Do angels watch over us, make sexy Halloween costumes, or make less fun costumes than demons? This is one of the many eccentric questions asked on the dating app SCORE, which matches users based on their answers to five-question quizzes. Here's how it works: When you come across the profile of someone who seems like they might interest you, you click a "score" button and select a quiz under your category of choice, such as "I'm feeling" (with questions like "I feel like... a. getting political, b. unpluggling") or "in my head" (with questions like "plastic... a. surgery, b. cards, c. explosives").
Then, you answer five questions, the other person answers the same five questions, and your "score" comes in. If you have two or more answers in common, you unlock each other's photos. (The initial profiles simply have one blurred photo.) If you have three or more answers in common, a message line opens between you. If you don't unlock anything, you can keep taking more quizzes until you do.
As you can probably tell, these questions are a lot quirkier than your standard OkCupid match questions like "do you think women have an obligation to keep their legs shaved?" and "do you like horror movies?" Unlike OkCupid's surveys, SCORE's aren't used to calculate "match" percentages — or "enemy" percentages, for that matter. “We made it so there’s no negativity. There are no wrong answers. What you answer is your answer. There is no real rejection model," SCORE co-founder and developer Casey Cordes tells Bustle. Plus, they're trying to get at something deeper.
What The Questions Are Based On:
Cordes says too many dating apps match people based on criteria people put on checklists — but "you could have something in common that doesn’t have to do with any list, and that could be what keeps you together forever.” SCORE's questions, he said, are based on topics that might come up while you're sitting at a bar. (I'd love to know which bars he goes to because I'd be far more interested in discussing angels than the usually pickup lines I get.) In other words, he said, "it’s not what kind of dog you have. It’s what part of a dog drives you crazy.”
Your Privacy on SCORE:
SCORE also prides itself on protecting its users' privacy. Unlike apps like Tinder and Hinge that connect to your Facebook profile, SCORE lets you use whatever name you want, and you don't have to enter your location. “You can play as many times as you want and not reveal yourself," Cordes said.
My Thoughts:
While SCORE's questions are fun, I'm not sure how much my mental associations with the word "plastic" have to do with my romantic compatibility with anyone. I personally prefer the straightforwardness of OkCupid's questions — someone's answer to "Do you feel there are any circumstances in which a person is obligated to have sex with you?" will actually affect whether or not I want to date them. SCORE's questions are more like conversation starters than actual compatibility metrics.
Another reason I haven't yet ended up meeting anyone off SCORE is that the profiles contain very minimal information. You get someone's age, gender, and location along with one sentence about them, a blurred photo, one thing they love, and one hobby or interest. Once you match, you get more photos (and the profile photo is no longer blurred) but no more information unless you chat. Plus, you can't see what questions you answered in common, so you can't really use your common answers as conversation starters — though a representative from SCORE tells me that feature is on their roadmap.
People who want to try out SCORE should go into the experience for the fun of the quizzes themselves rather than with the expectation of getting a date. Cordes admits that some people play without even looking to meet people. Perhaps the quizzes could adapt the model of the typical online quiz, with results telling quiz-takers about their personalities, for added value. The chance of meeting someone with similar results is an added bonus, but the interesting questions are the real gimmick.
If you want to try out SCORE yourself, you can download it from the Apple store or Google Play.
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Images: Monkey Business/Fotolia; Courtesy of SCORE
