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 Even relatively innocuous virtual deceptions – such as outdated or ultraflattering photos of themselves that misrepresent how they look in person or fudged facts about their interests and accomplishments – can be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-software weakness as they search for ways to take back some control of their romantic fate.

LinkedIn’s attract because the a dating website, according to individuals who make use of it like that, ‘s the platform’s power to give back some of that control and you will enhance the caliber of their prospects. Since top-notch-networking website asks profiles to help you link to the current and you can previous employers’ reputation pages, this has a supplementary coating of dependability one to other social-news programs run out of. Of numerous users include very first-individual recommendations off former associates and you can executives – genuine individuals with actual reputation pages.

Even for people who timid out of using LinkedIn so you can angle to have times, this site has-been a spin-so you can equipment for vetting romantic candidates discover due to traditional relationships apps or in-individual activities

Some users have taken this idea to the extreme. Last summer, a British expat in Singapore, Candice Gallagher, made waves after publish a good TikTok films 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 media is one large matchmaking app,” John said. “Almost any social networking where you can pick man’s pictures can turn with the a matchmaking software. And you will LinkedIn is much better because it is just indicating mans fake lives.”

A question of consent

Charlotte Warren, https://kissbridesdate.com/russian-women/armavir/ a 30-year-old content creator who lives in Austin, sees things differently. Warren posts TikTok videos throughout the dating 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.

“Everyone uses LinkedIn in a different way, but I believe generally speaking, anyone find it pretty invasive and you will poor” for all of us to use it in order to find personal lovers, Warren told me.