Most dating services match their users by the things they like, but a new dating app called Hater completely turns this idea on its head, using common disinterests to help people find love.
Hater founder Brendan Alper, who left his job at Goldman Sachs to become a comedian, first came up with the idea for the app as a joke. But the more he thought about it, the more he became convinced that it would actually be an interesting real-life dating app, and after finding some scientific studies that confirmed his intuition, he decided to turn it into a reality. Hater has been in testing since December 2016, and will be officially available for iOS and Android devices on February 8th. So get ready to let the things you hate guide you to true love.
“What we hate is an important part of who we are, but it’s often swept under the rug in our public persona,” Alper says. “We want people to express themselves more honestly. Plus, it’s easy to start a conversation with someone if you know you both hate pickles.” The app utilizes the same swiping function as Tinder or Bumble, but instead of swiping on people, you swap on topics ranging from butt selfies and bad tipping, to sidewalk etiquette and Donald Trump. You simply swipe down to hate, up to love, left to dislike or right to like. Hater than finds potential matches based on the things you hate and your location.
“Dating is supposed to be fun, somewhere along the line, dating apps lost sight of that,” Alper adds. “Hater wants to bring it back.” It’s definitely a breath of fresh air in the online dating service scene, and the company claims that they’ve received very positive feedback during the testing period. Who knows, maybe hate can sometimes bring people closer.
One thing that Alper and his team don’t want to do is encourage negative behavior, and to make sure that doesn’t happen they carefully curate the thousands of topics available on Hater and have a one-strike policy for users who act inappropriately. “Hater absolutely does not stand for hate speech or bigotry — particularly animosity toward races, religions, or body types,” the app terms of service state. “Our team carefully moderates the topics, and we have a strict one-strike policy for anyone who abuses our guidelines.”
And in case you were wondering what the most disliked things out of the 2,000 or so available Hater topics are, 29-year-old Alper said the top three so far are the presidential election of 2016 , slow walkers, and drain hair. I have to agree with all of them.
Sources: Digital Trends, Mashable
