Hi. I used to post here a lot and run a blog about online game (http://pancakemouse.wordpress.com). I stopped using Tinder in Fall 2019, and continued to not use it during the pandemic. Recently a friend had asked me to sign up for Tinder and see what the scene is like so we could compare notes. Here is my analysis from one week of swiping. I am located in the San Francisco Bay Area, using the standard version of Tinder with no upgrades. I nearly maxed out my 200 swipes each 24 hours, so I swiped probably 1300+ girls. I ended up with 5 matches and zero numbers. Tinder Gold informs me that 33 additional girls have swiped right on me. Quality of girls in the queue is low, much lower than it was in previous years. I estimate I swiped right on only 35% of girls. Typically I'm at 50-60%. Anecdotally, population is extremely low compared to normal times. In only ~1300 right swipes, I exhausted every girl within a 7 mile radius. Multiplied by my swipe right percentage, that's an estimated 3700 girls. In previous years where I've scraped profiles, there have been 10-15K girls within a 10 mile radius of my house. So we can conclude that less than half of female profiles are active during the pandemic than usual, and probably about a third. Compared to previous years, my amount of matches is very low. Even early last year with the basic version of Tinder, I was getting 15-17 matches per week on the same number of swipes. Cofounders: I used kind of a douchey profile compared to the one I normally used. Shirtless photo, ripped gym selfie, partying in Vegas. It's possible it got less likes than my normal profile. I also did not verify my account. Conclusion: Free Tinder likely not worth it at this point. Will restart sometime in January with my normal profile and a verified account and try for another week. At that point, I'll evaluate whether it's worth it to spend money on Plus/Gold/Platinum.