Like many people living in this 21st-century nightmare of a world, I have used dating apps. I've used Tinder, I've used Bumble - I've even had a few people slide into my Insta DMs with a flirty "heyyyy" on more than one occasion - and, I have to say, they're often more of a curse than a blessing.
Yes, I met some lovely people, and yes I did actually get a couple of (reasonably) successful relationships out of it... but, boy, I put in a lot of effort along the way. On more than one occasion, in fact, after half an hour of left-swiping on people with the Snapchat dog filter covering half their faces, I found myself handing my phone over to my best friend and saying, "Please just find me someone nice."
As it turns out, I probably should have been letting my pals choose my dates all along, and if you find yourself feeling the same way, there's now a dating app out there just for you.
Betches, a media company, has teamed up with Match in order to create a new, free dating app called Ship. The name comes from the relatively newfangled internet term, which is used as a verb in order to say that two people (real or fictional) belong together - i.e. "I totally ship Rachel and Joey over Rachel and Ross". And, in the app, your friends can ship you with your new potential bae.
"Dating apps are a huge part of today’s dating culture and people in relationships are begging their single friends to let them swipe for them," said the founders of Betches. "We felt like there could be a better way to incorporate your friends into your online dating experience."
But don't worry, your friends won't get all the control. You will still be able to swipe for your matches, but your decision will then be sent to your "crew" - a group of people (single or otherwise) who you've picked to be the jury for your decisions.
"Every woman knows half the fun of dating is talking about it with your friends, so we took that behavior and put it into the Ship app," said the Betches team.
But this isn't to say that guys can't get their mates in on the decision-making, too. Granted, it's usually women that like to discuss the nuances of whether a potential partner is right for them or not, but I'm sure there are some men out there who would appreciate some advice from their friends.
The only downside, of course, is that - if you sign up to Ship - your profile will be torn apart by a bunch of strangers on the internet. But, as someone who has screenshotted terrible Tinder profiles before and put them in a Whatsapp group of at least a dozen people, I can assure you now: if you already use online dating, you've already been featured heavily in a group chat - so you might as well just roll with it!
