By his own estimation, JB averages about three dates a week. The majority are the result of successful matches on Hinge, but also Tinder and Raya. “It’s gonna sound wild,” he confesses, “but I’ve probably been on close to 200 dates in the last year and a half.” There was …
Read More »Dating Apps Are Dehumanizing. Let’s Try Something New
If the idea of going on a date makes you anxious, and all you’d really rather do with your evening is stay home and play video games, well, have we got the app for you. Date Like Goblins, a new dating platform that debuted on Kickstarter this week and will …
Read More »'Date Like Goblins' Thinks Playing Games Can Fix Dating Apps
Swiping apps have gamified dating. Date Like Goblins wants to solve that by turning first dates into gaming sessions. The app, which launched today via Kickstarter, gets users in the dating game through rather traditional means. They set up a profile, answer prompts, upload a photo (only if they want …
Read More »The Real Problem With TikTok’s ‘Fruity’ Boy Trend
Cruise around TikTok these days and you're bound to stumble on one: A young woman, standing next to a presumed beau, pointing out their “feminine, vintage-Levi’s-wearing, tote-bag-carrying, mustached little boyfriend.” If you haven't seen one of those, maybe it's the person saying “if my friends think you're a little bit …
Read More »Boomergasms Are Booming
Eury Jones was 58 the first time she pegged a man. It was May of 2021. She was coming out of a long-term relationship and entering a new life chapter. “I did a bit of Googling about threesomes and chanced upon Feeld,” she says of the dating app for free-spirited …
Read More »The Real-Time Deepfake Romance Scams Have Arrived
The compliments start flowing as soon as she answers the video call. “Wow, you so pretty, honey,” says the man on the other side of the screen. His video feed shows he’s white, with short hair, likely a few years younger than her, and is sitting in front of his …
Read More »Twitter’s Former Trust and Safety Chief Is Trying to Clean Up Your Dating Apps
Yoel Roth has spent the past 16 months recovering from a very bad, very public breakup. For two chaotic weeks after Elon Musk took control of Twitter in October 2022, Roth clung on to his job as the platform’s head of trust and safety. He even won public praise from …
Read More »We Tried a Dating App That Lets a Chatbot Break the Ice for You. It Got Weird
More than a decade of dating apps has shown the process can be excruciating. A new app is trying to make dating less exhausting by using artificial intelligence to help people skip the earliest, often cringey stages of chatting with a new match. On Volar, people create dating profiles by …
Read More »Bumble, Grindr, and Hinge Moderators Struggle to Keep Users—and Themselves—Safe
“I wasn’t able to go outside anywhere alone,” Ana says. “I had so much anxiety that when I went outside to do errands, I lost consciousness twice. That’s when I realized I was very sick.” Ana began working for LGBTQ+ dating app Grindr when she was in her early twenties, …
Read More »Gen Z Is Leaving Dating Apps Behind
In August, a swarm of hopeless and horny romantics on Reddit disputed the pros and cons of Bumble, the dating app that requires women to make the first move. “Besides barren wastelands like [Plenty of Fish] crawling with bots, scammers, hookers, and psychos, this app has to be the worst,” …
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