It’s a weird time to date.

It was difficult meeting someone when we could all still leave the house, and now the lockdown has added a whole new layer of complication to the process.

For those of you going it alone, the isolation of being at home with no company could be difficult.

There are a few ways to cope with loneliness, like connecting with friends and family online.

On the other hand, if meeting new people, or even dating, is the thing you miss the most, CNN says that there’s an app for that.

Daniel Ahmadizadeh and Christopher Smeder designed Quarantine Together, a dating app for exactly this moment.

“People need to stay home and people will be lonely when they stay at home,” Ahmadizadeh said.

The website and app launched on March 15. It was originally designed to keep its creators entertained during social distancing but as the coronavirus spread, the need for a virtual dating app became clear.

The app is text-based. Every day at 6 p.m., the app asks its registered users whether they washed their hands. If they say yes, they are introduced to another user by text. After 15 minutes, the matched users will be offered a link to video chat.

The benefits of this are many. For one thing, if the virtual date isn’t going well, you just hang up. Who hasn’t wanted to hit the red button on a Tinder date that was more cringe than connection?

Furthermore, matches don’t know anything about each other except their names, which removes the biases associated with swiping culture.

As hookup and regular dating apps become redundant during a lockdown, connecting online is fast becoming the new normal.

It’s hard to say whether the app could work beyond the pandemic. From a user proposition standpoint, it works right now, when virtual meetings are the most encouraged form of dating. But people are going to want to meet at some point. It’s already a looming question for some users.

At the same time, it’s a good way to safely get to know someone before meeting up, so it has the potential to keep going.

Who knows, maybe this pandemic will breed a new way to date online. You can check out the app here.

One last thing – in case nobody told you, Pornhub is free now.

[source:cnn]