Looking for love is never easy, no matter what your sexual orientation is. But there’s a new dating app coming soon for queer women and non-binary people and it has a unique approach: no photos. Personals is a text-based app that requires users to describe themselves with words, not images.
Kelly Rakowski got the idea for the app based on her Instagram account, @_personals, which shares user-submitted text-only posts based on personal ads. She started it as a passion project to create a more inclusive community to help people find love and sex as well as friends.
“You’re learning about the person based on their writing and how they express themselves, what they’re looking for and what they desire,” Rakowski explains. “People are looking for a different way of interacting with each other rather than just swiping through selfies. We want more than hot-or-not, throwaway experiences.”
Rakowski says Personals is designed for and open to members of the queer community, and she specifies on the app's website that it welcomes "lesbians, trans men, trans women, non-binary [people], pansexuals, bisexuals, poly, asexuals, & other queer beings," and notes “queer people of color, people with children, 35+ crowd, rural queers, people with disabilities, people with chronic illnesses and international queers” are especially encouraged to join.
Source: Whimn