Swiping right on would-be sweeties as if he were online shopping didn’t feel right to Jack Liu — but spending $1,000 on a personal ad was right on the money.
“My ads got straight to the point,” Liu, 40, a digital marketing entrepreneur from Queens, told The Post, detailing the virtual love campaign he launched in 2020 via Facebook Ads. “Women had to click on it, then fill out a form.”
“I’d read through the responses each day, reach out to the ones who I found interesting and then set up the first Zoom date,” said Liu. “From there, if it went well, we would do an in-person date.”
Self-promoting on cyberspace, although outré, was the singleton’s best defense against online dating fatigue.
It’s an exhaustion that’s swipe-worn plaguing millennials and Gen Zs on the prowl.
Researchers have found that a staggering 78% of daters across the US feel “burnt out” by the underwhelming and unavailing apps, per a June 2024 survey from Forbes Health.
Another recent report via DatingAdvice.com saw that a majority of young men and women — 93% and 88%, respectively — seek unconventional meet-cutes as opposed to matches on apps.
Liu’s apathy towards the platforms bubbled amid the COVID-19 lockdown.
“During the pandemic, it was all online and Zoom speed dating,” he said. “There was just something missing from those approaches.“
“I never felt I’d found the woman I was looking for,” continued the promo pro. “Using the apps, I never felt I was able to convey the best parts of who I am as a person.”
So, Liu took a whack ad it himself.
His cyber flyers, which popped up on Facebook and Instagram timelines for about a year, touted the wannabe boyfriend as a creative, faith-driven entrepreneur who enjoyed traveling. The cutesy description aided Facebook’s algorithms in garnering interest from potential paramours with similar values and weeding out incompatible prospects.
“I thought my ads would yield results,” said Liu, who founded ZipMatches.com to help other singles advertise themselves online. “But couldn’t have imagined how well it would work in finding Bethany.”
The lucky lover boy’s bulletin caught the eye of now-girlfriend Bethany Landby, 36, from Boston, in August 2021.
“When I saw his ad what stood out to me was his tango dancing and other shared interests,” Landby, owner of Allumette Candle Company, a brand aimed at ending human trafficking and domestic abuse, told The Post.
“For men, it seems like they have to swipe endlessly just to get a match, and even then, it might not be a great fit,” she added. “Running an ad can cut through all that and save a lot of time since it’s targeted and done for you.”
And while it’s said that only fools rush in, ultramodern guys and gals looking for love widely prefer taking the least time-consuming, most straightforward path towards happily ever after.
Like Liu, a fellow New Yorker seeking “the one” — who chose to remain anonymous — launched a series of Instagram ads at the top of the year. The millennial also created a Google Forms doc to share his height, likes and background, before presenting a short list of questions to contenders for his heart.
But the avant-garde approach isn’t limited to honey-hunters of the concrete jungle.
Tiffany Wong, 28, from Sydney, Australia, tells The Post that Google Forms helped speed up her search for a suitable suitor in the scummy dating pool.
“Being a single woman in Sydney on the apps is a minefield,” said the down-under darling, a theater and screen actor.
Owing to her hectic schedule, which often sees Wong working 55-hour weeks, she reluctantly turned to Hinge and Tinder for romance assistance in July — but created the personalized survey to streamline the hunt.
The doc, titled “So…you want to go on a date?” asks daters about themselves, their relationship standards and views on social issues. It’s aided Wong in distinguishing the studs from the duds.
“If they answered the form in a way that showed they were intellectual, funny and considerate,” she said. “Usually the dates would be exactly the same.”
The brunette garnered over 25 requests for dates in a month. However, she only agreed to going out with three guys per their gripping responses to her queries.
But rather than finding Mr. Right on an app, Wong randomly landed a man at a ramen shop in Edinburgh last month. The twosome are now in a long-distance relationship.
“He filled out a Google Form, too,” said Wong. “It intrigued me.”
