Page 4 - iAV Digital Magazine #397

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N e w D a t i n g We b s i t e U s e s B o d y O d o r T o Ma t c h Y o u Wi t h A Ma t e
By Joi-Marie McKenzie
A new dating website, launched on Valentine's Day, is all about chem- istry.
Smell Dating, described as the "first mail odor dating service" on its website, is matching potential couples strictly by scent.
For $25, men and women can sign up and receive a white T-shirt in the mail. They wear that shirt for three days and three nights without deodorants and other scents, then return the shirt in a prepaid enve- lope.
"We then receive all the T-shirts. We cut them up into pieces and what you get back is other peo- ple's shirts. We send each participant a series of these pieces. You smell each one and you let us know which ones
you like and then if someone else likes you too, we exchange con- tact information for you guys, with a phone number," co-creator Sam Lavigne told ABC News.
For now, the pool of participants is limited to 100 New York City resi- dents.
Co-creator Tega Brain, who developed the concept for the service, said they currently have 52 participants signed up and limited the pool to the Big Apple "so it was more possibility of people meeting up."
The site doesn't collect typical dating data such as gender, age or even sexual orientation. Brain told ABC News there's a reason for that.
"We've received a lot of
interest in this sort of idea because there's a bit of exhaustion with online dating and the analytical burden of going through profile pics," she said. "So our service, you have to completely rely on your intuition. You can't rely on the preconceived notions of what you want. That's a big relief for someone."
Brain clarified that if a woman looking for a man is paired with another woman acciden- tally, the two could potentially form a platon- ic friendship.
Rachel Herz, author of "The Scent of Desire: Discovering Our Enigmatic Sense of Smell," told ABC News that Smell Dating has the potential to work.
"I do think that theoreti- cally it is legitimate and interesting," she said.
Still, if you're interested in signing up to sniff, Herz has a suggestion -- skip the deodorants, colognes and perfumes. "In order to have the most intimate, accurate scents, you don't want to masque your natural body odors," she said.
But Smell Dating's cre- ators warn you not to take their new dating website too seriously.
"It's an Internet experi- ment," Lavigne said, adding that he views Smell Dating as more of an "art piece," though it could expand to other cities in the future.
He's not even sure if the website is an accurate predictor of love.
"I have no idea," Lavigne admitted with a laugh. "That's what's so exciting about it. Maybe we'll get to find out."
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