From Raya to Tinder Select: the world of elite dating apps

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This article titled “From Raya to Tinder Select: the world of elite dating apps” was written by Gavin Haynes, for The Guardian on Wednesday 8th March 2017 17.39 UTC

Bad news for ugly, unsuccessful people: Tinder is no longer keeping up the pretence that they might one day enjoy a quirky romcom relationship with someone from a different league.

Already, a velvet curtain is being drawn around the world’s facial one-percenters with the launch of Tinder Select. The Select sub-platform is the world’s biggest dating app’s entry into the increasingly popular market for elitism.

No one is yet sure what the criteria are for entry to Tinder Select. Some suggest it might be based on your Tinder Elo score, a sort of romantic Uber rating. Those whom Tinder invites to join are apparently allowed to invite someone else. But their invitees aren’t allowed to nominate anyone in turn, capping the spread.

As all the hotties get beamed up into a secret champagne room from where the rest of us can only hear the distant tinkling of laughter, it is time to look at the key dating apps doing the bodysnatching.

The League

This should really be renamed the Ivy League. The League synchs with the greatest digital prophylactic of all time – LinkedIn – to offer thrusting business-oriented types the opportunity to touch each other’s base going forward. It seems to pride itself on having a waiting list longer than Yale: 100,000 at the last count.

Its selling point is that it finds people as career-focused as you are – people who will understand that you can’t go to see that German arthouse comedy because Tokyo needs the tort law briefing by 3am UTC. However, its founder, Amanda Bradford (Stanford, MBA), suggests that there is still a glimmer of hope for normies everywhere: “Maybe you didn’t go to Oxford, but you started a non-profit to help underprivileged children in Africa and you’ve run that company from the ground up.”

Luxy

Fearing the sort of backlash that overtook the nightmarish human-rating app Peeple, Luxy’s CEO remains anonymous, choosing to be known only as “Tim T”. Luxy boasts that half of its users earn more than $500,000 (£411,000) a year, but a humble $200,000 income will get you in the door.

For $99 a month – far less than the wine-pairing at Noma – members can join Luxy Black, which allows you to put a prestigious VIP logo next to your profile and avoid the humiliation of other members voting on your application.

Raya

Two years ago, the original “Illuminati Tinder” kickstarted the trend towards circling the wagons. Vloggers, models, Disney stars, DJs: if you’ve got 5,000-plus Instagram followers, a face like butter and a job in the media-entertainment elite, you stand a good chance of climbing aboard. For many, it is as much about the ego boost of being “liked” by other top-tier types as it is about any realistic prospect of hooking up. Celebrities spotted on Raya in the past include Bob Saget, Ryan Lochte, Cara Delevingne, Teri Hatcher and Diplo.

Beautiful People

Beautiful People made news when it culled 3,000 members who had put on weight over the festive season. It was partly a publicity stunt designed to reinforce its reputation as the custodian of the only sexual selection rule that should matter: a spray-tanned and duck-faced ideal of beauty.

Mensa Match

Mensa Match is more an add-on to the Match platform than a site in itself. But given that there are only 110,000 Mensa members globally, the dating pool for people pompously obsessed with their own cleverness is quite a small one. If you are part of the 2.1% of the population with an IQ of 130 or more, that will get you through the door.

“[Mensans] process things much quicker than most other people do,” the company’s director of marketing told mashable.com, presumably speaking very slowly and acting it out with his hands.

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