Nice to hate you...
The dating app with a difference
Long walks on the beach, holding hands in front of the fire, a walk in the rain, the smell of freshly cut grass – we all know the hackneyed things people say they love when they’re looking for a romantic partner. But that may all be about to change. Last week, a new dating app called Hater was launched, to match people on account of their pet peeves as opposed to their passions.
The app, which aims to “help you meet someone who hates the same stuff as you”, offers the user a selection of thousands of things for which they can register their love, indifference or downright hatred. These range (widely) from Donald Trump to socialising with colleagues, via investment bankers, Lady Gaga, tofu, zumba, complaining,
Downton Abbey and LinkedIn. The app then builds a profile based on those answers to match you with like-minded users. Its 29-year-old creator, former Goldman Sachs employee Brendan Alper, explained: “What we hate is an important part of who we are, but it’s often swept under the rug in our public persona.”
There’s even science to back it up – in 2006, Jennifer Bosson, a social psychologist at the University of South Florida, led a series of studies that examined how people bond via shared negative attitudes toward others.
“There’s something really powerful about the discovery of shared negative attitudes,” she said, calling the mutual antipathy a “third entity”. The object of dislike is often more trivial than it is universal – a celebrity, for example, or a type of food. She surmised that when people reveal something they dislike to a fairly new acquaintance, it creates a form of intimacy. Anyone can share pleasantries – it is taking the risk of sharing something negative that establishes a certain level of trust in a new relationship.
Journalist Esther Walker told me that she and her husband Giles are “entirely bonded” by their common disinterests.
“I know for a fact that Giles fell in love with me when I once did a very cruel impersonation of a Eurotrash banker saying how much he loves his Lexus, because we both hate Eurotrash,” she explained. “I fell in love with Giles when he revealed that he hates festivals – the very principle, the associated fashion, the kind of people who go.”
Their other joint dislikes include “Game of Thrones, Italy, horror films, 4x4s in London, being late, late people, eating after 8.30pm”. Oh, and “Patek Philippe watch adverts”.
These shared irritations can signal an entire belief system. Helen, 29, told me that she and her partner Ross’s shared hatred of square plates keys into a much broader outlook on the world.
“They remind us both of a kind of tedious Home Counties snobbery,” she says. “We hate affectation and people who put no thought into what they do, so I think our mutual hatred of drinks served in jam jars, the overfriendly labels on Innocent Smoothies or artisanal cafés that sell bread for £10 a loaf means something more than a knee-jerk dislike of the actual thing. Our shared hatred says something about our values and what we think is important in life.”
Despite the app being made by an American, Hater embodies a philosophy that is at the heart of the British mentality. We are a proud nation of complainers. There is a down-in-the-trenches camaraderie that links us all; as strangers, as colleagues and as friends and family. Whether it’s grumbling to a similarly red-faced passenger on a delayed bus or ranting by the water cooler about a difficult boss in a fractious office, we’ve always had the hots for getting hot and bothered. AA Gill observed in his book about the English, The Angry Island, “collectively and individually, the English are angry about something. The pursed lip and the muttered expletives, the furious glance and the beetled brow are England’s national costume.” It was only a matter of time before someone tried to access this bonding mechanism for romance.
Shared grievances may not only be binding, but practical. My parents Barbara, 61, and Tony, 72, have been married for 28 years and share a passionate hatred of skiing. My mother said this particular gripe meant it was always easy for them to plan a holiday. “A lot of our friends go on skiing holidays and we’ve always made elaborate excuses together,” she told me. “We both like the après-ski, but neither of us want to dress up like Nanook of the North to go up a hill, then go down it, only to go back up it again.”
When I asked my friend Meg if she and her fiancé Henry, both 29 – who were university sweethearts, before taking a break, then reuniting many years later – have any joint dislikes, she answered: “We love each other because we hate the thought of being in love with anyone else. We both tried it, we both hated it. That’s why we ended up back together and getting married.” Who knew hatred could be so romantic? Loathe is the answer, and you know that for sure.
‘Our shared hatred says something about our values and what we think is important’