Finally, there's a dating app that helps geeks find true love
Does your ideal first date involve seeing the new Star Wars movie the second it comes out or maybe engaging in a little light cosplay? Well now there's an app for that.
Cuddli wants to help you meet and fall for your fellow geeks. It's launching on iOS this week, though it's been available on Android since last year and has already garnered a really positive response from its users.
So why exactly do geeks need their own dating platform?
AdultFriendFinder — readers’ pick for casual connections
Hinge — popular choice for regular meetups
Pinguino Kolb, one of the app's founders, told Mashable that those who revel in fandom and comic culture don’t always have the easiest time on more mainstream apps like Tinder. Other users, she says, “don’t understand the passion behind fandom or geekdom, and they can belittle it.”
Cuddli is meant to be a space where you're rewarded for your love of Comic Con or gaming rather than ridiculed. And there’s something about the dedication of the geek community that makes this seem far more likely to find an audience than some of the other more specific apps that have hit the market in the past few years.
You don't have to prove your nerdy credentials to join, so it's far more inclusive than the purposefully exclusive apps like Inner Circle or The League. Cuddli also lets you put interest icons on your profiles to identify what, specifically, makes you geek out. Then when you see your matches, any shared interests are highlighted to make flipping through them faster.
Cuddli uses GPS matching (just like Tinder and many other apps), but there is no pending list. If someone adds you, you're out of their sight until you add them back. That reduces the odds that anyone will creepily obsess over you or try to reach out without your consent. You also have to respond to existing match requests before you can start matching with new people.
If you end up hitting it off with someone and want to make it official, the app can be switched into couples mode. That allows you to keep chatting with each other (so all your romantic history isn't lost), but it doesn't let you match or chat with anyone else. That way you also know the other person isn't keeping their options open.
As with any niche app, the key to its success will be getting enough people on board to give everyone a chance to find. Right now their biggest concentration of users are on the west coast (and in Spain, oddly enough), but it’s available globally.
Only time will tell if this revolutionizes the geek dating scene, but now at least you've got one more way to try to find your manga-loving match.
Cassie Murdoch is Mashable's Culture Editor.. Before coming here, Cassie was Senior Culture Writer at Vocativ. She previously wrote for Jezebel and The Hairpin. Cassie spends most of her time thinking about and consuming cheese in all its glorious forms.
