In a 2023 Pew survey of US adults, nearly one-third of respondents said they had used an online dating site or app at least once. More than half of women who had used the apps reported feeling overwhelmed by the number of messages they had received in the past year, while 64% of men said they felt insecure from the lack of messages they had gotten. Though an overwhelming majority of men and women said they’d felt excited about people they connected with, an even-larger proportion of respondents said they were sometimes or often disappointed by their matches.
Online, it isn’t always easy to know whether the human behind an alluring profile is who and what they say they are. Even relatively innocuous virtual deceptions – such as outdated or ultraflattering photos of themselves that misrepresent how they look in person or fudged facts about their interests and accomplishments – can be disheartening. Then there are the people who fabricate or steal their entire profile, a practice known as “catfishing,” leaving anyone getting hit up by a stranger online justifiably skeptical. All these deceptions have left many people with dating-app fatigue as they search for ways to take back some control of their romantic fate.
LinkedIn’s attention since the a dating site, according to individuals who use it this way, is the platform’s ability to surrender a few of that manage and improve caliber of their prospects. Just like the top-notch-networking website asks pages so you can link to their current and you can previous employers’ character pages, it has got an additional layer regarding dependability you to definitely most other public-news systems lack. Many users likewise incorporate very first-people records out of former colleagues and you may managers – real people with real reputation profiles.
Even for individuals who timid off playing with LinkedIn to help you perspective to have schedules, your website has been a go-to tool for vetting intimate people located as a consequence of antique matchmaking applications or even in-person experiences
Some users have taken this idea to the extreme. Last summer, a British expat in Singapore, Candice Gallagher, made waves after posting a beneficial TikTok movies in which she said LinkedIn had “A-grade filters” for finding “A-grade men” – namely, doctors, lawyers, and “finance bros.” In the post, she touted the various filters you could use to track down ideal partners. More recently, a screenshot of the tech entrepreneur George Hotz’s LinkedIn bio was shared on X. In his bio, Hotz declared that he now used the site “exclusively as a dating platform” and laid out a catalog of requisite attributes – “intelligent, attractive, female, in or visiting San Diego” – for his ideal match. “Send me a message and invite me out for a drink,” he wrote.
“Social networking is certainly one large relationships app,” John explained. “Any social networking where you are able to look for mans pictures is capable of turning on the an internet dating app. And LinkedIn is even better because it’s just showing people’s bogus lifestyle.”
An issue of concur
Charlotte Warren, a 30-year-old content creator who lives in Austin, sees things differently. Warren posts TikTok movies regarding matchmaking and has received more than her fair share of advances from unknown men on LinkedIn. Though she said that the men were usually reaching out under some flimsy guise of professional networking or “mentorship,” many had bare-bones profile pages that suggested they weren’t seriously using the platform for work. Several of her friends and colleagues across genders have received similar messages, she said, and were similarly put off by them.
“Someone uses LinkedIn in different ways, but I believe by and large, anyone view it very invasive and you can inappropriate” for all of us for action in order to come across intimate lovers, Warren said.