Love factually: Dating start-ups promise to cut the cheats |
Love factually: Dating start-ups promise to cut the cheats
Dennie Smith was standing in a recreated WW1 trench when she had a revelation.
The self-confessed military history geek was on a trip with fellow enthusiasts and realised a big flaw in online dating apps. They didn't cater for the people peering over the rim of the trench with her.
"A lot of dating sites are just about volume, and they include fake profiles that conceal scams," she says.
Smith, who owns a hairdressing salon in Croydon, south London, decided she needed to branch out into the dating business with a focus on "the big market of geeky people".
The founder of the Geek Meet Club wanted to bring like-minded people together and exclude the regiments of fakes she says have undermined online dating.
Vetting each applicant personally seems to please Smith. "I'm very good at spotting a fake. But sometimes it's easy, one person submitted a photo of Boris Johnson!"
And she's happy to decline around 50 applicants a month rather than expose her 3,300 members to bad behaviour.
Geek Meet Club exists to bring dating back into the offline world. "We do events, monthly quizzes, and I want to hire venues so people can come in costume."
This nod to elaborate disguises, favoured by attendees at science fiction conventions, hints at Smith's core audience. "Comic and sci-fi conventions are a big pull for geeky people."
The idea is to get people meeting in person as quickly as possible because online dating has become a minefield littered with deception and frauds.
"I tell my members to meet in person as soon as possible, go for a coffee in the park, or on the High Street, to find out if the other........