By Emma McGowan
Imagine you’re messing around on Tinder and you come across a cute little blonde named Sarah. She’s 23, she likes to drink wine, you have a couple other things in common, and she’s a few blocks away. Are you going to swipe left (not into it) or right (into it)?
Well, according to one organization, you’re 25% more likely to right swipe Sarah than you are for her identical “twin” Heather. The only difference between Sarah and Heather? Heather is smoking.
Heather and Sarah are two fake profiles planted in Tinder by Action on Smoking & Health in order to determine whether smoking is perceived as hot or not among people in their early twenties. According to Co.Create, each “girl” swiped right on 1,000 guys over the course of one weekend. Action on Smoking & Health found that non-smoking Sarah was matched 54% of the time while smoker Heather got only 29% of her matches.
The question is, then, is being deceptive online ever okay? Is snaring people with fake profiles or experimenting on them without their knowledge on the right side of ethical?
Similar to the controversial fake profiles on Grindr that were targeting gay men in San Mateo earlier this year, Heather and Sarah are seen by some as an innovative way to reach a target demographic, and by others as just another form of catfishing.
The question is, then, is being deceptive online ever okay? Is snaring people with fake profiles or experimenting on them without their knowledge on the right side of ethical?
When it comes to anything smoking-related, “ethical” is not a concept that has historically been taken into consideration. The tobacco industry has shelled out millions of dollars on advertising and placement in movies to convince young people that smoking is sexy and cool. Public health officials and organizations are always looking for new ways to be relevant and reach the people they need to reach. While they’ve largely won the defensive battle to eliminate cigarette ads and get them out of the movies, I’ve yet to see an offensive approach that works. Public service announcements are way too 1995 for this generation, and clearly didn’t have much effect anyway, so what’s the answer?
I say if public health officials want to move into new spaces, let them innovate. A couple of fake profiles on a hookup site that many people treat as a game hardly seems like the thing we should be fighting against. At the very least, they’re less annoying than the sex bots.