Dating apps are both the bane of my existence and the only way I can get a date in this day and age. I am not ashamed to say I have done a fair amount of dabbling on Tinder and, like many people, I have been less than impressed. Between mediocre coffee dates and poorly-worded requests for nudes, I have found myself striving for real connections with people and, 9 times out of ten, have ended up sorely disappointed.
That is why I was so intrigued when I heard about The League, a dating app which has just opened up in Salt Lake City. The League is aimed at working professionals and attempts to create an environment where real relationships can form between equally busy adults. I decided to give it a try.
The League requires verification from both Facebook and LinkedIn, making it more difficult for fake accounts to spring up. Additionally, it prevents you from seeing or being seen by contacts on LinkedIn, a convenient feature if you are trying to avoid seeing your coworkers — or worse, your boss — on a dating app.
The League displays your education, work, interests, groups you have joined on the app and your religion. You must also include six pictures of yourself. I liked having all that information up front and easily viewable so I could see what potential matches were like.
The League provides an option to register as single or in a relationship because many people of working age are looking for other single friends to hang out with. I really liked this feature because many of my friends are already in relationships and it would be nice to have other singles to go out with.
Instead of endless swiping, The League gives you a set of prospects every day at 5:00 p.m., right when the business day ends. The idea behind this is that you will not be tempted to swipe aimlessly and decrease your workday productivity. This definitely stopped me from idle swiping — but the sets were so small that it took away the fun. The size of my sets ranged from three people at the least to six people at the most.
Matchmaking is slow, likely because of the minuscule sets, and response rates are even worse. Only about half of the people I matched with messaged me.
In addition to prospects, The League also recommends groups for you to join. I joined include Beer Lovers and Art Aficionados, to give an example of the groups you can join. The idea behind these is that you can meet other people with similar interests and plan activities together. However, cities are not separated out from what I can tell, making it really difficult to actually find anyone near you in these groups.
Something that I found particularly disappointing was the lack of ladies I saw on the app. While you are allowed to put both men and women as your preference, I have not seen any women appear in my daily sets.
My greatest annoyance with the app is how much of it is set up for further profit. While I understand that as apps or companies the goal is to make money, The League goes too far. You have to pay to get larger sets of people, boost your profile, power move someone (the equivalent of Tinder’s super like), take a break from the app while still preserving your profile, and even see if people have read your messages yet. It seems like far too much gimmick and far too little focus on being a dating app.
Overall, I was not terribly enamored with The League. While I like some of the key ideas behind it, like being able to find other hard working professionals or join groups to find people with similar interests, I think that there are still many improvements to make.
@TheChrony