EXCLUSIVE: Is love really blind?
Matchmaker May Ku thinks it can be, if “fatigued” Aussie romantics are willing to give it a chance.
The 36-year-old is the founder and CEO of a new voice-based dating app called ‘Reev’ where there are no beauty filters, selfies at the gym or blokes wielding freshly-caught fish, just short sound bites and phone call ‘dates’.
Before creating her own start-up, Ms Ku experienced first-hand how modern dating has failed young people. After a Tinder experience had gone awry, she swore off the apps.
“Then Covid happened and I was back on dating apps and using all kinds of different ones – like Coffee Meets Bagel, Tinder, Hinge, Bumble,” she said.
“Because every dating app has some unique feature, I thought maybe this is going to work out. But in the end … the core mechanism is still the same – you’re still choosing based on photos.”
Inspired by Netflix’s hit reality TV show Love Is Blind — and drawing on her background as a market researcher and anthropologist — Ms Ku resolved to offer something different in the crowded dating app market, finding support from Macquarie University’s start-up ‘Incubator’ from which she runs her Sydney-based operation.
The idea behind Reev is simple; instead of swiping left or right based off your prospective match’s looks, profiles feature only basic biographical information like name, age and gender with a series of vocal responses to prompts like ‘the best advice I’ve ever received’ or ‘a relationship deal-breaker for me’.
Users schedule phone call ‘dates’, and after a full hour of conversation the couple unlock a FaceTime-style video call feature. Only then are they permitted to view each others’ photo album, and move the relationship into a real-world meet-up.
“I do think that this generation needs a different way to date, because the current traditional dating apps are not really working,” Ms Ku said.
“The loneliness epidemic is real, and we’re talking about dating app fatigue everywhere.”
The dating game has been tailored to men for too long, Ms Ku argued, leaning into the “male process for selecting a mate”, rather than the breadth of information women take in when seeking a romantic partner.
Her app would still need male users to be successful.
Would men buy in, when their date’s appearance is a guessing game? Her partner, Cyril Allart, wasn’t convinced.
“Initially when May started Reev, I was very sceptical about people in general talking to each other and continuing through different dates, but I’ve been proven wrong many times,” he said.
Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the University of South Wales Martin Graff said dating app “fatigue” in humans echoes behaviour in animals – “if you stop the … reward, the animal’s response will eventually extinguish or stop” – and advocates slow, “mindful” dating.
“Dating should be fun, so just treat it as having a good time, rather than being ‘on a mission’,” he said.
Sophie Maltby, a 21-year-old university student, said dating apps have often felt “like a game” – full of addictive features designed to keep users online, hampering her efforts in an already tough market.
“There’s a huge culture around situationships and hooking up, and not really wanting to have serious relationships, which I think for the people like us who … are romantics at heart, it’s been a bit frustrating,” she said.
Friend Kayla Wilson, 20, has “dabbled” in the apps but after creating a “joke profile” stacked with “bad” pictures, only to be inundated with matches asking her to their hotel rooms for a hook-up, she realised just how “superficial” conventional platforms could be.
Instead her first ‘dates’ on Reev were spent sat in a wheelchair, in hospital, with a broken leg.
“It did feel … a little bit less awkward because I was like, ‘This is what I’m doing. Isn’t that crazy? What are you doing?’” she explained.
“It’s more personal.”