Sophia Zhao
After being a Yalie for approximately six weeks, I’ve already become accustomed to the 3-character posts that populate Fizz past 10 p.m. “M4M” and “M4F” signal pleas for low-commitment connection — “Male 4 Male” and “Male 4 Female.” Fizz is anything but a dating app, but at times it reads like a place to signal loneliness without backlash.
If there’s such a persistent desire to connect, why are students using anonymous hookup posts instead of a platform? Enter: Yinder, the Yale-only dating platform that blew up and fizzled out faster than a failed talking stage. For a brief moment a couple weeks ago, it looked like a switch had flipped. Students flocked to the platform to create accounts before the app officially released, only for the commotion to mysteriously disappear just days later.
As a first year thus far uncorrupted by campus dating culture — for the most part — I sat down with Emir Ahmed ’28 and Filippo Fonseca ’28, the creators of Yinder, to clear the air. We discussed the app, the hole it was meant to fill and its fall out earlier this month. The two developers, both computer science majors, released an app together this summer called Degree Intelligence, meant to support Yalies in planning their workloads each semester as they work towards graduation. Evidently in need of a less serious extracurricular escapade, the idea for Yinder was sparked while grabbing a back-to-school meal in the Davenport College dining hall.
“We were discussing what we could build after Degree Intelligence when a friend of ours suggested we start a dating app specifically for Yale students,” Fonseca said. Motivated by a couple of weeks with a light workload, the two grinded out the program for Yinder in about a week.
But shortly after the program’s completion, a friend of the two posted the program to Fizz, inviting users to set up their accounts before the app was officially released.
The release was met with a maelstrom of comments from Fizz users, all stemming from a viral post critiquing the release. The original Fizz post name-dropped the creators and claimed their app could potentially leak personal info and compromise messaging data. This struck a chord; the one thing Yale students hate more than making the first move is someone else noticing they did.
Ahmed and Fonseca ultimately decided to cancel the release of the app because of this data-based backlash. “We understand that it’s very sensitive info, so we decided to err on the side of caution. We’re not going to half-ass people’s data,” Fonseca said.
The legacy of Yinder isn’t just a graveyard of viral Fizz posts, though. Beyond the file that still lives on the developers’ laptops, the gap that Yinder leaves highlights a hole in the campus culture. Ahmed remarked, “supposedly there’s a pretty big market for this.” Said market can be seen walking between classes on Prospect Street.
This hole is not a new one. In my extensive ‘research’ on Fizz, the first mention of a Yale Tinder was from three years ago, before Ahmed and Fonseca even arrived on campus as frosh. The desire for a Yale-only dating app exists for the same reason that the Yale Marriage Pact blows up every year. People buy-in as a joke, but is it more serious than that?
It seems that the reason Yinder failed is the very reason we need it: limited time. Ahmed suggested that the need for a Yale dating app was amplified by the university’s rigor, “especially at a university that’s demanding like Yale, it’s hard to find the time-slash-energy to go out and meet people.”
The app’s failure was due to the founder’s lack of time, as well. Both pursuing rigorous course schedules, they lamented that they were unable to keep up with the demand needed to properly scale the app, accounting for a large user base while maintaining the safety and privacy of intimate conversations.
The two were quick to emphasize that they’re not entirely opposed to a relaunch at some point down the line — but only if it’s safe for Yalies’ data. Ahmed invited any developers who want to continue the Yinder legacy to reach out to the duo, while Fonseca encouraged the population of students who were disappointed in the app’s short-lived tenure not to rely on the potential future of a Yale Tinder, but instead to “go out and meet people.”
“You don’t need a dating app to make connections,” Fonseca said.
Ahmed called Yinder’s rise and fall “a fun two weeks” of development and drama. Maybe that’s what makes it the quintessential Yale love story: over-analyzed, short-lived and maybe better on paper than in practice.