Get Off Tinder and Have a Baby

JD Vance’s political career probably would never have happened were it not for the financial generosity of certain powerful tech industrialists, namely rightwing billionaire Peter Thiel. Now, whenever a journalist asks Vance a pointed question about technology, he says something kinda dumb.

In an interview with the New York Times, columnist Ross Douthat asked the vice president whether he ever worries about AI and its capacity to induce a sense of “obsolescence” in humans (this seems to be code for “take people’s jobs”). Given the fact that Donald Trump’s recent presidential campaign was partially funded by people who have deep financial interests in the blossoming AI industry, it’s not surprising that Vance decided to pivot the conversation’s focus to a different kind of tech business. The veep told the newspaper that he didn’t really think AI poses a threat to Americans’ jobs or welfare, and that the real societal threat posed by technology comes from dating apps. The vice president said:

“If you look at basic dating behavior among young people — and I think a lot of this is that the dating apps are probably more destructive than we fully appreciate — I think part of it is technology has just for some reason made it harder for young men and young women to communicate with each other in the same way. Our young men and women just aren’t dating, and if they’re not dating, they’re not getting married, they’re not starting families.”

Vance is clearly killing two birds with one stone here. On the one hand, he’s evading the question about the destructive potential of AI. On the other hand, he’s using the dating apps issue as a way to encourage young people to embrace the traditionalist conception of dating and the nuclear family that has been part and parcel of the Trump administration’s vision for American society. Vance has long discussed his concern for the national birth rate, saying in 2019, “Our people aren’t having enough children to replace themselves. That should bother us.” In 2021, he famously complained that the country was being run by “childless cat ladies,” whom he described as “miserable.”

That said, (and I hate to admit this), Vance has a point about dating apps. It is true that there is a lot of discontent when it comes to online dating. Women seem to hate it, and most men can’t secure a date to save their lives. In short: It’s rough out there, and the apps are not leading to satisfying results for most young Americans.

As enthusiasm for dating apps has waned, the businesses at the forefront of that industry have struggled. Match Group, the dating app kingpin that owns Tinder, Bumble, Hinge, and other popular sites, has notably floundered in recent years. The company’s profits have been down this year and, earlier this month, Match CEO Spencer Rascoff said he planned to cut about 13% of the firm’s staff, in an effort to offset losses. This week, the company announced that it planned replace Tinder’s current CEO, Faye Losotaluno, with Rascoff, as it looks for a more permanent successor.

It remains to be seen whether young Americans are onboard with the Trump administration’s whole drop-everything-you’re-doing-and-procreate thing. Vance is probably a particularly imperfect vessel for this message, in that he has never been particularly good at navigating the vector by which young people acquire information—which is to say, the internet. Indeed, ever since being chosen as Trump’s running mate, web users have hazed Vance mercilessly at every turn—whether it’s accusing him of being a “couch fucker,” accusing him of liking dolphin porn, turning him into a horrifically bloated version of himself via a grotesque meme, or suggesting he killed the Pope.