There’s growing weariness towards dating app platforms as many question if gamified swiping actually creates connection. Two main culprits seem to be spurring alternatives to finger swiping - algorithms and superficiality.

Dating app algorithms are completely mysterious. There’s little public information about the mechanisms at play even though we’re meant to trust them with our love lives. (source) This WIRED article asks, “In 2021, why are dating algorithms so bad?” The dating app company S’more compiled a study in March of 2020 and again that December, finding that “physical attraction and location — had been supplanted by the need for compatibility and chemistry.” (source) This Michigan State University Study states the obvious - “people's reason for swiping right is based primarily on attractiveness and the race of a potential partner, and that decisions are often made in less than a second.”

This wave against superficiality is why dating apps, game shows, and researchers are challenging “love at first sight” with “love at first sound.” (source) 2013 gave us a taste of this phenomenon with Spike Jonze’s sci-fi romance film Her in which Joaquin Phoenix falls in love with an operating system named Samantha, played by Scarlett Johansson. While anyone would fall in love with Scarlett Johansson's voice (apparently you can hire a female voice actor that sounds like her), it’s not shocking that voice plays a role in attraction. But what about the idea that voice alone can create romantic connection?

Heather Li’s podcast “It’s Nice to Hear You” is “a story about human connection told through a voice-forward matchmaking experiment.” She emphasizes that the connection between voice and attraction has scientific roots. For instance, there is a correlation between pitch levels and perceived attractiveness. Although many studies follow an obsolete gender binary, there are links between physicality and vocal pitch. For men, lower-pitched voices have been linked to broader shoulders and for women, higher-pitched voices with smaller stature (source). The same Smithsonian Magazine article includes sound clips of the “ideal male and female voices,” (source) In a way, these studies bring us back to the very reason why people like Li are trying to change our perceptions of attraction and connection. Defining an “ideal,” voice is the same as rating a face “1-10”, it’s superficial. And people like Li are trying to foster online experiences where attraction and connection are bridged against superficiality.

Li’s experiment isn’t the first time online dating has used voice in this way. The dating app Revealr uses a 20-second audio description to match individuals, Hinge recently added the option of responding to prompts with voice memos. The Netflix reality show Love is Blind takes the experiment to the next level, placing starry-eyed contestants on opposite sides of a wall where they eagerly speak to each other only meeting face to face after a proposal is made. Most pod-ridden couples didn’t work out, a few stayed together and two ended up getting married (source).

We spoke with Li to hear her story behind “It’s Nice To Hear You.” Driven by the “pitfalls of modern dating,” and Li’s own dating app grievances, she delved into research, exploring critical analyses of online dating, and what makes an “ideal partner” among other scientific and social phenomena. At the end of her research, she decided to isolate sound. After months of R&D, she crafted a voice-only blind dating experiment. Under the pseudonym Yves D. Ropper, Li herself plays matchmaker, setting up the game. The six-episode series follows three couples over 30 days. “No names, no direct contact, no pictures” - couples only exchanged a voice memo a day for 30 days during which they “fall into like, reciprocate vulnerability, and develop intimacy.”

In episode 1, Li invites Junon Maceus, a practitioner who assesses vocal energy levels to weigh in on pairing participants based on energy detection. Maceus doesn’t pay attention to words or sounds but to vibrations, explaining “what I'm listening to is the vibration that is in their voice. When someone is speaking, they give off vibrations and my brain automatically compares my vibration to theirs and how different it is. I feel it in my prefrontal lobes... when it comes to matching romantically, you want to be matched with someone whose level of energy [is] similar to yours, because falling in love is on an energetic level.” (Episode 1) Maceus then ranks participants 1-10 based on her energy detections. (Listen to the episode to hear examples).

Li winds up relying on her own cupid devices to match the participants but includes Maceus’ method to “raise awareness and educate people that something like [Maceus’ work] exists. If we rely on and trust tech company algorithms, why couldn’t a method like this work? There’s no scientific model that [dictates] the attributes that are driving compatibility.” Li does notice the way participants influenced one another vocally, “when you get to know someone and you have a connection - you start to learn the same language - your speaking rate, pitch, and tone starts to evolve.”

[SPOILER] In the end, one couple moved in together, one dated, and one stayed friends. “People were pleasantly surprised by how powerful voice is,” she says. Despite the promising outcome, Li is hesitant to state that an audio-only form of connecting is better or worse. Li believes that any approach that focuses on one single modality - be it looks, sound, scent - isn’t the answer. She says, “In order to have a successful virtual experience that will eventually become IRL you can’t restrict it to one modality. For any app or experience to arbitrarily dictate that mode is not fair to everyone. Especially one as intimate as romantic relationships.”

After speaking with Heather, I do believe voice alone can lead to attraction, when one sense is stunted, other senses compensate, “lose a sense, improve another.” (source) I also agree that any platform with a single modality undermines the immersive experience of dating. And we return to the harder question, does attraction lead to connection? One’s voice, like one’s face, is still physical. I wonder if we can undo the physical determinants of attraction to explore what lies beneath - one’s mind, ideas, values, beliefs. A written letter can make us feel, cry, smile. Then again, I can easily fall in lust with the voice behind a really good song. What matters is what you say, not how you sound. After a while, the physical power of a voice or face wears down, then you face this person in their raw form, and that’s where the connection lies. I do believe we’re entering an era of digital dating experimentation that promotes “anti-superficiality,” where unique styles of matchmaking and meeting will become ubiquitous (like bristlr for beard lovers and untappd for beer lovers) but ultimately, a person, not an algorithm, chooses to be or not to be superficial.