(This is for the dudes. Although I'm curious if any women can corroborate my theories from the other side of the fence)

As an avid Tinder user for the last 24 hours or so, I've noticed some interesting trends in the likes I've gotten. I think those trends have allowed me to figure out how it works, and more importantly, why it seems like matches are so rare. Unfortunately I'm not sure this information is actually going to help me improve my matches, but more on that later.

So the first thing I should say is that, in 24 hours, I've yea/nayed a lot of people. Probably a few thousand by now, the vast majority "liked". So far, I've gotten 4 matches that weren't bots or ads. I've got a friend using the app too, who talked me into it, and his luck has been worse.

But the main thing we've noticed is that the matches we've gotten, 100% of them, have been completed when we liked them. None of the thousands of people we've liked have liked us back afterwards. Now obviously lots of those people haven't used the app since we liked them, and despite my (extraordinarily dashing) photo I wouldn't expect a 100% hit rate. But even a 10% hit rate, or hell, a 1% hit rate would give a reasonable number of matches, in theory.

So my first thought was, "what if it's totally random who tinder shows (at least with regards to liked/not liked yet status)?" That would explain why no one has liked me back yet, potentially, since there's lots of dudes and random in a big city means a low chance of me turning up in her app. But then, especially after not using the app for a while, I find the people who liked me first pretty quickly, usually within my first few people, but generally if I keep going I don't get more of those matches (except very rarely). So it seems likely that it's prioritizing people who "liked" me, when I check the app. But somehow not the other way around?

So here's my theory: Tinder prioritizes people who liked you, but it mixes in some random people as well. Hence, the people who liked me first saw me as one of those random people. Once you've liked someone first, though, instead of being randomly chosen from the other likes, you go into what I'll call the "death queue". In the death queue, you get in line behind a billion other dudes, and as the woman goes through her matches, she'll see some people, chosen in order from the death queue, and some random people who haven't seen her yet.

What this means, practically, is that any attractive woman who's been on tinder for a decent amount of time will probably never see you if you like her. Her death queue is probably longer than even the most outrageous Disneyland line. Even if she does, she's either gotten matched with a ton of people before you, or she's gotten incredibly jaded and will only like you if you're in the top 1% or whatever.

So, there's 2 options, in direct opposition to each other.

1-only use the app rarely. You'll stay in the random pool, where you have a decent chance of appearing. Then you can just browse through people until you seem to stop getting many matches complete (when your "death queue" is empty). The downside to this, obviously, is that you're limited to the rate at which your queue fills up.

2-plow through tons of people to increase your odds of getting at the front of someone new's death queue. The attractive women who aren't new, you're dead to them. But you'll definitely show up quickly for the women who don't have a long queue already.

Since these are basically polar opposites of each other, I have no idea which way to go. Maybe it doesn't matter at all.

If anyone can corroborate/refute my theories, that would be great. I'd love to be wrong, the "death queue" idea really sucks and I'm kind of angry at Tinder for not making it random instead of queued. But as usual, my primary goal is to get to the truth of the matter, suckage aside.