Your eyes meet, there’s some seeerious vibes a happen’ and then, you decide. You’re going to say something, but what to open with? A cheesy/ semi-ironic pickup line? You quickly try and think of something to say, anything, on some kind of topic – music, films, AIR? Oxygen… ah WORDS, words are hard to come by at times like this. You go for it, pluck up your courage and… tap their photo on an app, like. It’s a meet cute, but not quite like you know it. Dating apps are in, meet cutes are OUT.
This week we worked with Qemistry, pegged as a dating app with personality, unlike the other perhaps slightly stale alternatives (!) because dating is supposed to be fun. Remember? With our help, Qemistry created a survey for their audience and gained a handle on some significant insights: how their users felt about dating apps in general – good, bad indifferent and whether a profile can translate your personality well, or if there could be a way to make it feel more organic. Especially whether in this Tiktok obsessed age, the use of video content could be the magic element to reflecting someone’s personality more authentically. Or whether in fact the prospect of posting videos would make people break out in a nervous sweat and return to their comforting Netflix cave.
Long gone are the days where people meet someone in person, even before the pandemic more than half of all relationships began online. At Qemistry, they're real romantics and with the results from this survey have gained some pretty handy insights for those looking for love in the virtual landscape. Insights they've decided to share with the World Wide Web (thanks guys, you the real MVP's).
Here were a couple key takeaways:
If you’re really in it to find the John Krasinski to your Emily Blunt, then you need to have more than one app downloaded. We found that
Using 2 or more dating apps increases your chances of finding a partner online by 3 times (!!)
This little piece of news made me snort my hot chocolate back into my nose. THREE TIMES as much. The wherewithal needed to create just one dating profile can be tough enough, but two! That’s potentially many more hours spent writing new material, witty one liners, scouring your social media for contrasting photos which give an impression of you being both offensively hot, but ch-i-l-l and fun. Eurgh, I feel tired just thinking about it. To find this result, we filtered and compared the responses to those who had multiple dating apps, then integrated it with those who had found a partner. Funnily enough, 50% of men have two or more apps but only 30% of women, which could suggest that men are slightly better at playing the numbers game, and increasing their chance for “viable” partners by spreading the opportunities across multiple apps.
Hours spent writing new material, witty one liners, scouring your social media for contrasting photos which give an impression of you being both offensively hot, but ch-i-l-l and fun. Eurgh, I feel tired just thinking about it.
Apps come in and out of fashion, first it was Tinder, Grindr then Bumble and now there are a couple newer apps (wink wink) coming into the fore. Conversely, we found that those who dislike a lot are 4 x more likely to lead to dates. When we cross filtered the questions, “Do online matches lead to dates for you” and “ Do you dislike a lot”, we found those who were more discerning with their choices, lead to greater success. In other words, DON’T LOWER YOUR STANDARDS FRIENDS. A pretty good litmus test is, if this person approached me in real life at a bar would I get my friend to switch places with me and make up an excuse about my cat/ rat/ dog that I needed to get home and brush immediately or not. And therein lies the secret of finding true love guys.
People are complex messy beings, just ask the engineers trying to replicate human intelligence in robots, and so, portraying your personality via a single page of crafty questions and a smattering of pics, doesn’t really do the job of embodying that complexity.
We found that:
62% of people felt their personality doesn’t come across on dating apps
When we filtered that section of respondents by those who felt including video would be an improvement, 75% in fact did, which bodes well for the crew at Qemistry. However, we’re not all natural artistés with 33% of people saying they would be too scared to upload a video of themselves. Video in many ways has become the most natural mode of communication and the most common way to capture experiences now. Everyone is a filmmaker and the air of spontaneity that video provides, where it’s something a little less forced and more spontaneous, could go some way to capture the magic essence of people in all their glory.
The air of spontaneity that video provides... where it’s something a little less forced and more spontaneous, could go some way to capture the magic essence of people in all their glory.
Final word from us, if you really want a partner for those cold winter months, go for multiple apps, dislike more than you like and don’t be afraid to show your personality with quiiirky video content – most likely embarrassing videos captured by your friends on a night out at uni. Good luck out there kids.
Tiffany is a freelance writer based in London, writing on tech, love, feminism and food. She once hosted a Meryl Streep themed party and brings her theatrical flair to the world of tech, writing web/ app copy and SEO blogs, helping every startup show their sparkling personality to the World Wide Web. Check out more of her work and get in touch here: https://www.tiffanyblack.co.uk/contact.