LeedsFess hopes algorithms will help students find lockdown love
The university confession page LeedsFess is hoping to help students in Leeds find lockdown love with a new matchmaking quiz.
LeedsLaughLove, which was announced on Valentine’s Day, involves a series of personality and what-if questions that are designed to help lonely students find their perfect match. It is unlike online dating apps as it uses an algorithm to pair participants with a match based solely on their core values, eliminating any choice in the process.
The quiz asks participants to react to statements such as ‘Corbyn would have dealt with Covid by now’, ‘Too many students have come back this term’ and ‘It is weird for a third year to date a fresher.’
It also poses scenarios like the following: ‘You have been offered a job with a £1m annual salary, but you will have a 14-hour workday for the next five years’ and ‘Your match insists on a pre-date Tarot reading to make sure you are compatible.’
The idea of a campus matchmaking quiz was first developed in 2017 by students at Stanford University and has since been modified by students at Oxford University to create their own Oxford Marriage Pact, which is the algorithm being used by LeedsFess.
The students at Stanford created the original quiz to test whether students could find more meaningful connections by breaking the paradox of choice presented by apps like Tinder, which can give users a limitless array of matches, and instead just giving people one match based on their core values.
The original Stanford quiz, which was shared using a few email lists and group chats, became a viral phenomenon on campus and received over 4,000 responses – over half the undergraduate population.
LeedsFess said they created LeedsLaughLove to raise money for charity and to provide some entertainment for students stuck at home in the third national lockdown. “We know everyone is busy cracking on with second-semester work and we wanted to provide some stress relief in the way of a cheeky matchmaker.”
LeedsLaughLove is raising money for the mental health charity Mind, which has supported people with mental health problems throughout the pandemic. LeedsFess says that for £3, participants will receive three matches instead of one.
The quiz closes to submissions on 20th February. It has so far received over 1400 submissions and raised over £1100 for charity.
