The CEO of Hinge, the dating app I am NOT back on, announced safety features just for India. We, as a country, present peculiar problems to the New York firm, so it had to come up with, let’s say, attempts to bring people back on the app. It is also vetting these people to ensure they have something good to bring to India’s infamous dating pool.
For the first time, the app is starting a marketing campaign, so it must be a sincere attempt at least. Hinge is also seriously looking into the utter annoyance that is people using AI to write jokes and quips and date-me-I-am-amazing paragraphs on the app. In terms of policy, there is nothing cooked yet, but Jantos believes in the discernment of the young people to recognise what is human and what is a tech parrot. And she wants us to report whenever something feels off or concerning.
There is, anyway, a thin line in the way things are going. What feels off to people now has been concerning to many for more than a decade. And I am not just talking about the state of democracy; I am still trying to talk about safety concerns in the dating pool.
The waitlist litmus test
One of the new updates on Hinge India, the situationship mart I escape to on weekends and delete very often, is a waitlist. The app is now going to put users in a queue until they are ready to join the “community” of singles. One profile can be in the waitlist for a few hours or months; it depends on the profile. The app has a vetting process now, and it’s not going to let everything pass.
Lately, League India is another dating app that’s been vetting profiles before letting them in. The general vibe of the industry is shifting toward making the user prove they are serious about it, and not letting the obvious creeps get in. There is also a personal journey angle tied to it. Being on the waitlist makes one think, “Do I want this? Am I ready for this? Who am I?”
The dating apps offer the advice that in the process of finding someone, one also finds themselves. They want users to show some personality, choose decidedly, be a fully formed professional or self-employed artist, or something real, and then be on the lookout for someone else.
Most importantly, they want daters to put in effort and take dating a little seriously. It’s deciding who counts as ‘fully formed’, independent, and secure enough to find love. I wonder how they are going to filter people out considering the standards of Indian adulthood, which is hardly fulfilling even in the big city of dreams (Mumbai) and the hub of all things national (New Delhi). The two metros where the majority of Hinge India’s user base lives (any data/link to make this claim?). Interesting? Yes, we have plenty of that.
It is also a benevolent move by startups to counter the current slump in dating market revenues.
Hopeless romantics don’t trust the apps; people are unsafe, too many people are undateable…blah, blah—they’re uninstalling rapidly. Hinge has also prohibited people from taking screenshots on the app for, I imagine, safety reasons. To prevent photographs of daters floating on the wrong side of the internet, or to regulate the meme-fest that calls out creeps and degenerates and praises funny people, imaginative, wicked sense of humour using screenshots from the app.
Also read: Men want to be princesses. Women just want to be safe
Selling the happy life
One thing that rubbed me the wrong way about the new Hinge marketing campaign is the targeted ads, only because I have unwillingly seen it too many times; it is always there, you cancel it, and it pops back up after another refresh of the page. What I could not remove from my timeline was a chic type of girl doing fun things like blowing out candles at her birthday party, surrounded by a village of people, living in a chic house decorated with plants and art, sporting a haircut that would never suit my boxy face.
The background voiceover was all about how she was happy already in her life, and so when she found this very special guy on Hinge, he elevated her life. Something like that. It’s very aspirational, I agree. I would say a little too aspirational for an ad made with actors acting on a script. But it is cute, so I don’t hate it.
The self-discovery is an important side note to the whole dating discourse. No matter how preachy or entitled the talk of god’s favourite children sounds, it is a relatively healthy message. Those who are not “already happy” and are waiting for a great love to be found on the apps—someone who can cut through all things terror and energise the journey of collective healing—will have to figure things out.
Living in the very unchic national capital, currently very dangerous, I am hoping to not relapse into the app. They can’t even put me in wait list for my own good because I am just so dateable and an authentic profile creator. But I really want to stay away at this shaky point in personal and political history.
Hinge took 10 years to adjust in India, to finally invent safety features needed for this country. Maybe more things will change, and maybe the change won’t be for the worse. To be “already happy”, I will have to start with a custom hairstyle inspired by that girl in the video—then I will have to let it grow and settle. Things take time, so I want to wait.
Views are personal.
(Edited by Saptak Datta)