Spite Is a Hell of a Drug

I don’t know a damn thing about dating apps — I couldn’t tell you if you swipe right or swipe left to match — but I know plenty about spite, and I’m a big believer in its motivating power, especially when that spite is rooted in doing what’s right.

Hulu’s movie about Whitney Wolfe, the founder of Bumble, unfortunately leans too neatly into the familiar start-up founder mold, but I’ll give Swiped this much: it’s refreshing to see a start-up founder succeed for the right reasons, instead of yet another story about a disgraced entrepreneur going down in flames because of greed or misconduct. I’m sure there’s more to the real story than what’s shown in Swiped, but I appreciate the takeaway — it is possible to succeed by creating something with good intentions.

Whitney Wolfe (Lily James) left college and joined the start-up that became Tinder. As Swiped depicts it, she came up with many of the company’s core ideas and was credited as a co-founder, at least when it suited the male co-founders, one of whom she dated. That was Justin (Jackson White), as toxic as the app itself. He tried to claim credit for her ideas, lashed out when she broke up with him, and ignored the toxic culture brewing on Tinder (unsolicited pics, harassment). When the other co-founder, Sean (Ben Schnetzer), sided with Justin, Whitney was pushed out.

She sued, settled, and was vilified in the press, but an NDA kept her from defending herself. So she launched Bumble, only to find herself dealing with another toxic investor, Andrew (Dan Stevens, who somehow always looks the same but plays entirely different characters). Once again, she had to weigh doing what was right against what was best for her company. Spoiler: she managed to do both, and thanks to a cultural moment slightly more supportive of women, she came out on top.

That’s the gist. I’m sure liberties were taken (in the movie, her eventual husband seems like an aw-shucks Texan, when in reality he’s an oil and gas heir). But that’s Hollywood. I won’t quibble with the positive message, although I will with the film’s generic and formulaic approach. It’s fine, but doesn’t add much to the recent wave of start-up biopics, other than giving us a rare story that doesn’t end in disgrace. That alone is refreshing, even if the movie itself is not.

‘Swiped’ is currently streaming on Hulu.