Cracking Tinder's New Desirability Rating Code

— -- Tinder is using a new secret formula: a desirability rating.

“The desirability rating is based upon the swipe-left-swipe-right ratio,” Jess Carbino, a Tinder sociologist, told ABC News.

The app still shows you potential matches based on interests, location and age, but now the first ones you see will be people in your league.

"Individuals are presented with individuals who are also at their same level of rating, who are slightly above them in terms of their rating, and slightly below them in terms of their rating," Carbino said. "They will be presented with users who match all of their criteria within the Tinder universe. We are not limiting the potential users that individuals can see. The rating is used exclusively to personalize the experience of our users and is just one of many measures used in our algorithm."

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Journalist Austin Carr is one of the only people on earth who actually knows his rating.

"You get a sense of how many folks find you disposable," he said. “How desirable you are as a human being."

Tinder told Carr his rating when he was writing about the app for Fast Company magazine.

"It was a very awkward experience," he said. "My score actually came out to 946. I would like to think it is out of a scale of 1,000. But if it goes up to 10,000 obviously that is going to lower your self-esteem to some degree."

"Desirability is far more nuanced than whether or not someone is simply physically attractive," Carbino said.

Tinder says the average is 800, so Carr can rest easy. But most of us will never know.

"Tinder users cannot learn their desirability measure, because it's constantly changing," Carbino said.