How I became the most liked man on Tinder (for a day)

Source: Dev.to

Introduction

“Look, if you had one shot or one opportunity, to seize everything you ever wanted in one moment, would you capture it or just let it slip?” – Eminem, Lose Yourself

My goal in life hasn’t always been to become the most liked man on Tinder, but when the opportunity presented itself, I couldn’t resist.

This article explains how I (probably) became the most liked man on Tinder for April Fools 2024, received 1,289 likes in a single day, and used the campaign to promote my Chrome extension to a wider audience.

Background

I’m the creator and owner of the Chrome extension LighterFuel for Tinder, which helps users identify fake accounts by showing the date an account was created and provides a one‑click reverse‑image search on matches.

Because the extension relies on Tinder exposing extra data (e.g., account‑creation date), Tinder could disable that data at any time, potentially breaking the extension. This uncertainty made the April Fools prank feel like a once‑in‑a‑lifetime shot.

I’ve also been working on improving my marketing skills, as I struggled to promote some of my other extensions.

Snap2Calendar was one of the extensions I found hard to promote despite being free and having a large target audience.

LighterFuel grew organically to about 10 k daily users over a few years thanks to visibility on the Chrome Web Store, but a little extra promotion couldn’t hurt.

The April Fools Plan

For April Fools I wanted to run a campaign that had never been done before. I was partially inspired by the dating app Singularity, which featured only one profile on the entire platform. The novelty attracted media attention.

I decided to create a similar “single‑profile” experience on Tinder, but instead of making the profile the only one available, I limited interaction to likes only.

The message that appears when you run out of likes on Tinder.

Tinder already limits the number of likes an unpaid user can give within a 12‑hour window, showing a modal that prompts users to wait or upgrade to premium. I created my own cheeky modal to replace that message:

Alert shown when users try to dislike the profile.

I initially hoped to use a separate “Colin the Caterpillar” test account, but it was shadow‑banned for not being a real person. Outreach to YouTube influencers yielded no participants, so I resorted to using my own Tinder profile and leaned into an egotistical persona for the prank.

The Execution of the Prank

Because time was short, I used existing Tinder‑compatible photos of myself and a bio that originally read “LighterFuel Creator, Soon to be, the most liked man on Tinder.” I later removed the LighterFuel reference to avoid potential support issues.

A week before the prank, I pushed an update to the Chrome Web Store. The update was mistakenly flagged as “mature,” but after an appeal it was approved just days before April 1. Consequently, only a subset of my active users received the update—about 16 k in total.

The rejection notice received on 25 April, later overturned.

Starting on 31 March, the profile was set to appear when the local date turned to 1 April. I was nervous about whether the setup would work and worried about potential bans from user reports.

First like recorded on the real‑time Google Analytics dashboard.

When I woke up on 1 April, the real‑time stats showed likes streaming in. However, my Tinder account was soft‑banned, requiring me to verify my identity with selfies. This soft‑ban occurred three times during the campaign, which likely reduced the profile’s visibility.

On 2 April, around midday, the campaign ended. The final tally was 1,289 likes—short of my original goal of 3.5 k, but still a noteworthy result given the limited rollout of the extension update.