Even (especially?) singles in oppressive, isolated regimes need casual sex, and that’s exactly what Tinder claimed last night during its unhinged attack on Vanity Fair. But is it true? Is anyone in North Korea really using Tinder? Sort of.

Tinder’s claim is bogus for reasons they themselves made clear:

Right. But I was still curious—were some hot dissidents finding a way to proxy out of Pyongyang and find third base? It’s easy to find out: if you pay $10 per month to unlock Tinder’s premium features, you can simulate your location anywhere around the world. Why you’d want to do this, I don’t know, but here we are, in Pyongyang, where I came across three other virtual sex tourists:

That’s it. If I had to guess I would guess that these are not actual North Korean denizens, but rather people like me using Tinder’s weird virtual travel option, or just spam bots. I swiped right and received nothing in return.

What about Hamhung, North Korea’s second largest city?

Nothing.

There were also no Tinder singles around the Hoeryong government reeducation camp.

In conclusion, Tinder is either lying about romantic dissident use of its casual fuck software, or is counting people who are pretending to be inside the regime through GPS spoofing or the company’s own location-faking option. Either way: stop tweeting.

Contact the author at biddle@gawker.com.
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