Luxury Dating App Touts Itself as Tinder for the 1%

Here’s a story that somehow isn’t from The Onion. A new dating app called Luxy has introduced itself with quite bold aplomb — its press release touts it as “Tinder, minus the poor people.”

From Business Insider:

“That’s right, there’s now a dating app geared toward millionaires, supermodels, celebs, CEOs, and others in the 1%.

‘With the rise of high-speed digital dating, it’s about time somebody introduced a filter to weed out low-income prospects by neighborhood,’ Luxy’s nameless CEO said in a press release. (Luxy’s CEO doesn’t name himself because of the controversial nature of Luxy.)”

Now I’ve been on the internet long enough to know when something sounds like a hoax. With a nameless CEO and a mission statement that would make Ayn Rand blush, the sirens started ringing pretty quick. There’s no way, right?

Apparently there is. Unless a bunch of dedicated pranksters decided to shell out to employ a well-regarded PR firm, this is all 100% legit. Luxy is – indeed – the Tinder for rich people, going so far as to feature the same left-swipe/right-swipe approval mechanism as the popular hook-up app. Luxy users who reveal themselves to be below the service’s standards are eventually washed out of the system.

The app and its makers are not all shy about dancing along the fault lines of political correctness:

(These quotes collected by Rebecca Bowe of San Francisco Bay Guardian):

“‘Tinder was pretty awesome when it came out,’ according to a quote from an unnamed user included in the press release, ‘but there’s a lot of riff raff on there.’

‘It’s Tinder without low-income dating prospects,’ according to the description. ‘In fact, the average income of male users on LUXY is over $200k and those who are unable to keep up financially are immediately removed from the service.'”

Luxy appears to be in its early infancy though the tons of press it’s getting should no doubt boost its profile for the next few weeks. Whether it’ll survive the retreat of attention (not to mention the blowback from critics) remains to be seen. But if you’re currently looking for a man or woman to fill the emotional emptiness in your Swiss Bank Account, Luxy may be the app for you.

Read more at Business Insider & San Francisco Bay Guardian.

Photo credit: Sundraw Photography / Shutterstock