Eric Crown had the Tinder iPhone application for less than a week before he was matched with 83 girls from around campus.

“I’ve only met one of the girls in person, but I run into a lot of my matches on campus,” Crown said. “I normally just wink at them.”

The app allows you to either select or skip other users based on photos pulled from their Facebook profiles. If you select someone who selects you back, you are “matched,” and both people are given the opportunity to start a conversation. It’s a self-proclaimed “fun way to break the ice.”

“I like Tinder because it takes the guesswork out of dating,” Crown said. “You know that the interest is mutual, so the playing field is level.”

And it’s true — striking up a conversation with someone at a bar does not necessarily indicate that there is mutual attraction. For people like Crown, this relaxed dating environment where there are no mixed signals (and therefore a smaller chance of having a drink thrown in his face) is something that can only be facilitated through Tinder.

In an email interview, Tinder co-founder Justin Mateen said that because college students live in such a highly social environment, they are generally tough critics when it comes to online dating. Despite this generally skeptical attitude, Tinder has recently gained popularity on campus. According to Mateen, “Tinder has spread quickly because we have tried to emulate the way the real world works in terms of how you meet someone.”

But what factors play into the “spark” of meeting someone?

“There have been studies that suggest that it takes only 20 seconds to detect whether a stranger is genetically inclined to being trustworthy, kind or compassionate,” Mateen said. “We facilitate these split second decisions that already occur daily, but in a virtual manner.” The app attempts to replicate the organic way that people meet, as opposed to other online platforms like OkCupid, which match people based on extensive personality questionnaires. The spark of meeting someone in real life happens quickly; there is no time to ask whether they support abortion or if they like Chinese food.

Tinder might also owe its success to the fact that users must link their account to Facebook. The app reveals if users share mutual Facebook friends. According to Mateen, this is because ”studies show that relationships are far more likely to begin and succeed when both partners share mutual friends.”

Linking Tinder and Facebook also prevents users from getting “catfished,” a term lifted from a movie of the same name and used colloquially to refer to the scenario in which someone creates an intentionally misleading online persona in the hopes of luring a potential partner.

“I think Tinder is socially acceptable because it’s linked to Facebook,” Crown said. “You know you can’t get catfished. They also did a really good job of designing and marketing the app to feel safe and not creepy.” Crown can focus on selecting a woman he thinks will best match his desires instead of worrying about whether she’ll be wearing a hockey mask and swinging around a chainsaw when they first meet in person.

While Crown represents a growing number of people who feel that it is okay to meet someone online, others remain skeptical of the concept. Junior Morgan Alfrejd had Tinder for two weeks before she deleted the app.

“It was amusing at first, but then it became awkward when I started running into my matches on campus,” Alfrejd said. “I generally just looked away to avoid eye contact.” She also experienced several odd moments through Tinder. ”There was one guy who used the same pickup line on me and both of my roommates,” Alfrejd said. “He definitely didn’t know that we all knew each other, and it was a huge turn-off.”

Alfrejd commented that another concern is that the app connects people on a strictly superficial level, asking for very minimal personal details. Matches are made almost exclusively on the basis of physical attraction. “Then again,” Alfrejd said, “Meeting someone at a bar is also superficial because you approach them because you find them attractive.” In this sense, Tinder does seem to accurately represent this process: physical attraction slowly evolving into emotional attachment.

Professor Azim Shariff, who teaches evolutionary psychology at the University of Oregon, said that using Tinder might induce a psychological dilemma known as the “paradox of choice.”

“When you have a massive dating market with so many choices, our brains have a hard time rationalizing that we made the right decision,” Shariff said. “Instead, we run through all the hypotheticals of what could have been. This is why people like to think that fate exists: because otherwise it’s too chaotic. If there are a million options, it’s hard to know you were right. It’s much easier to think that there was some sort of cosmic force that put you together.”

Despite the best efforts of the Tinder staff to emulate real-world introductions, there are many subconscious biological factors that play into attraction that simply can’t happen online. Recent studies in the field of major histocompatibility complex (MHC) suggest that our immune systems can tell whether a potential mate would produce a genetically inferior offspring. Through unconscious scent and pheromone detection, humans can essentially tell if a mate is incompatible. This type of subtle biological test can’t happen via Tinder.

“The literal chemistry between two people can be off,” Shariff said. “A common statement indicating incompatibility is ‘They smell like my brother.’” He adds that this is just one relatively recent development in the field of biological attraction and that there are perhaps many more unknown subconscious cues of which we are unaware.

“Many studies suggest that women value the tone of a man’s voice as much as the way he looks,” Shariff adds.

Although Tinder cannot digitally convey some of these factors, the app does not claim to match people based on its ability to predict a lifetime relationship. Instead, its main goal is simply to introduce people who could potentially be interested in one another. Whether that interest develops into something deeper is completely contingent upon the users.

Regardless, Tinder boasts an estimated 600,000 active monthly users. The success of the app indicates that for a lot of people, it’s working.

“When it comes down to it,” Crown said, “I’m meeting a lot of people that I wouldn’t really meet otherwise.”

Perhaps the app is less romantic than the traditional method of relying on “fate” to bring two people together. But in the end, the picturesque tale of how you and your soulmate meet can’t be told if you were never introduced.