incubator’s chief marketing guru raised a few eyebrows. Look at the tech world circa 2012, and you’ll see a plethora of XY chromosomes. Men launched the startups. Men crafted the code. And for the most part, men hired other men to fill the office. To bring a woman into that no-girls-allowed treehouse? Yeah, a little unusual.
But Sean saw Whitney’s talent, passion and ability to close a sale. And one of his business concepts, Cardify, needed a boost.
Well, Cardify lasted about as long as a fish on a Houston sidewalk in mid-July. But Hatch Labs was also working on a little dating app, too: Match Box, they called it—even though Sean hated the name. Too close to match.com, for one thing. Plus, it just sounded a little too … combustible?
But then Whitney—in her very first meeting—had a thought. “What about Tinder?” she said. Same idea, she insisted, but a little less problematic. It’s all about “the initial spark starting the fire.”
And with that, Tinder was off and running. Thanks to Whitney’s creative marketing campaigns, everyone was swiping right on the app. Tinder became the talk of the tech world, and Whitney was one of its cofounders, joining Sean, a bloke named Jonathan Badeen and, oh yeah, Justin Mateen: Sean’s best friend and Whitney’s boyfriend.
But just like a typical relationship started on Tinder, Whitney’s own romance with the business went south in a hurry. As Tinder grew, the guys did the interviews and accepted the awards. And what did Whitney get? A nice thumbs up from the boys’ club.
Maybe Whitney could’ve lived with that. But the business chill knocked her relationship with Justin into the cold, too. When Whitney broke up with him, the horrors truly began. The threatening texts. The office jokes. The ridicule. The hate.
So in 2014, Whitney marches into Sean’s office, shows him Justin’s texts and says that it’s not acceptable. It’s a hostile work environment. Something must be done.
Sean looks at her. “So, are you telling me you’re resigning?” he says.
It’s not a question: Whitney just got swiped left.
When Whitney first meets Sean, she’s an idealist. They only meet because she has the grand idea of connecting would-be volunteers with orphanages in need. She’s not interested in doing the typical startup tech thing.
“I don’t wanna sell people things they don’t need,” she tells Sean. “I don’t want to have a job that I have to pretend is interesting when I tell my friends. And I don’t want to tell myself that [my work] has value when actually, it kind of doesn’t.”
Sean suggests the best way to change the world is from “a place of power and influence.” He adds, “Bill Gates cured polio or malaria or something, but you know what he did first? He made a hundred million dollars.”
Well, Tinder changed the world, all right—though not necessarily for the better. But after Whitney’s time at Tinder is done, she starts her own service called Bumble, and its origins do appear to be rooted in Whitney’s original sense of idealism.
Though still a dating site, Whitney designs Bumble to be a safer, more positive, place for women. And after Bumble’s up and buzzing, she extends its reach to encompass not just dating, but friendship. Bumble BFF is, Whitney says, a “community-driven, female-forward social network” that she hopes will be truly a positive experience for its users. (Whether that network ultimately became everything Whitney hoped it would be is beyond the purview of this review.)
When Bumble’s primary financial backer, Andrey Andreev, is called out for sleezy, misogynist behavior, Whitney sets aside her gratitude for Andrey’s help and their close working relationship to condemn such behavior. “Accountability is not something you can reason your way out of,” she says. “If you are not condemning [inappropriate behavior], you are supporting it.”
As Whitney researches what people want from a dating site, she goes on fabricated “dates” with a number of guys. One comes to her through Christian Mingle, and she asks the guy what he looks for in a potential romantic partner. “An unwavering devotion to Christ, a strong belief in traditional family values and nice feet,” he says.
Whitney and Andrey Andreev go to the Broadway play The Book of Mormon—a play the Russian entrepreneur assumed that Whitney would appreciate, given that she’s from Utah and presumably a member of the Church of Latter-Day Saints. “They let non-Mormons live there, too,” Whitney clarifies, and then tells Andrey that she doesn’t think that Mormons actually like the musical all that much.
There’s a brief, tongue-in-cheek mention of Sunday being “the Lord’s day.” We hear a quip about how someone who works for Tinder could “sell condoms to a nun.”
Traditional Christianity tells us that the sacred act of sex should be saved for marriage. Tinder says otherwise.
It may not say so explicitly in the service’s bylaws, but Swiped makes it clear that casual hookups are a part of Tinder’s DNA. Whitney and Tinder’s other founders celebrate when the phrase “Tinder slut” becomes a thing.
The service is geared toward physical appearance, and when Whitney shops Tinder on college campuses, she says that it’s where all the “hottest” people are. When she’s doing “research” before Tinder’s creation, she interviews someone who uses a dating service “just to have fun.” The next scene, we see Whitney and her interviewee in a room, kissing passionately and taking off each other’s clothes. (The camera leaves before things progress too far.)
Tinder’s vibe becomes a significant irritant to Whitney. Some of her female coworkers tell her about how many guys post obscene pictures of themselves to the service. Tinder takes down most of those pictures, but “nothing happens to the guys who do it, so they just keep doing it,” someone says. And the woman tasked with scrubbing the service of such pictures complains that repeat offenders are so common that she’s beginning to recognize certain individuals’ bits of anatomy. (In one scene, we see several obscene pics on her computer screen, all of which feature full-frontal nudity and none of which are edited.)
Sexual harassment also becomes a huge problem on the site, but Sean and Justin wave off such concerns. “We don’t want to get in the habit of overreacting to every piece of bad press,” one says.
When Whitney and others begin to develop Bumble, they aspire for something better—but perhaps not that much better. One co-developer compares it to Tinder this way: “If you want a f—boy, use Tinder. But if you want something more, like a meaningful relationship, or even just a decent person to bang …” (That said, the service does ban shirtless selfies, and if someone posts an obscene picture, they’re banned immediately.)
Whitney would argue that misogyny has been baked into Internet culture from the beginning, pointing out that a 1972 Playboy centerfold was instrumental in creating the .jpeg image format. “Everything that is wrong with Internet culture is at its peak with online dating,” Whitney says, pointing to the “creeps” who can harass women with no consequences. She also complains that the internet “reinforces outdated gender roles.” (Bumble, in contrast, requires that women, not men, make the first dating move.)
Whitney kisses her boyfriends during the movie: first Justin, and then her future husband, Michael. Pool parties feature men and women in bathing suits, some of which are pretty skimpy. Andrey walks around in a Speedo-style bathing suit and bathrobe. Whitney helps a couple of guys find the “hottest” picture of a bikini-clad woman to use as a sample for Tinder.
We hear references to a tech company hiring prostitutes for investors. It’s rumored that other tech companies hire pretty women simply to “even up the numbers.” We learn that Tinder serves same-sex couples as well: We see two men meet up at a nightclub after connecting on the app. Later, the two apparently get married.
Whitney and a coworker, Tisha, bond while going on a murder-themed bus tour of Hollywood. (We hear briefly about George Reeves’ mysterious death and the Black Dahlia’s murder.) Tisha says that she had been worried that her “casual obsession with horrible murder was maybe too weird for a first hang.”
After leaving Tinder, Whitney receives some threatening messages: Someone claims to have a gun and is waiting outside her door. A guy playfully punches another man in the crotch.
The f-word is used nearly 30 times, and the s-word nearly 20. We also hear “a–,” “b–ch,” “b–tard,” “d–n,” “h—” and “p-ssed.” God’s name is misused nine times, and Jesus’ name is misused three times.
One of Whitney’s coworkers at Tinder calls her a “whore” as he and his friends giggle.
After Whitney leaves Tinder, she spirals downward emotionally. A montage suggests that she drinks heavily without ever leaving her apartment. And when she meets up with an old friend for drinks, Whitney treats the other woman poorly.
While marketing Tinder at a college campus, Whitney agrees to slam beer through a bong to get the frat members signed up. She does a lot of her dating app research in the same bar. (“Here’s your usual,” the bartender says to an embarrassed Whitney. “And what will tonight’s gentleman have?”) Whitney and her friends go to a Western-themed bar in Austin, where Whitney tries to buy a guy a drink.
Characters frequently drink wine and beer. We hear how Tinder has turned online dating into an “addiction” for some. A story alleges that Badoo, the corporation of which Bumble is a part, was home to some drug-fueled parties.
Swiped portrays Justin Mateen, Whitney’s one-time boyfriend, as a first-rate heel. His bad behavior here checks virtually every box in the “heel” checklist, from his raging rants to his threatening texts. Moreover, he, Sean and others are (in the movie’s eyes) obscenely unresponsive to the user complaints about Tinder (most of which come from women, it would seem).
And certainly, the way both men treat Whitney during her tenure is pretty vile and quite sexist—blaming Whitney for an unhealthy environment that (again in the movie’s eyes) was entirely generated by Justin.
Swiped examines a tumultuous two-year period in the life of Whitney Wolfe Herd, one of the most powerful women in tech today. But what a shallow and icky examination it is.
Swiped admits that the real Whitney Wolfe Herd did not participate in the film at all, given that she’s still under a nondisclosure agreement from her time at Tinder (a condition of the settlement for the sexual-harassment lawsuit she filed against the service). But that does not dissuade the film from turning its own version of Whitney into an unalloyed heroine and her former male workmates into unmitigated cads. There’s no nuance here.
But for our purposes, the more troubling issue might be Tinder itself.
Swiped makes Tinder look like a great idea gone wrong. But from where we sit, the whole concept is flawed from the get-go. While users’ appearance is an inescapable part of any online dating service (and let’s be honest, a factor in many real-world relationships, too), the Tinder app as we see it represented in Swiped is almost exclusively focused on looks. Does someone look “hot”? Swipe right. But if someone’s nose is a little too long or their hair a little too stringy or teeth a little too crooked for your taste, swipe left and be done with the loser.
“For the LORD sees not as man sees,” reads 1 Samuel 16:7. “Man looks on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.”
Tinder encourages us to keep looking at that outward appearance—and for many users, it’s simply an efficient gateway for a night of throwaway sex. Forget intimacy; emotional connection has no part in today’s hookup culture, which Tinder has so obviously helped foster. This is all about “fun.”
So perhaps it shouldn’t surprise us that Swiped itself is so superficial, yet so preoccupied with presenting its heroine in such a positive light. It knows how the game is played. Even as it lambastes Tinder for not doing enough to shake itself clean from obscene pictures, shoving some of them right into our faces. Even as Whitney seeks to foster positivity and kindness on the internet, the streaming-based movie peppers its viewers with foul language.
Swiped could’ve been an interesting dissection of internet culture, dating and otherwise. It could’ve examined its issues more deeply and thoughtfully. But as it is, this Hulu-based film is a disappointment.
For me, it earned a swipe left.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
