According to eHarmony, about 80 million Americans are currently using dating apps or websites. And one in ten couples in the U.S. found love after first meeting online. 20 years ago, there may have been some stigma associated with meeting your partner virtually, but nowadays, it’s completely normal. In fact, it can feel almost impossible to meet new people without the help of the internet!
Despite how normalized dating apps have become, not everyone has figured out how to curate the perfect online profile. From blurry group photos where you can’t tell who to look at to profiles full of crude and discriminatory comments, there’s a reason why many people consider dating apps to be cesspools. And nobody knows that better than the members of Dating Profiles That Make You Cringe.
To find out more about this amusing community that has amassed an impressive 188K members, we reached out to the group’s administrator. They were kind enough to have a chat with Bored Panda and explain how the community came about in the first place.
“This group was an inspiration from a previous group that got shut down,” the admin shared. “It's a reboot I've been hoping to keep alive to sensibilize people to their socially unacceptable profiles and expose the cringe this day and age's dating experience brings.”
We also asked the administrator what the members of the group are like. “The community is pretty active,” they noted. “We do have a lot of headaches at times, but we keep things on track the best we can.”
And it doesn't seem like the community will slow down any time soon. As of now, the group has seen over 860 new posts in the past month and gained over 3,800 new members in the past week.
Next, we wanted to know if they had any favorite posts that they had ever seen shared in the group. “I can't name a specific post that made me laugh the most,” the admin says. “But things that get submitted sometimes that would break community standards seem to be the best behind-the-scenes posts.”
As someone who has seen potentially thousands of dating profiles at this point, we asked the admin if they had any advice on how to create the perfect profile.
“I think the dos and don'ts would be: just being authentic but also keep in mind that people will judge no matter what,” they told Bored Panda. “I'd say just stay between the lines of socially acceptable things you'd say in public.”
Jason Patrick Fisher, another administrator, also weighed in with some info about the group.
“Having been brought in from running some volatile diet and lifestyle groups, I am constantly impressed by the content and the responses [in this community],” he shared. “Men, women, age, ideology... All regardless- as anyone can come in, join us, and have a nice time there celebrating everyone's differences, if they're open to it!”
