With an open heart and the chutzpah of a truth-seeking Jewess, I decided to give the app for „Jews with ridiculously high standards“ a shot.
If you, like me, are a Jewess with way too much time on your hands in quarantine and a raging Twitter habit, you may have heard about the latest in Jewish dating the Lox Club. For those who havent yet come across it, the Lox Club is a new Jewish dating app that advertises itself as being “for Jews with ridiculously high standards.”
While, on its surface, the framing of the Club as an exclusive hideaway from the legions of fish-wielding gentiles on Tinder may sound enticing, I have to admit that the phrase “ridiculously high standards,” especially in regard to a dating app, activates my fight or flight instinct. It makes me ask the questions of what they consider high standards to be, how they go about determining if a person is “worthy” of being placed among the oh-so-holy profiles on their app (that will inevitably be speedily swiped through anyway), and who makes the call of which applicants make the cut.
I couldnt help but wonder if, like most things that advertise themselves as being for only a select group of people – and that charge a $12 monthly fee (not an insignificant amount of money!) – the Lox Club would be as classist as I feared. (I also couldnt help but wonder if writing this article about a dating app makes me Carrie Bradshaw if she was Jewish and knew what an iPhone let alone a dating app is, but thats a conversation for another time.)
With an open heart and the chutzpah of a truth-seeking Jewess, I decided to give the Lox Club the benefit of the doubt and go through the application process myself. By no means is my opinion the final say on whether or not something is “problematic,” but I think it was worth my while (and hopefully yours too if youre reading this!) to investigate. I also reached out to the creators of the Lox Club to ask how they determine who meets their high standards, but they declined to comment on the matter.
Upon opening the app, I had to read through a story about a Jewish speakeasy that closed in 1953 that required a password to get into. I then had to enter a password to get into the app which was hinted at in the story. I will say that the idea of a secret Jewish soiree genuinely rules (anyone interested once were all vaccinated?) but having to answer that question felt slightly like an SAT reading comprehension test.
I Applied to the Lox Club to See What This Elite Jewish Dating App Is All About
The next few questions were pretty standard: name, email, Instagram username, gender, and the genders that I am looking for on the app. Something that was confusing to me about this process was that the list of possible genders I could identify myself as was fairly exhaustive and inclusive, but the options for Match vs eHarmony whom I am looking to meet were only “men,” “women,” and “everyone.” I have no interest in meeting men (especially ones who identify as having “ridiculously high standards”) but would be interested in meeting people who fall outside of the identities of man and woman, and I know many people who feel similarly. I also wonder what the algorithm does with people who identify themselves as an option other than binary genders – who gets to see them once in the Club? Is it only people who have selected that theyre interested in “everyone”? That is not only exclusionary, but robs people of so many connections that they could otherwise potentially make!