- Lane Moore, a comedian and author, has been hosting "Tinder Live" for 10 years.
- She said the show taught her how many nice people unknowingly have awful profiles.
As anyone burned out from dating apps will tell you, there are too many profile options to slog through. And many of them are laughably atrocious.
From a comedy perspective, it's been a golden opportunity. Lane Moore, a comedian and author, has hosted "Tinder Live" for 10 years, where she swipes on real profiles in front of an audience.
While rude or bizarre bios are often the subject of collective groans, Moore said she has been surprised by how many genuinely normal, nice people have offputting profiles.
"I hear that from so many men after Tinder Live shows where they're like, 'Oh, I didn't know that sounded that way,'" Moore told Business Insider. "They don't know that something that maybe you could say with a friend where they had your tone of voice and they knew who you were comes off really horribly on the apps."
Moore, who also takes on clients to rework their dating app profiles, understands the struggle to come up with one that stands out. Unlike meeting strangers in real life, "we have to distill everything we are into a couple sentences and a few photos, which is not easy," she said.
From her decade of hosting "Tinder Live" and experience with editing bios, she's encountered some mistakes over and over again. She shared the top three she sees all the time.
Being too negative or judgmental
Moore said the amount of negativity on dating app profiles still surprises her. Examples include "'Why are you going to put a group photo when you're not even the hottest one in there?' 'No fatties, no single moms.' 'I don't want to hear about your kid' — just yelling at this person you're going to be dating and already making them feel like crap," she said.
Specifically, she sees many negative lists of dealbreakers, rather than people positively sharing more about themselves or what they're looking for in a partner.
Leading with group photos
When she first started the show, Moore had a segment called "Which One Is It?" where the audience would try to guess who the profile writer was in the group photo.
"There's just 10 Jasons, and sometimes if you even swipe to the second photo, it's multiple people, third photo is multiple people," she said. "All genders do this. Nobody likes it."
She still can't believe that people don't crop their friends out or rearrange the photos so the group shot isn't the first one.
"There was one photo that came up on a show recently where there were 30 people in the main photo," she said. "If someone's just going off of one photo, how is that your best foot forward?"
Not being vulnerable
Moore said she often has to help clients redo their profiles to be more vulnerable. Instead of being open about their passions or what they're looking for, people often repost the same viral jokes or stories.
"I think there needs to be a little bit more earnestness, a little bit more humanity, honestly," she said. "But I think that people are so afraid of that. So then they list their demands, or they're yelling about all the things that they hate about this app. That's not how you're going to connect with somebody."
While it seems scary to be that honest, Moore said it plays better than hiding behind dealbreakers or group pics. Occasionally, she'll stumble across a genuine profile during "Tinder Live." The room always "Aws."