Perth Voice Interactive

IT’S not just flesh being advertised on Perth’s Tinder scene, with drug dealers, wannabe politicians and Fringe performers sneaking ads onto the popular dating application amid profiles of lovelorn daters.

The phone app lets people create a profile and if two people both click that they like each other they can start chatting to arrange a date (or often just jump right to the chase).

But among the thousands of Perth people jumping on board looking for company, low-key advertising has crept in. Advertising can be a big expense for Fringe shows, but we’ve spotted a couple of performers sneaking in freebies, with ads for shows set up as pseudo-dating profiles.

Welsh comic Jenny Collier was spruiking her show Jenny Say Qua at the Skyebar in Northbridge, but her profile made it clear she wasn’t on the hunt for a fella.

Ms Collier told us “the more places you can put your poster up, the better”.

“Tinder seems to be pretty popular in my target demographic so it made sense to whack it up there. I wanted a mixed audience though so I put in my bio ‘bring a date. If she laughs, she’s a keeper’.”

Ms Collier says “I think it’s impossible to know how well it worked. There were some quite male heavy audiences but that could just be a coincidence. Although one man after a show said, ‘if you’d like a shag at any point, let me know.’ That had Tinder written all over it.”

She says most blokes on Tinder “were cool” about it. “I think some people saw it as a bit cheeky of me to advertise on there. One guy asked me on a date and then wrote ‘joking btw’, so that was nice.”

We’ve also seen a handful of neighbourhood drug dealers offering their goods on Tinder, mostly weed and occasionally some speed or ecstasy.

“Anyone looking for greens. Hit me up,” Shayles, 23, says in her profile.

While many believe they’re mostly anonymous on Tinder, many profiles are easily traceable: even though they only use a first name they’re linked to Facebook which brings back nearby results first, and users with uncommon names are quickly found.

While we had a hold of Ms Collier, we asked her what she thought about Perth’s Tinder men (and we apologised to her for all the dudes holding fish in their profile pics).

“I’m not a connoisseur of Tinder men around the globe but there are lots of very beautiful men in WA. I only saw a couple of ‘fish holders’, the overriding theme was quokkas.

“And sunglasses. Save us some time lads—show us your whole face!”

by DAVID BELL