Matchmaking can be a thankless task – but someone’s got to do it. Photograph: Cavan Images/Getty Images/Cavan Images RF View image in fullscreen Matchmaking can be a thankless task – but someone’s got to do it. Photograph: Cavan Images/Getty Images/Cavan Images RF Opinion Dating A dating app that lets random strangers match users? Sign me up! Polly Hudson On Rivet, volunteers get to choose who they think are the most suitable suitors. For an interfering busybody like me, this is a match made in heaven
S ometimes it’s extremely hard to mind your own business. However, we all know that ideally we should, and most of us give it a bloody good go. So when the universe rewards us with an opportunity to do the opposite, it must be grabbed with both hands and cherished like the precious gift it is.
New dating app Rivet lets a random group of volunteers pick users’ matches, AKA gives interfering busybodies who think they know best free rein over strangers’ love lives. I mean, where do I sign up? This is the chance frustrated matchmakers like me have been waiting for, once their supply of single friends has been exhausted (in both senses).
Launched last week, Rivet “surfaces a lot of people that you may otherwise swipe past”, explains founder Taru Kapoor , a former Tinder exec. It tells prospective daters who has been selected for them slowly, a few options at a time: think one or two episodes a week rather than the whole season being available to binge-watch. The idea is that this prioritises quality over quantity and encourages users to take a chance on somebody who isn’t their typical type. In other words, it … let’s say strongly suggests the volunteers’ picks are entertained (again, in both senses). Good. What’s the point of being nosey and controlling if you’re just going to be ignored?
“It’s very easy for most of us to look at a friend who may be dating the wrong person and ask: ‘Why?’” Kapoor says. “People also tend to be more objective and rational when they’re outsiders looking in on someone else’s life.”
Let me at them. Not to boast – and by “not to” I really mean “not sure I technically can” – but one couple I matchmade got married. Admittedly, they then got divorced, but still, a win’s a win, no matter how fleeting.
That blissful (ish … at points, surely) union is my most successful endeavour in this field – so far! – but I remain enthusiastic and certain that the others didn’t work out only because people don’t know what’s good for them. The memory of the joyful wedding I was pretty much solely responsible for fortifies me and supplies the strength to continue, because being a matchmaker is a largely thankless, nervy business. Deciding the order in which to show the photos of those you want to set up is almost impossible. There is no way to tell somebody who has approved their match that they have, in turn, been rejected without devastating them, even if you lie your socks off.
Also, proffering a picture of the person you’re suggesting they meet – basically indicating their attractiveness level, in your eyes – can be excruciating if it doesn’t correspond with their attractiveness level in theirs. In this game the risks are high, and the rewards rare – but what can I say? When you’re called, you’re called.
Goose/gander style, I have also been the beneficiary of matchmaking, willingly and unwittingly. The former by friends, the latter by my own mother, who, dismayed by my romantic choices (and rightly so) created a profile for…