Annoymous dating apps

Manoeuvring your way through the online dating sphere as a woman means balancing expectations, microaggressions and wading through unsolicited dick pics.

Pickable is a new app that lets women users sign up and be anonymous – no names, pictures, or descriptions. Men, however, are expected to provide a photo and have the option of adding a bio of themselves.

“To ‘pick’ a guy, the woman must first send him a personal and private photo that only he will see. Women are invisible to anyone on the app since they don't have a profile or a picture. Therefore, neither their exes, nor their friends, colleagues or bosses can see them,” the description for it reads.

“Men cannot browse. They wait and relax until they receive a photo and chat request. Guys have the option to accept and chat, or skip and move on. The Pickable model aims to cut back lengthy online chats and take dating into the real world much faster than other apps.”

It remains unseen as to how this app will encourage people to meet each other in real life. There’s also a little issue with the women on the app being real at all. Using a phone number for verification to prove that you’re a real person is a little weak also, considering you can order new sim cards for free online.

The pictures women send can either be a fresh shot or an existing image from your phone’s gallery leaving the door open for catfishing and random shitposting. According to Gizmodo, the app allowed them to send a picture of a Christmas card to potential suitors which is basically useless and opens the floodgates for spam. 

There have been a number of apps that have tried redress the balance between heterosexual couples, with Bumble making its whole premise about women engaging with their matches first only.

In the end, the answer to finding the right person might not be down to an algorithm or new app, we might have to go back to the Stone Age and talk to people we don’t know in real life.