Every so often, when I’ve got enough time to remove myself from the hustle and bustle of the cesspool that some people refer to as “inner-city Sydney”, I hop in my car and make the journey back up to the New England. As a twenty-something from the country, there’s a few things I’ve come to notice whenever I make the pilgrimage up through Gloucester to get back home.
Obviously, the classic one is the stars; with the amount of light pollution radiating from Sydney’s skyscrapers, the constellations spend months at a time hiding from the view of the naked eye. It’s quiet, too – no sirens, or overhead passenger jets, or even the frighteningly abrupt screams of the two cats that regularly decide to make my back deck their battleground.
Then there’s the dating apps.
To some, returning home to the country is a blessing in disguise; it makes you part of a much smaller pool of would-be suitors or “temporary partners” if that’s your cup of tea. You may or may not be a big fish but hey, at least the pond is smaller.
You’ll also notice that it goes both ways. Everybody that you swipe on is an ex or an old school friend or, God forbid, a relative – and that can certainly present some barriers. Oh, and as for the potential matches that decided they weren’t much interested in that photo of you and the barramundi you caught last weekend – you’ll definitely see them at the pub.
Every. Single. Time.
The point is: online dating in the country can be tricky at the best of times.
A 22-year-old farmer is looking to take away the barriers of dating in rural areas with her new app, Howdy.
“In rural areas, it’s not that you don’t have the right people to connect with, it’s that you don’t have anyone to connect with,” says Mia Ryan, creator of the Howdy app.
Mia says the idea came from he own frustrations with using dating apps in the country.
“They’re not great. They really go with quantity over quality, and I was really struggling to find anyone that understood my lifestyle.”
“People would send you a message and go ‘hey, do you want to do brunch’ and my answer would always be no. There was a lot of people that just weren’t agricultural whatsoever.”
The app, which launched on the Apple App Store and Google Play back in March, has already seen a significant level of traffic. Just under 3500 people have signed up to Howdy at the time of writing.
“We first launched with the Today Show on a Friday and over that first weekend we had a lot of glitches because so many people got on there so quickly.”
Given that I take my work as a journalist very seriously, I thought it was only appropriate that I also joined Howdy in order to familiarise myself with the functions of the app.
I wanted to find out if it really did enough to differentiate itself from the deluge of other dating apps that exist out there, and I was also keen to speak to users about their own experiences.
I matched with one person, told them I was a journo and that I’d love to know what their Howdy experience was like, and then I was immediately unmatched with.
I guess I need to work on my pickup lines.
Howdy allows users to set their radius nation-wide, a feature that isn’t necessarily unique, but one which does place a clear focus on the user stepping outside of their typical dating habits.
The focus on long-distance relationships is combined with a weekly subscription fee, so I asked Mia if she felt as though users would be more reluctant to hop onto the app with these kind of barriers in place.
“It’s really based around people wanting a relationship. With a paid subscription it weeds out the people that are looking for something casual,” she says.
“I’m sure I would probably have more people on the app if I had a free version. It’s eight dollars a week, which amounts to a beer at the pub…I’m sure most people have more than one anyway.”
Howdy already seems to be in the process of bringing people together. Towards the end of our interview, Mia mentions that a girl she knows is flying all the way to South Australia to meet the man of her dreams.
It’s an impressive piece of advertising for a dating app in its early days. It seems that a long-running dating show may no longer be the only piece of media available to people searching for their rural “happily-ever-after.”
Time will tell, but Howdy is certainly one to keep an eye on.
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