With the new year of 2019 blissfully upon us, I think it’s high time we all admitted one inescapable truth. Online dating is horrible. Sure, if you filter through the piles of weirdos and catfishers and ghosters you can find some pretty genuine people. But the convenience of thousands of profiles of people you’re yet to meet doesn’t outweigh the fact that the hard slog lies in the little things: Your profile. What opening line should you use? Do those pictures accurately portray who you are (or at least, who you’re trying to be?)
Tinder, Bumble, Happn, Grindr, Match, eHarmony… There’s just an endless slog of apps where you’re fruitlessly trying to present yourself in a way that is true to you, yet is marketable for someone, whether it be for a relationship or just for a night. Sure, there’s ten thousand articles that tell you to use that photo or be this type of funny. But it’s all just the blind leading the blind, no?
Enter Holly Bartter, a professional online dating expert and owner of new company Matchsmith. At just 28, she’s started her own business after making a habit of hijacking her friends’ phones to tweak their profiles. Matchsmith offers services of varying intensity. You can get a simple review of your bio, or a complete profile takeover, where experts make connections with people they believe will be a good match.
Genius? Strategic catfishing? Probably both. It’s the age where we’re more connected, and yet more distant than ever, so we all need as much help as we can get, huh.
