It may be a sad reality that we bond most with the people who share a common dislike of something. As soon as you find a person who hates nature hikes just as much as you do, you feel more connected and understood.
Hater latches on to this idea of mutual negativity, functioning as a dating app that matches you with other users based on things you both hate.
Not surprisingly, people are getting on board. The one-month old app has already accumulated 200,000 users around the world, and is currently topping the charts in Germany as the #1 lifestyle app.
The format of the app is similar to Tinder, where you swipe right if a hater catches your eye, and then you have the opportunity to chat with them about your common hatred of knitwear.
Brendan Alper, creator of Hater, quit his job as a banker to become a comedy writer, where discovered a huge part of a person’s personality lies in their dislikes. He also came across an actual study from 2006 that revealed people who dislike the same thing form closer bonds.
After having a bit of a play around on the app, we can confirm that it is pretty easy to use. We are apprehensive to use the term “user friendly”, because friendliness doesn’t real seem to be Hater’s objective.
To create a profile, you need to connect to your Facebook account, where photos and basic information are transferred and edited.
Then, this is where it gets interesting. The screen pops up with topics to choose from, like politics, sports, food and so on. You can either swipe up to “love”, down to “hate”, right to “like” or left to “dislike”. You get the idea.
There are over 3000 topics to choose from, varying based on current trends. Some taboo subjects come up like “texting while driving” and “abortion”, however some topics are off-limits to prevent hate speech of any kind. Hater prevents any votes on topics about race, ethnicity or socio-economic status.
After a lot of weighing in on issues, Hater matches you with like-minded people, showing you what percentage of compatibility you have with the matchee.
In a weird way, Hater is better than Tinder, because at least you’re not judging based purely on looks. There is an element of “personality” thrown in there for good measure.
