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Every Saturday, when Randa Sakallah sends out her free newsletter Hot Singles, she hopes to get a match. Maybe not a love that will last forever, but a temporary connection between two people who are interested in something more.
Their emails feature profiles of eligible New Yorkers framed by old-fashioned personal ads. One day, subscribers might learn about a “spiked seltzer-loving, beat-boxing, outstanding techno dancer.” Another is “31M Pomodoro Papi” looking for “Bucatini Baby”.
Each subject answers at least three questions: What is your toxic feature? What makes you hot? What are you looking for?
Ms. Sakallah, 27, said in a recent phone interview, “It’s a good little warning that gets people talking about themselves positively in this dating environment where it’s a little awkward to introduce yourself.” moon. Interested readers are encouraged to email him their personal information to move on to the featured “hot single” that will take him there.
Ms. Sakallah launched Hot Singles, a Substack newsletter when she moved from San Francisco to New York last October. Back then, many singles, hot or otherwise, were desperate about the pandemic and the ways it’s complicating the dating equation. Finding a potential partner in the age of apps was hard enough.
“The current ways of meeting people had become obsolete,” he said.
Back in the Bay Area, Ms. Sakallah was engaged in the matchmaking game: the participants 36 Questions That Lead to LoveIt was developed by a psychologist to help couples assess their potential for intimacy. He also took note of an Instagram account called Personals, which borrowed from old text-based methods to help strangers connect in ways that felt new. (The account was later replaced by an app called Lex.)
Instead of “Why should you date them,” Ms. Sakallah said, “I thought it would be great to make a dating profile that focused on the whole person.” you feel the person’s voice.”
“Personality is screaming through Hot Singles and it’s very mixed with something like Hinge,” said Avery Bedows, a 24-year-old subscriber who hit a spotlight single. It wasn’t a match, but it still reads.
Spenser Mestel (“32M Prince of Polls Seeking Active Voters with Kindred Soul”) described the newsletter as “one man’s dream.” He had met Ms. Sakallah in a group of Substack writers and was intrigued by her alternative to the “stylized, stale demands” common to dating practices such as Hinge’s “Two truths and a lie”.
“I have no desire to live in apps,” Mr. Mestel said. Being on Hot Singles meant he could chase after others. (Indeed, two people reached out to him to express their interest.)
App fatigue is a feeling many people experience, according to Stephanie Tong, director of the Social Media and Relational Technologies lab at Wayne State University. Browsing online dating is starting to feel “like a part-time job.”
Dr. Tong said it was helpful for Hot Singles to work as an interview. Asking questions makes people think and present themselves as if they were writing their own profile. He also said it “seems to be more accurate” because the profiles are written through an intermediary. “You don’t just write how awesome it is and post it on your own profile, someone else might be more likely to believe it because it’s being discussed by someone else.”
Success so far has been modest. Responses ranged from zero to five per single, and some connections resulted in a month or two of dating. The newsletter’s subscriber base remains small: around 800, with the most popular Substack posts having close to 100,000 subscribers. But Ms. Sakallah has a growing waiting list of singles who want to stand out – over 60 and that’s just the ones that passed the Google Forms scan.
Ms. Sakallah has since launched a monthly advice column as part of her newsletter. While he doesn’t make any money from Hot Singles – he works in tech – he has some ideas for the future, such as increasing the frequency of his newsletter and sending personalized explosions.
“I’m personally more interested in how it makes the experience of dating and finding people to date more fun,” she said. As long as it doesn’t involve scrolling, it should be.
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