Tinder's Bringing Us Back to Our AOL Chat Room Days With Its Newest Feature

Online dating can easily feel like you're wading through a cesspool. Even if you do manage to swipe on somebody who's potentially intriguing, the chances of their matching with you is pretty slim. And even if you do match, the chances that the two of you are going to "gel" is even slimmer. Trying to maintain sustained conversations, getting schedules to align, etc., etc., is a pain. Which could be the reason why Tinder users are loving the "Fast Chat" feature. But what is it?

Shared interests are usually a great launching point for any conversation to take off. Tinder's commodification of romanticism, boiled down to singular photos and knee-jerk left-right swipe decisions, can take the human element out of dating. Fast Chat looks to rectify that, or as best as it can.

The feature connects Tinder users with similar likes and helps to facilitate immediate conversations instead of letting you just stare down the abyss of your giant inbox of matches wondering which person from which "interest tier" you'll be able to actually meet up with for dinner. So Fast Chat is designed to get you interacting with more people more often. Sounds horrible, I know.

When you initiate Fast Chat, Tinder will ask you a few questions in order to help immediately match you with folks who provided similar responses to the short quiz.

What's interesting about Fast Chat is that the conversation is a blind one. You don't see the person or their profile before initiating a talk with them.

After you've been in the chat for a while, both of your profile pictures will be shared. Once the "Fast Chat" option is over, both people have the option of "matching" with each other on Tinder to continue the conversation. If at least one person rejects, then you can simply move on to the next fast-chatter.

From the looks of it, Tinder users are really, really enjoying Fast Chat. Some are writing that they hope it becomes a permanent fixture of the popular online dating service. Others are calling it the "greatest" thing to ever happen to Tinder. It also helps to solve what many users who are looking for a bit more "depth" to the service felt they weren't getting: having a better shot at actually getting to know people.

If you feel like just swiping through folks one day, you can. If you actually want to try and connect with a human, and not immediately discount them because their golden hour selfie wasn't as on point as it should be, then Fast Chat is there to help regulate that.

Fast Chat isn't the only new trick that Tinder's got up its sleeve. The Mirror reports that application developers are working on an "Explore" section that will feature a slew of new features for users to enjoy. Have you tried Fast Chat out yet? What do you think?