See Through Your Own
Rose Colored Glasses

I'm Eric Dormer. I was on dating sites 25 years ago, near the dawn of the internet — and honestly, they were better then than they are now. It's the only thing internet related that got worse! How crazy is that?

Today's dating apps are explicitly designed to manipulate you into wasting time and money, and they destroy your self-esteem in the process. Not everyone is in the top 5%, that's life. If everyone is messaging only the most popular people, they get overwhelmed, and almost everyone else feels rejected. That's Lose-Lose and it's pointless and frustrating (and soul-destroying).

I am an electronics engineer, and software guy, and I decided enough is enough. There is absolutely NO reason we (as users) need to put up with this. But launching a successful new dating site is insanely tough not due to technical reasons, but because it's very hard to grow a user-base.

Until you have a critical population of women you won't attract the men, and until you have the men, you won't attract the women. It's a chicken and egg problem. Countless people have tried to launch new dating sites with all kinds of angles, and almost all have failed.

The few that do grow get bought up by the "dominant corporate player" in this field, and promptly get merged and evolved till the site is just another one of their family of corporate sites.

So this is my attempt at trying to crack that monopoly and break into this space for no other reason than I am procrastinating doing real work, so I spent a few days making the site. Plus I am annoyed that I am being toyed with by unseen gremlins who keep all the useful statistics all to themselves, and create truly hurtful algorithms that treat real people terribly. I would be happy to eat their lunch.

Based on all the multitude of failed dating sites that have gone before, this site probably won't attract users either. But I will do what I can to attract new users initially by low budget person-to-person techniques and some cross marketing on websites where potential users might see an ad or posting. I am also looking for a small team of volunteers to assist online, and at some in-person events. I am hoping we can attend or host some in-person events promoting the site (trivia nights at a bar, a group bbq, dinner and dance at a venue with a live band). I want members to see this site as their community resource where they have influence. On a technical level if there is anything I can do to improve the features or make the site easier to use, I will try my best. But what really matters is growing the user-base, and it can only grow if people like you help spread the word person-to-person.

But I will promise if somehow this site thrives and the user-base grows, I won't let it be gobbled up by any "dominant corporate player". It will always be radically transparent with useful searching and messaging ability that will always be free.

How is this Dating Site Different?

This site is different because it treats your time and focus as an expensive resource that deserves to be valued as PRECIOUS. The time you take to write an opener is not free. The creativity you apply is not free. The time you take to read invitations is not free. Even the time you spend waiting for a response that may never come wears on your optimistic heart. Too much ghosting can turn you into a bitter misanthrope.

Ensuring everyone recognizes and respects the time investment of other members is done by three complimentary systems.

First, the system imposes rules:

• Everyone is real, verified with government photo ID matched against a live video selfie from multiple angles. Uploaded photos are cross-checked so nobody claims to have found the elixir of youth.
• Zero tolerance for bots, scammers, or commercial peddlers of any kind.
• You can only have 4 active conversations at once.
• 48 hours of no response is ghosting, and ghosting has penalties.

Second, everyone's behavior is tracked and publicly visible:

• Opening messages have quality and originality scores.
• Your active conversations and pending invites are visible to everyone.
• Your history of invitations sent, accepted, and rejected is recorded.
• Your history of invitations received, accepted, and rejected is recorded.
• Your response times are tracked.
• Endless conversations that go nowhere are tracked.
• Who ended conversations, and why, is tracked.
• These statistics are public — that is the radical part. You are NOT anonymous.
• But the system is forgiving. Statistics use a rolling 14-day window. If you have a bad patch don't worry, the algorithm is forgiving, and time will eventually put it behind you.

You can be rude, or overly picky, or have an unrealistic idea of how attractive you are if you want to. That's your choice. But the community will quickly see how you behave, and they can choose to ignore you. All the rules, algorithms, and scoring systems are completely transparent. Our dating coach AI will even give you tips if you're struggling.

Third, you are not alone — in both a good and bad way. You are not nearly as special as you think. The site publishes full group statistics (anonymous) for each gender and 5-year age bracket about how people actually behave and what they claim to value. It is interesting that in the real world these often don't align very well. You might be surprised what is actually "normal." So don't be too hard on yourself. We're all human, for better or worse.