Another day, another dating app. And as irritating as the consistent reminder of our apparent inability to find a partner in real life may be, this particular app doesn’t seem just another means of swiping your way to your next last minute shag.
Appetence is all about taking it slow. Remember that phrase? ‘Taking it slow’? Now that’s a throwback in itself. But the premise of the dating app is that you’re forced to have conversations with people before you’re allowed to see their profile picture. So it’s pretty much like that awkward TV show Dating In The Dark except you go through the process on your phone and I imagine sitting in a room void of light is optional.
When you download the app, you’re prompted to answer a series of questions about yourself – name, age, gender – the usual suspects. Then, before you upload your profile picture you’re advised that ‘Your photo will appear covered by a pattern and will get discovered as the game progresses’. Anyone else feel like it’s been a long time since dating was ever referred to as a game? I have mixed feelings about the terms and conditions of 'winning' and 'losing' in love, but let’s progress…
‘The more “likes” your encounters have, the sooner they will be able to reveal your photo’, it continues. In the messenger function between you and another faceless hopeful, you have the ability to ‘like’ each other’s messages, much like you do on Facebook, Instagram, iMessage and so on. You have to make the effort to give the good chat because each of you need 50 likes in order to see the other’s photo in its entirety. And although the prospect of earning a visual of your mystery person based on how many double taps someone gives your conversation is pretty terrifying (here’s looking at all the kids who delete Instagram posts that receive any fewer than 20 likes) the intention of the ‘game’ seems straight forward enough.
Next, you need to spend a bit of time building your profile with your interests and things you like so that there’s plenty of information to match you with someone compatible. ‘Great!’, Appetence will tell you, ‘You’ve successfully signed up and now you’re in the search engine’. If more people described the quest for love as mechanically as being in a location-based search engine I think I’d reside to a life of* I Am Legend* style solitude entirely off the grid. But sure, okay. Now I can be found.
Fast forward to the awkward moment when I swipe passed the first match I’m offered to find that ‘It seems that there is no one near you’. I would seem I lost the game rather quickly. To be fair, the app is very new to the market so it’s not particularly surprising that I was met with slim pickings this early on. But it’s never nice not to win, is it?
In essence, it would seem that Appetence just wants to feel special again. ‘Unfortunately, our society today promotes relationships with increasingly fragile ties. “Fast Dating” has made many women and men tired of not feeling special,’ founder Camilla Forsell tells Mashable.
‘The conversations have become monotonous and similar, and having a “Match” is no longer as exciting as the first few times’, she adds. We get it. We've all be hit with the same tired old 'Hey. Wuu2?' in a daze of absentmindedly swiping right and left just before bed. But if anything, for me, Appetence's existence just reinforces the argument that we do need to get off our asses (and phones) and re-learn how to actually talk to people. And for all I'm the world's biggest dating app sceptic, at least this one is pushing us to do just that. Even if you have to enter a search-engine game to do so.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.