Dating App Stroovy is Like Yelp for Exes

Online data apps are best at giving you a sense of who’s out there, but they can also be a huge waste of time. That guy you met on Tinder who shared your interest in old Woody Allen movies may turn out to have more in common with the neurotic director than you bargained for; or the girl who emphasizes that she’s “chill” on her profile is in fact the exact opposite. A new review-based dating app Stroovy combines Yelp and online dating to make a better use of your hours.

The overarching mission of Stroovy, according to the app’s description, is to preclude the possibility of deception. Apparently 80 percent of people lie on their dating profiles, and most of us are familiar with the dangers of being Catfished in today’s digital world. That’s where Stroovy comes in: users can write reviews of people they’ve been on dates with, so others are more familiar with the real person behind the profile.

Stroovy has several features that ensure online daters are getting what they signed up for. The reviews are based on first-hand experiences and provide helpful ways to discern if someone’s personality in real life matches up with the one on his or her profile.

A bad review could spare you from a miserable date, while a positive recommendation could be the encouragement you need to meet up with someone. The ability to authenticate a date beforehand can protect users from sex offenders and predators, and a facial recognition feature potentially links a user’s various dating profiles together — which could highlight any discrepancies between them.

Here’s how it works:

After you initially sign up by inputting basic information (name, sex, birthday, etc.), you’re immediately required to write a review of someone before you continue any further. The review writing process is surprisingly extensive: first you have to state on which dating site you met the person, your relationship to them, their name on the dating site, the person’s location, a picture of the person, and a short review of your experience with that person (note: profanity will be flagged).

The next page requires you to write everything you know about that person, including their marital status, if that person has or wants kids, their ethnicity, body type, height, if the person smokes, drinks, or does drugs, their education, job, and income.

Call me sensitive, but it seems pretty rude to share a person’s income with the rest of the Stroovy world. Once you’ve reviewed someone, you earn 2,000 points, although it’s not clear what purpose the Stroovy points serve.

While Stroovy seeks to fix an authenticity problem in the online dating universe, the open forum set-up will likely lend itself to plenty of trolls spewing vitriol. You may be privy to the first-hand experiences of other users — but who’s to say that the person reviewing is any more trustworthy than the person being reviewed?

The inherent subjectivity of dating seems to complicate matters beyond the simple solution of drawing conclusions from a few reviews. It’s also reminiscent of other people-rating apps like Peeple, which remains largely unpopular. Stroovy launched in late March, so it’s only a matter of time before we find out if people start Stroovin’ before they get groovin’.