Turns out, love does win.
September 6, the day India’s Supreme Court struck down a colonial-era law criminalising gay sex, was the busiest day on Tinder, the dating app said in its first-ever “Year in Swipe” press release on December 6.
A five-judge bench of the apex court scrapped section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, which prescribed a prison sentence as long as 10 years for homosexuality.
The judgment day beat Valentine’s Day (February 14) in terms of the number of times users “swiped” – expressed interest or lack of it in other users – on the dating app, Tinder said.
Besides the busiest days of the year, Indians loved using Tinder on Tuesdays, during the night, and using the waving fox emoji. Here are some other annual trends for India in 2018 from Tinder’s data:
Weekday mania: Indians clearly don’t wait for weekends to indulge. Against the general perception that Friday to Sunday would be popular for dating, Tinder said, the most popular day of the week among its Indian users was Tuesday.
Night mode: Indians tended to prowl most at night, according to Tinder’s data. The top time for swipes on Tinder in India during 2018 was 9 pm.
Waving fox: It was by far the most popular GIF on Tinder, not just in India but also in France, Brazil, Spain, Germany, Russia, Japan, and South Korea. In the US, UK, and Australia, the top GIF was ”How you doin’?” the (in)famous pick-up line of the character Joey Tribbiani from the sitcom Friends.
Winks and grins: The most popular emojis in Indian users’ profile descriptions during 2018 were:
Super like: Indians had a super liking for Tinder’s “super like” option. A “super like” is a way to express a keen interest in a profile and lets users highlight themselves to a prospective mate. Four Indian cities were among the top 10 globally in terms of “super like” use:
Indians in demand: Users in the rest of the world expressed high interest in India on Tinder. Four Indian cities were on the list of the top 10 cities where remote-based users scouted for dates using the app’s paid “passport” feature:
This article first appeared on Quartz.