'Refrigerdating': The Branded, Dystopian Dating Experience That Absolutely No One Wanted

If swiping left on someone’s actual face didn’t feel impersonal enough, now you can judgmentally swipe on their leftover Thai food or brand choice of mayo. This is thanks to the Samsung-sponsored dating app that absolutely no one in the world asked for: Refrigerdating.

It allows you to match with other daters based on photos of the inside of one’s fridge. The app syncs with Samsung’s $3,000 Family Hub refrigerator, which shows you the contents of your fridge on your smartphone (the idea being that if you’re at the grocery store, you can check if you’re out of milk). But, when synced up with the Refrigerdating app, it “lets you see the inside of someone else’s fridge,” reports the New York Times.

As the Refrigerdating website explains, “Simply upload an image and let the world know what kind of person you are.” Because, as the saying goes, you are the contents of your fridge.

The Times tells us that Refridgerdating’s founder, John Stonehill, found his wife by way of judging her fridge. The first time he was invited to her house, “he headed straight for the refrigerator,” says the Times. It was love at first sight: she had a “stainless steel” number “with a water and ice dispenser,” which “told him that [she] was financially comfortable.” There’s more: “The contents were revealing, too: a bottle of wine, a bottle of champagne, hummus, olives, fresh fruits and vegetables.” They’ve been married for nine years now, all thanks to the hummus.

Before meeting his girlfriend-turned-wife, Stonehill encountered another date’s fridge “that was so overcrowded with food it reminded him of being on the subway at rush hour,” says the Times, in all seriousness. “He felt that pursuing that relationship would have been too chaotic for him.” And now, thanks to personal neuroses mixed with capitalistic opportunism, here we have Re-friger-dating.

The Times gives the app a stunningly earnest level of consideration, asking: “Gleaning information from what we eat may be an unusual way to meet a mate, but does it reveal who we really are?” The Times goes on to cite research about risk takers liking spicy food and people with a sweet tooth being “more likely to volunteer to help clean up their city after a major flood” and “how bitter taste preferences might be associated with antisocial personality traits” and the “link between eating certain foods and depression.”

I think that a quick gander at the Refrigerdating website suggests that it is not so deserving of serious consideration. After asking visitors to upload an image of the insides of their fridge, it prompts you to click a button to “LEARN MORE ABOUT KITCHENS AND LOVE” (i.e. have Samsung try to sell you some kitchen shit under the auspices of improving your dating life). I clicked, because what in the fuck, and was served up a slideshow of the insides of various Samsung fridges, carefully decorated with different types of food and in various styles of organization, with some of the most insane ad copy I have possibly ever encountered in my life:

Being vain when it comes to your body suggests vanity when it comes to your home as well. Our refrigerators offer a slimmed design, to match with muscle definition.

A lot of fine ingredients. This person gazes at food the way you want him or her to gaze at you.

The choice of brands that your date makes, reveals a lot about who he or she wants to be. … But ‘I say tomato, you say tomato’, it’s totally possible to keep separate bottles of ketchup if you can’t agree. [Ed note: ?!?!?!?!?!]

Sugar, sugar, sugar in all its forms. Is this the home of a child? Or just someone who is enjoying the freedom of deciding over one’s own fridge.

A chaotic fridge can be a sign of a chaotic soul.

Hoho, this fridge echoes of emptiness. The person living here doesn’t seem to have the same need for nourishment as the rest of us.

Hoho, my soul echoes with the emptiness of brands trying to capitalize on the search for love.