The League: Intelligent Dating

I was pretty nervous about joining after reading all the reviews. I’m not going to pay for a dating site, ever, when there are so many free options, but I also didn’t want to be waiting for weeks on end. The ‘waitlist’ chat room was filled with people who had been waiting for weeks and kept just posting ‘checking in’ on the chat because the concierge said that daily activity on the chats helped them get in faster. What a drag. The waitlist was 40,000 people when I signed up. Ugh. I went to bed, and figured if the waitlist number didn’t go down (and I’d heard it didn’t), I would delete my account. I woke up to an email that I was off the waitlist. I ended up getting off the waitlist in less than 12 hr. But, let’s be honest, I’m a young, pretty, successful, graduate-educated woman in LA. My pictures were of me in formal wear at the opera and sailing. They definitely screen the list for people who fit their goal demographic. They want to be seen as an exclusive club for successful, pretty people. If you’ve been on the waitlist for longer than a few weeks, it’s probably because they aren’t seeing you as someone they want in their club. Yes, that’s kind of awful. Yes, it’s not a site with equality in mind. But I’m looking for someone with similar qualifications to myself, and not to wade through a sea of creeps looking to hook up. If you want an exclusive club that will make you wait in line for months because you’re not pretty enough, this is the app for you. But you should know that going into it.

I signed up for the site and was “off the waitlist” in one or two days out of 38,000 people. I find it hard to believe that thousands of people are waiting to get on the site. Seems more like a marketing tactic to get you to buy a membership so not sure if I’m buying it. When you first get on the site, you are assigned a “dating concierge” (aka a bot claiming to have gone to an Ivy League school) who gives you dating tips to be more successful on the site. I will say the site is full of very attractive, professional men but it’s not very diverse and predominantly white. As a non paying member you are shown 3 prospects a day (and not always new ones) and can only correspond with other members on the site you match with. Unless you pay for a membership you don’t have access to many perks on the site and are essentially just waiting around for someone to match with you. You also can’t see any “likes” from other members unless you pay so again, you’re just hoping you match with one of your daily prospects. The price of the memberships start as “low” as $100 for ONE WEEK. I understand the concept of paying more to have access to better quality people but I agree with a lot of others who found the pricing to be outlandish. I’ve also noticed A LOT of the same men who are on the site are also on hinge as well which is a way cheaper alternative for the “same access.”

I think this is a cool concept in general and have definitely think this app tends to attract a higher tier. But at the same time this app compared to others has a very low response rate, in my experience. Because you’re only looking at 3 profiles a day you’re just going to be matching with less people. And I think the impact of matching with less people is that people, myself included, just don’t check the app as frequently for existing matches. Overall, cool concept but the idea that being shown less people necessitates a focus on quality feels like it makes more sense in theory than in practice. On top of that, given that most matches are just not going to lead to anything, even if this app had a higher response rate I don’t think it would lead to much. If your match rate is 5%, which is substantially higher than the average for guys on other apps, that means you’re going to get a match about every week, and if 20% of your matches lead to dates, that means you’re getting a date from this app a little less frequently than once a month. And the reality is most dates don’t lead to anything. This app could work, but they would have to significantly increase the number of people you’re shown per day. Getting shown 3 people per day just doesn’t make sense given the economics of dating apps.