About Not A Zombie

The Problem

Online dating has increasingly devolved into a dehumanizing experience — a marketplace of gym selfies and swimsuit photos rather than a genuine avenue for finding lasting love. The problems in the contemporary dating scene are rooted in deep cultural trends. We believe, however, that culture is downstream from technology, and by creating a more pro-social dating technology, we can also nudge dating culture onto a more prosocial path.

In our view, one of the core problems with extant dating platforms is the primary role that pictures play in the process of deciding who they would be interested in interacting with. Physical attractiveness is somewhat “objective”, in the sense that there will often be broad consensus among rankers as to whether someone looks good in their pictures. This creates an extremely unequal situation in the amount of attention users receive. Conventionally attractive people tend to receive overwhelming attention (often from people who aren’t relevant at all), and less conventionally attractive people receive little to no interest.

Our Solution

If the aim of a matchmaking service is to find compatible matches for everyone, it would be much better to emphasize traits that are more “subjective” in the sense that there is less consensus about how to rank potential matches. For example, if Alice loves camping, she might really like the fact that Bob also loves the outdoors. But Caitlyn, who prefers the comforts of an urban lifestyle, might see Bob’s outdoorsy personality as a downside. Matchmaking based on these kinds of subjective traits will generally mean a more equal distribution of attention, and from more relevant people.

To this end, we have created a new dating site, Not A Zombie: Dating For People with Brains. Not A Zombie is a text-first platform. Unlike other dating applications, where users are immediately shown pictures of other members, on Not A Zombie, users first see a rectangle with a freeform text-based (yet visually appealing) self-description of the other member, called a Tile. Each user writes 7 phrases on their Tile that they believe best describes themselves. A user’s photos and full profile will only be shown to other members once the other member clicks on the Tile, thus re-orienting user decisions about potential matches to be based on substantive compatibility rather than split-second visual attraction.

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