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Swipe right on at least 180cm? Tinder tests new height filter
The Straits Times
|June 13, 2025
Premium users of the dating app can set the preferred height of potential matches, a feature that disheartens "short kings" and "tall queens"
Does height really matter when you are searching for "The One" on a dating app?
Tinder has again put this touchy question front and center when it quietly rolled out in May a new filter that allows its premium users to use height as a metric for a potential partner.
A post on Reddit early in June drew the internet's attention to it, and it has since set off a spirited debate on the state of love and romance in the world and how dating apps may be screwing it all up.
The new filter lets Tinder subscribers who pay for the two highest subscription tiers set the minimum and maximum height of a potential match.
Tinder is testing this out in "limited" parts of the world, excluding Singapore as of now. And it is not a hard filter - meaning the setting is more of a suggestion to the algorithm rather than a tool to completely block users of a certain height.
But it has understandably disheartened "short kings" and "tall queens" — and divided everyone in the middle.
Many insist that height is a superficial metric of attractiveness. But there are those who say it is not easy to overcome social expectations, and so height becomes for them a minimum requirement for anyone wanting to get one foot in the door.
Shorter men, in particular, feel especially targeted by the filter.
"It's over for short men. What are they going to do now?" one person wrote on X. "Tinder just declared war on short kings," wrote another social media user.
This story is from the June 13, 2025 edition of The Straits Times.
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