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 Even relatively innocuous virtual deceptions – such as outdated or ultraflattering photos of themselves that misrepresent how they look in person or fudged facts about their interests and accomplishments – can be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

LinkedIn’s appeal due to the fact a dating internet site, according to people who put it to use by doing this, is the platform’s power to surrender some of one control and enhance the caliber of their prospects. Because elite group-networking website requires pages so you’re able to relationship to their most recent and you will previous employers’ profile profiles, it has an additional level away from dependability you to definitely most other personal-news networks use up all your. Of several profiles have first-people records out of former acquaintances and you can managers – genuine individuals with genuine profile profiles.

Even for people that shy off using LinkedIn so you’re able to direction to own schedules, your website has-been a chance-so you can unit to possess vetting personal candidates located due to traditional relationships apps or even in-individual encounters

Some users have taken this idea to the extreme. Last summer, a British expat in Singapore, Candice Gallagher, made waves after publish a beneficial TikTok clips 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 Chekhov beautiful women 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 networking is just one big relationship software,” John informed me. “Any type of social network where you can discover people’s images can change toward a dating app. And LinkedIn is much better because it is not only indicating man’s fake lifetime.”

An issue of agree

Charlotte Warren, a 30-year-old content creator who lives in Austin, sees things differently. Warren posts TikTok films regarding 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.

“Anyone spends LinkedIn differently, but In my opinion generally, anyone find it very invasive and you can inappropriate” for people to use it as a way to find close partners, Warren said.