FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Tech

Talk Flirty to Me: This Dating App Matches Lovers by Voice

It's called "Revealr," and it's exactly what it sounds like.

There are few things in life more gimmicky than smartphone apps. And even in the increasingly crowded world of Flappy Bird clones, nothing comes close to dating and sex apps in terms of sheer ridiculousness. Alongside the plethora of Grindr-esque location-based apps for all types of orientations and persuasions, there are even apps that will help you remember how to keep having sex once you've managed to land yourself in a committed relationship. And just this morning, I came across a new iPhone dating app that purports to match eligible partners based on the compatibility of their voices.

Advertisement

Yes, you read that right. Their voices. Not their personalities, their "likes," or interests. Or even obvious-seeming factors like, I don't know, physical attractiveness or sexual preference. Nope, just their voices.

The app is called "Revealr," and it functions similarly to other dating apps—the only difference being that instead of filling out a profile you submit a 20-second voice recording. Here's how The Next Web describes it:

At any rate, Revealr is looking to set itself apart from the rest by letting users introduce themselves verbally with a 20-second gambit. This is revealed alongside a pixellated profile photo.

Users can browse through profiles seeing only a forename, location, age and the 20-second audio clip. Once a mutual match is made – i.e. two people ‘like’ each other – both parties are revealed to each other and they are then free to chat.

In other words, someone found a way to turn The Choice, that short-lived reality TV show where celebrity contestants listen to potential dates pitch themselves with a brief, salacious monologue, into a smartphone app. I find the prospect of pitching myself to the mobile meat market with a 20-second audition tape sort of terrifying. Though maybe that's just because people tell me that I sound like Kermit the Frog.

I suppose there's an argument to be made here about how Revealr is a sign of just how petty our romantic behavior has become in the post-Grindr age—that we're now developing increasingly precise tools that allow us to be hypercritical of individual traits, let alone whole people. But even though I doubt that I'll find Revealr particularly useful, I'm still appreciative that weird ideas like this exist.

There's a perfectly good reason for the explosion of this kind of experimental material on the app store, after all. Sex is complicated and intensely personal. While there might be a science (albeit an inexact one) to developing hit mobile games like Candy Crush Saga, intimacy isn't so simple. A substantial chunk of human history has been devoted to figuring out our nether regions.

Disruptive as the iPhone may be, it's not going to answer all of our questions overnight. So while Revealr might not become anything more than a silly little blip on the radar, it at least shows that people are still throwing new ideas at the wall.

Eventually, some of them might start to stick.