The release of the buzzy new Hulu film, “Swiped,” starring Lily James as dating app founder Whitney Wolfe Herd, has triggered a furious public backlash from the original members of the Tinder team. The film, which chronicles the early days of the app, is being slammed as deeply “inaccurate” and a “hit piece on [the actual founders]” even before it was widely seen. At the heart of the dispute is the title of “co-founder,” a status the Tinder old guard vehemently denies Wolfe Herd ever held. As the film threatens to “canonize a lie,” these former executives are finally breaking their silence—years after a bitter lawsuit—to reclaim the narrative of the app that revolutionized modern dating.
Hollywood’s “Canonization of a Lie”
The new film “Swiped,” which debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival and is now streaming on Hulu, has ignited a fire among the original Tinder executives. Jonathan Badeen, one of the app’s credited co-founders, expressed his disdain, stating that the movie is “obviously going to be a lot of lies.” He fears the film is set to act as a “hagiography,” or overly flattering biography, that obscures the true founding story of Tinder.
Badeen and others allege the film is rife with errors and is deliberately engineered to damage the reputations of the true architects of the dating platform, naming Badeen, Sean Rad, and Justin Mateen as the sole co-founders. A source close to the original team summarized the conflict, claiming: “The movie plays like a hagiography, but the real story of Tinder, Bumble, and Whitney Wolfe is something else entirely.”
Debating the “Co-Founder” Status
The central point of contention in the ongoing feud is the role Whitney Wolfe Herd played in Tinder’s genesis. While her team has historically and consistently maintained that “she is, was, and will always be a co-founder of Tinder,” the original team vigorously disputes this claim.
Badeen described her role as being “more like an internish role.” This sentiment was echoed by others, including Rosette Pambakian, Tinder’s former VP of Communications and Marketing, who recalled Wolfe Herd primarily as “Justin’s girlfriend” and asserted that she “didn’t add anything to meetings or to the business of Tinder.” Pambakian claims that Wolfe Herd was perpetually “begging to be included [in articles] as co-founder,” driven by career motives. The initial use of the “co-founder” title in a 2013 Harper’s Bazaar article reportedly caused a scramble within the comms team to get it removed.
The Fallout and the Muzzling of the Truth
Though several original executives were deeply upset by Wolfe Herd being credited as a co-founder, they admitted the title went uncorrected for years because “No one ever publicly combatted it.” The entire dynamic exploded in 2014 when Wolfe Herd filed a high-profile lawsuit against Tinder and its parent company, IAC, alleging discrimination and sexual harassment, including inappropriate text messages from her ex-boyfriend, Justin Mateen. The case was ultimately settled, with both parties admitting no wrongdoing.
According to the insiders, the fallout from the lawsuit effectively muzzled the original team, contributing to the “co-founder” title sticking in the media. Josh Metz, former brand manager, explained his reasons for speaking out now: he stayed silent at the time out of fear of losing his job. He added that the film’s trailer “reignited a fire” because it feels “inauthentic.” Metz, who joined in early 2013, stated unequivocally that Wolfe Herd “was never considered part of leadership” and “wasn’t involved with any of the early marketing.”
Wolfe Herd’s Next Chapter
Despite the controversy surrounding her role at Tinder, Whitney Wolfe Herd successfully moved on to found Bumble in 2014, a dating app famous for giving women the power to make the first move. Her success led to her becoming the world’s youngest self-made female billionaire in 2021 following Bumble’s IPO.
For her part, Wolfe Herd told CNBC that she was “not involved” with the production of “Swiped,” stating she only learned about the film after the script was already written. She even claimed to have asked her lawyer two years ago, “‘What do I do? I don’t want a movie about me. Shut it down!'” Nonetheless, the film’s release has succeeded in dragging the messy, contested origin story of the world’s most popular dating app back into the public square, ensuring the fight over who deserves credit for the famous swipe right continues.
