Pheramor, a Houston Texas-based dating startup, says it can find you the perfect match for $19.99 plus a $10/month subscription — and it’s all in your DNA.
Described as a hybrid between Tinder and 23andMe, Pheramor requests a swab from your cheek via mail, analyzes your DNA, then finds compatible mates in your area.
Pheramor’s business model is based around the concept that, like many animals, human attraction can be decoded through everyone’s favorite love spice: pheromones.
But experts aren’t sold on the mystical love stink: Many believe it’s all just a data grab. Self-dubbed “the world’s first smart dating app,” Pheramor disagrees.
The company’s product was released in Houston last month, and soon will have a new feature called Second Date, designed to track user locations to see if their subscribers meet up with one of their matches.
As in, they may not really exist. According to Oxford zoologist Tristram Wyatt, it’s all a bunch of sexy pseudoscience started by corporations.
Dr. Richard Doty, the director of the Smell and Taste Center at the University of Pennsylvania medical center, dismisses pheromones as “total nonsense.”
“If human pheromones actually elicited the kinds of behaviors we see in other mammals,” he told Wired, “the subways of New York City would be in a constant state of mayhem with people hopping all over each other.”