One of my personal nightmares regarding online dating is probably finding out the level of desirability I am rated on the dating apps I use. On Pairs, you can see the number of people that «liked» a person and the number is placed boldly in the corner of a user’s profile. And on Omiai and With, you can filter profiles based on the level of their popularity.
They are, and some have even leveraged their internal rating systems to either lure more users or more revenue. Tinder has Tinder Select, a members-only version of the platform that serves users deemed good-looking or a catch according to the Tinder Elo score, the app’s algorithmic rating system. OKCupid A-List subscription, which seems to charge users differently according to multiple criteria — attractiveness included — allows its users to search through profiles by body type and degree of attractiveness.
What sets Japanese dating apps apart, however, is how accessible this information is to regular users. On With, for instance, you can filter profiles by several different criteria, two of which are the number of likes a profile has received and the amount of Facebook friends a person has. Despite the fact that this feature gave me pause, I can understand the ease and convenience it proffers users who don’t have time to scroll through multiple profiles every day and who prefer seeing the profiles the app or other users recognize as the most «desirable.»