Hashsnap: Combating The One-Second Swipe Culture

Photo by See-Ming Lee

The Internet exploded earlier this month when Vanity Fair columnist Nancy Jo Sales posted an article called “Tinder and the Dawn of the Dating Apocalypse,” examining the anonymity that popular dating apps have introduced into modern-day dating culture.

Towards the beginning of her article, Sales describes a conversation she had with several young men in a New York bar. The men were bragging about the quantity of sex they’ve been having through dating apps–without having to do much work to get it. One man said he had slept with five women in eight consecutive days, but when he was asked to describe his conquests, all he knew about them was where they worked.

Another young man featured in the article shared with Sales that he’s been using online methods of dating, most recently dating apps, but originally the “Casual Encounters” section of Craigslist.com. He stated that finding potential dates or hookups via “Casual Encounters” wasn’t “as easy” as dating apps, because without a dating profile boasting your shirtless mirror selfies or pictures with your dog, you have to grab and keep the attention of your would-be matches simply by what you type and send in your messages.

Granted, online dating is a great way to meet someone you might not otherwise meet, especially in this day and age when people can (and do) use their Smartphones for almost everything.

The problem is establishing a personal connection through an app that’s as meaningful as one you might make with someone you meet elsewhere. This is hard to do when the only basis you have from which to form an opinion of someone is their age, location, and a few Facebook photos that may be outdated.

Today, dating apps are teaching us to make one-second decisions based on very little information. The profiles on most other dating apps look exactly the same–there’s nothing real about them. The conversation Sales had with these young men show that society has been teaching us that this is normal—forming a relationship, whether that relationship lasts for one year or one night, with someone of which you know almost nothing about.

Of course, with the plethora of dating apps that make it easy to make a one-second decision about someone based on very little information, it’s no wonder that the dating culture has ended up here. There are a ton of dating apps out there–we think what society needs now is a relationship app. That’s why we created Hashsnap.

Hashsnap is a relationship app, not a dating app. We provide a platform for like-minded singles to overcome “one second swipe” culture and find a relationship, not a hookup.

With Hashnap, you can upload real-time photos and videos through the app’s camera to several set themes–#HiddenTalent, #HavingFun, etc. These themes make it easy to better show your personality and find a higher quality match, or, at the very least, avoid an awkward first date. People can pretend to be whomever they want with a basic dating app profile, but it’s pretty hard to hide your personality when you’re uploading pictures and videos of what you’re doing in real life.

We encourage users to spend time building their profiles, and to not quickly swipe through others’ profiles in order to establish and maintain a meaningful relationship with someone you might match with. No more one-second swiping!

Unlike that gentleman in the bar who only knew where the girls he’d slept with worked and nothing else, we value quality over quantity. We think it’s important to build a quality profile so you can find real people with whom you can build a real, lasting relationship.

We strive to change online dating behavior by eliminating superficiality. After all, real, lasting relationships don’t work if they’re only based on something skin-deep.

We’re directly combating the dating apocalypse—join us!

Making Online Dating Less Superficial

Using today’s dating apps often feels like using slightly different versions of Hot or Not. You’re mostly deciding who you like based on looks, and you feel like everyone’s doing the same to you.

Is everyone shallow? No. But the way dating apps are designed today, online daters are forced to be superficial.

The problem is that dating apps make it difficult for you to show off your personality in pictures. And as long as profile pictures contain little else about a person, besides their appearance, people will continue to be superficial online daters.

But there is hope. As we dig deeper into how people discover one another’s personality, you can start seeing how dating apps can make it easier for you to show off your personality in pictures.

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Personality is observed, just like appearance. You learn about someone’s personality by observing their behaviors and finding patterns that stand out. For instance, if you observe a particular co-worker always completing their work on time, while others do not, you might conclude he’s a hard-working guy.

You observe both appearance and personality, but not in the same way. Normally, getting one good unobstructed view of a person’s physical body gives you an almost complete picture of their appearance. But to get the same complete picture of their personality, one view isn’t enough.

That’s because when you observe personality, you’re observing behavior. And with only one view, you’re observing behavior in only one context. To get a complete picture of their personality, you must observe their behavior in a variety of situations, or contexts.

Some common contexts you might find yourself or others in:

• Going to happy hour at a bar with co-workers
• Giving a friend advice
• Making breakfast before work
• Talking about recent movies you’ve seen
• Getting to work
• Watching sports on TV
• Arguing about politics with your family

Observing how someone behaves in contexts like these helps you discover parts of their personality. And the more contexts you observe them in, the more parts you discover.

For example, if you observed a stranger in the context of ordering food at a restaurant, you might discover they’re funny if they joked with the waiter or that they’re indecisive if they took a long time deciding what to order – but you probably won’t discover whether or not they get easily jealous. To discover that, you’ll need to observe their behavior in a different context, like: talking to your girlfriend about her ex-boyfriends.

In order to discover someone’s personality, you need to observe their behavior in a variety of contexts

Dating apps already create a variety of contexts for you to act in. Most provide questionnaires that you can answer in writing. Each question creates a new context for you to act in, and an opportunity for others to discover your personality.

So why is everyone still superficial online daters?

The problem is these questionnaires can only be answered in text, which most people won’t read. Reading profiles is an investment in time and energy. And scanning people’s profile pictures is an efficient way to filter out profiles not worth investing in. So while many people will look at your profile pictures, only a small fraction of them will also read your profile.

That means dating apps will help you be a less superficial online dater by making it easier to show off personality in pictures, as opposed to text. And they could do this by allowing you to post pictures in different contexts. For instance, they could provide questionnaires or prompts that can be answered with pictures.

In their current state, dating apps only have ONE context for you to post your pictures in. There’s no theme or question you’re posting to, you’re simply posting pictures you’d want your profile visitors to see.

If dating apps treated text like they do pictures, they’d only provide one big, unlabeled textbox for you to fill out. If that were the case, you’d always be writing in the same context: writing content for my dating profile visitors to read.

And you wouldn’t be able to recreate the same context the questionnaire created.

Take for example, one of the questions in OkCupid’s questionnaire: “The most private thing I’m willing to admit”. Whatever you write is in the context of answering the question ‘The most private thing I’m willing to admit’ in a questionnaire that my dating profile visitors will read. If you answer “I cheated all throughout preschool”, you might come off as sarcastic, funny or someone who doesn’t take themselves too seriously.

Now, imagine again that you only have one unlabeled textbox to fill out and no questionnaire. You decide to write the same thing in that one textbox: “The most private thing I’m willing to admit is that I cheated all throughout preschool”. In this context, you’re more likely to come off as eccentric, quirky or socially awkward. That’s because whatever you write is forced to be written in the context of writing content for my dating profile visitors to read. And writing such a statement seems out of place and superfluous in that context.

In today’s dating apps, you’re uploading pictures in only one context, and it’s constraining your ability to show off your personality. Hashsnap is planning to provide a larger variety of contexts for you to post your pictures in, like other apps do for your written content. In turn, your pictures would show off your personality and not just your appearance, making you and others less superficial online dater.

Who Are You Really In Your Dating Profile?

Imagine you’ve been active on several different dating apps for the past 6 months. And on each app, you used the same three profile pictures the entire time: you standing in front of a snowy mountain range, you eating cake at your brother’s wedding, and you pensively staring into the ocean. You also include the same self-summary containing all the same witty jokes and movie references into all your profiles.

In those 6 months, tens of thousands of prospective dates glanced at your 3 photos, and a small fraction of them also read your 2 paragraph self-summary. And an even smaller fraction sent you a message or wink or just “liked” your profile. All the while, you’ve been sending messages too and having conversations that normally end as soon as they start, but on rare occasion, lead to scheduling a date.

You’re left wondering, “What do all these likes, winks, and awkward conversations say about the kind of person people think I am?”

Your dating profile represents a Frankenstein version of who you are: A fleshy mass assembled by body parts your photos happen to capture, and that possess whatever bits and pieces of your personality the profile hints at. Your 3 photos and half-assed self-summary probably won’t communicate the same personality or image you, your family, or close friends know you possess.

So when people “like” your dating profile or profile picture, which part of you are they liking?

Today’s dating apps don’t provide feedback on why people like you. There are plenty of features that tell you whether people like you, but none that also explain why. People’s preferences are complex, not everyone will like you for the same reason. Some might like you because they think you’re funny and some because they think you’re smart. With access to that kind of feedback, you’d have a better idea about who the Frankenstein is that’s representing you and whether he’s representing you accurately.

If you’re checking out someone’s profile, knowing why other people liked it is helpful too. If you have a fetish for, say, classy folk, it’d be helpful to know which users other people thought were classy.

We wanted HashSnap to provide such a feedback mechanism. That’s why we’ve developed Personality Tags. They’re used to anonymously express you like a snap and the personality trait you’d attribute to the user based off of that snap. After selecting a personality tag, you’ll be able to see how others tagged the same snap. On the opposite end, you’ll be able to see how others tag your personality based off each of your snaps.

Anyone With A Smartphone Is A Photographer

When a skilled artist recklessly splatters paint all over a canvass, it’s done with intention. They might be expressing how they felt during a traumatic event, or experimenting with new color combinations, or they could be creating a sort of anti-art that’s intended to mock contemporary artwork.

Although their artwork might look like it was created by a 5-year-old, their artwork isn’t limited by the same poor technical skills and low intelligence of a 5-year-old (sorry kids), so when skilled artists do something, they’re probably doing it on purpose

Since personal cameras were first introduced, the average, non-photographer has been taking photos like a 5-year-old photographer.

In the past, the average person didn’t have the time, money or incentive to use photography as a medium of self-expression. Photos were taken to visually record reality, in a literal sense, without any intention to express oneself. Only until recently, in the era of smartphones and photo-sharing applications, is this no longer the case.

Personal cameras used to be very expensive and hard to carry around, and photos would take time and money to develop. More importantly, there were no easy ways to share photos with people who don’t already know you. So it didn’t make sense to use photography as a medium of self-expression when the people most likely to see your photos were friends and family who knew you well already.

But as smartphones and photo-sharing apps become more and more popular, the cost of being a photographer plummets. We’re now able to take high resolution photos and videos at any moment with virtually no overhead. Some apps, like Snapchat and Tinder, allow us to easily draw on or add captions to these photos and videos. And all this media can be shared instantly with a limitless audience of family, friends, followers, matches, or complete strangers.

In this new technological era, the limits that held us back as 5-year-old photographers have been lifted. Expressing ourselves through photography is no longer costly, inconvenient, or unnecessary. We’re like artists whose artwork is no longer limited by technical skill, but by imagination and creativity.

Photography is opening up as an accessible medium of self-expression to the general public. In a sense, anyone with a smartphone and internet connection can be a photographer and express who they are and their ideas through their artwork, with no previous training or experience necessary.

HashSnap welcomes the influx of new photographers and empowers them to show, rather than tell, their prospective dates “a little about themselves” using this newfound artform.