Dating

Once upon a time, singles met by grinding on dive bar dance floors, playing footsie under the conference table, or shyly making eye contact at the church picnic.

Then online dating hit the scene. Dating apps and websites completely changed the dynamics of finding love, turning footsie and furtive glances into a series of swipes and winking emojis.

Or did it?

According to a recent survey from ReportLinker, modern dating looks decidedly less modern than pop culture would have you believe. Only 19% of adult singles in the US say they are registered on a dating service -- a surprisingly small percentage considering the size of the buzz around online dating. That leaves a whopping 81% who prefer doing things the old fashioned way.

Photo-focused dating services like Tinder and Grindr are no strangers to stigma. Since day one, conservative singles and media outlets have called them “hookup apps” designed for the desperate, horny, and swipe-obsessed.

But if you’ve been holding off on joining over fears of friends’ ridicule or a chock-a-block casual sex schedule you just can’t keep up with, put those worries to rest. A new study published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences found that the reality of dating apps is far more chaste than its salacious reputation.

Researchers at NTNU examined the "sociosexual orientation" - the degree to which an individual is open to short-term sexual relationships that don’t lead to a committed partnership - of 641 students at the university between the ages of 19 and 29.

Image: bumble

Bumble announced the launch of its new creative endeavor: granting five female filmmakers and screenwriters in the U.K. $27,000 each to make a short film. This marks the company’s first official move into the original content space, following in the steps of Netflix, Amazon, and iTunes.

Bumble’s content shingle, dubbed The Female Film Force, came to fruition after the 2018 awards season, where only 15% of Oscar winners and 20% of BAFTA winners were female. Bumble wanted to ensure more women’s voices were heard and reflected in film, so its executives decided to launch this initiative.

Bumble writes on its website:

Do men and women think differently when it comes to receiving compliments over a dating app? According to a recent study by website AskMen.com, the gender gap in this area is problematic for online dating. Turns out, men and women are in totally different camps when it comes to giving and receiving compliments in the romance department.

AskMen surveyed 1,000 people in 2018 about their preferences for online dating, including ranking their favorite compliments. The purpose? To see where the divide is when reaching out to the opposite sex for a date. If you’re a guy wondering why you don’t hear back from matches after you compliment them on their appearance, this could be the reason. Or if you’re a woman, complimenting a guy on his intelligence isn’t the best way to stir up intrigue and romance, either.

In other words, just because you like receiving compliments about your looks or your personality doesn’t mean the opposite sex thinks the same way! Here’s how the results played out.

Huggle Marketing Team

Image: BusinessCloud

While Bumble battles Match Group over intellectual property, another women-led dating app is celebrating a more positive 2018. Huggle, a British friendship and dating service launched in 2016, and its all-female marketing team has been acquired by Badoo.

Huggle matches users based on the places they love to visit. Simply indicate what you’re looking for – a date or a friend – and your search preferences, including your ideal age range and how many places you must have in common. Huggle uses GPS to automatically check you into locations you visit and notifies you of profiles that share your interests.

Founders Stina Sanders and Valerie Stark believe this approach to dating offers a more effective way to assess compatibility.

Flashback: remember that classic movie moment when Indiana Jones arrives at the cliff in his search for the Holy Grail? To complete his quest, Indy has to step off, blindly and unquestioningly.

Clearly, stepping off that nice, safe ledge doesn’t seem to be in his best interest (though it may be in ours... did you see “Kingdom Of the Crystal Skull”? Not good.)

Indy is facing a challenge that requires him to go against every instinct for his immediate safety and well-being… that he take a literal “leap of faith” to achieve his goal. And, when it comes to overcoming the biggest obstacle facing most men on the quest for love, same thing goes...

That obstacle is the idea of SACRIFICE.