The Catch Review: Say Goodbye to Online Dating Creepers

The Catch Review: What You Need to Know

The entire point of online dating is to get offline. Too many dating sites are so focused on improving online matches and relationships that they forget that (rather important) point. This is why I’m writing this The Catch review — because it’s about time we found a dating app that focuses all of its energy on getting you out into the real world to enjoy one another without the help of a keyboard. The Catch Dating App is the only application I’ve found thus far that encourages meatspace meetings in a way that goes against the digital hookup culture of traditional dating websites. Not only does it get you and your date offline as quickly as possible, it gives women the primary role in choosing a partner. That puts a giant spoke in the figurative wheel of misogyny so typical of old-fashioned dating sites.

The Catch Review: Women’s Choice

Before I wrote The Catch review, I had given up on internet dating. I was bored with the way I, as a woman, was targeted by rude, overly forward men. I simply didn’t have the time to weed through the hundreds of messages I received every week, either. The male of the species is an active dating site user to put it mildly, so when I found out about The Catch Dating App, I decided to give the world of virtual romance another shot, purely because it’s women who have control of the process of finding a partner. After I’d set up my profile, I was eager to find out what The Catch Dating App was all about.

The app functions around a female-centric game. Recently, the site has made the games last a day, which is a marked improvement when you consider that sites like Tinder provide instant gratification. I want to be able to set up dates for Friday on Thursday, and The Catch dating app now offers that kind of immediacy. I started this The Catch review on Wednesday, which left plenty of time for me to schedule a Saturday night date. The experience was like a more precise, secure version of Tinder. Some large presses are calling it “Micro-Tinder.”

3 questions

To kick off this The Catch review, I had to set up three questions. Not a single man could see my profile unless I indicated interest. That meant the miracle of all online dating miracles happened: I didn’t receive a barrage of impolite, creepy messages from a group of strange men sitting in their mothers’ basements eating Cheetos and waiting for the next female to create a profile. The day I spent creating The Catch review was amazingly peaceful.

I set up my location and age preferences, and the first four men who responded answered my questions. After the 24 hour period was finished, I had to rank those three answers, along with their responses to the site’s generic question: “Where would you take me out on a first date?” The app functions like a cross between a reality television show and an old fashioned dating contest. The prize? A date with me. That’s how the app encourages real world meetings, and it works. I did, indeed, get to have my weekend date.

The Catch Dating App is as accurate at partnering as you make it. If you set questions that are too broad or generic, you’re not likely to find Mr Right. If you’re savvy with your games, though, it can work as well as the online dating sites that require 200 responses merely to fill out a profile.

The Catch Review: Statistics

The Catch Dating App was soft launched on Valentines day of 2015.

Whether you’re looking to date, meet your soul mate, or find casual hook-ups, the app will be useful for you. Focus your questions on your relationship goals, and you will easily make the process suit your purposes.

It’s free of charge, and the iOS 8.0 version is 17.5 MB in size. You must be 17 years or older to use it, and it’s become a popular download at the iTunes store. No membership figures have been released, but the company is still relatively small, with three employees. It has enough members to function well as a dating app if you live in the U.S., but you might find it limiting if you’re a foreigner. It hasn’t quite penetrated the market outside North America. As yet, it’s also only offered in English. Its demographic is the mid-twenties to forties market.

The Catch appeals to people of above average intelligence given that it relies so heavily on in-depth text-based communication. If you’re fond of wordsmiths, this is the app for you.

For the moment, The Catch is available on iPhone, but the company will be rolling out an Android version as well as versions for those living outside the U.S. There are just over a thousand people on the waiting list for those functionalities, so when they do launch, you’ll have plenty of fish in foreign, Android seas to choose from.

The Catch Review: What it Packs

The Catch is a simple app. It gives you multiple image uploads, fields for age, career, and height, and the stats of the gents you can invite. The contest itself is remarkably easy to use. Once you’ve picked your winner, you can chat freely with him. Women tend to be choosy about height, but less picky about age. Whatever your preferences, you can specify them. Men also get a back-end algorithm that gives preference to frequent users. The Catch’s blog is fun to read and offers useful tips about how to find your match.

The Catch Review: Last Word

For my The Catch Review, I’d offer four stars out of five. Obviously, the women’s choice set up earned most of those. I’ve spoken to enough online dating creepers to write a novel about them, and there are not enough hours in the day for answering OKCupid-length surveys. The Catch lets me date the lazy, fussy way, and that’s exactly how I like it. They can’t have my fifth star, though, purely because the app hasn’t reached full market penetration, so it’s quite useless for Steve Jobs haters and foreigners.

As for my date, I’ll be seeing him again this weekend. He’s probably not my Mr Big, but he might just be my Mr Right Now.

Download from

App Store 4/5