57% of users lie on their profile

Small lies 

In today’s busy world, no wonder why dating apps are successful and online dating has become socially acceptable.  What a tremendous promise to help find one’s partner, and how clever it is for users to take advantage of this new technology to find the best possible and most harmonious match?

You create your profile, and you show your very best self.  Wait a minute, why not improve that very best self just a little bit?  You can add an inch more to your height.   You can trim a couple of years, and you can be just a little more successful. That’s not a big deal.  Oh, and there is that picture of me in front of a supercar at that hotel.
It is a slippery route to go down.  This also happens in real life but is so much easier to engineer online.

According to Psychology Today, 57% of Americans lie on their dating profile.  A similar study from Opinions Matters found the very same percentage for Uk users lies. How is that promise of quickly finding one’s partner going to work if we have to swift through each profile to determine what is true from false? Do the algorithm and artificial intelligence used on these sites, after the crazy long forms, recommend matches taking this bent reality into account 😂?

Here again, we could not let this unexplored and spoke with tens of different users about their experience on dating apps and the impact lies have had on their experience. We have talked to Isabelle, a gay living in the countryside with fewer opportunities to match locally.  She started a conversation with another lady through a dating app and chatted daily for months as they had a lot in common before organising to meet in a town between their two homes.  What a disappointment this has been for her once they meet in real life.  The lady she met with was nothing like her online description with a few pounds extra and pictures taken at least ten years ago.  And Isabelle is far from the only one. This scenario was repeated to us over and over again. We have even interviewed users who could not go on dates after matching with someone as this would uncover their lies.  This strategy is short-lived, good enough for a short shoot of endorphins followed by a  useless limbo.

We interviewed successful professionals who were worried about attracting the wrong crowd and being perceived as liars if they shared their successes on their profiles.  We are passionately against lying, which always results in massive confusion.  A waste of time, a waste of Karma that hinders the promise of productivity which was the premise of what dating apps had to offer.

We don’t want to go mad at the perpetrators and understand why they distorted their reality, hoping to stand out of the crowd. DearReal intends to eliminate the possibility of lying on its dating apps.  We want to encourage our users to feature the honest best, and beautiful version of themselves.  We want our users to be happy with who they are and encourage them to become better the same way we strive to improve daily.  

Big lies

As we are on the lying topic, we cannot avoid mentioning catfishing.  Catfishing occurs when a user creates a fake profile to ask for money from others.  Romance scams are common on free dating apps where 10% of new accounts are fake (Marketdata Enterprise, Inc.).  Norton antivirus research shows that romance scams have tripled since 2019, costing an estimated $201 million in the US alone. Okay, this is very serious, but as DearReal will be tackling small lies, we can assure you that big deception will not be possible.  

No more lies

We believe DearReal’s setup stops this lying while featuring our users in beautiful light.  This won’t be hand on heart marketing, like Hinge and Bumble, but by design.  We won’t verify pictures or ID’s like Tinder does.  Verifying photos and ID’s won’t stop 10-year-old images from appearing on profiles and won’t stop you from lying on pretty much everything else.  The way DearReal is built is much more profound than this.

DearReal won’t compete on quantity or speed, but we will be much more pertinent, efficient and genuine than the current crazy jungle out there.
So, let’s forget about those lies and start dating in a fun, relaxed and genuine manner.

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