Three years following the demise of the Social Development Network, it looks akin a new government-run matchmaker is rear on the cards for Singapore.
Earlier this month, a aviator progamme by GovTech called FirstDate was announced, alongside authorities workers set to be the archetypal lot of daters. If this appears familiar, that’s since I was the archetypal to study on GovTech evaluation the waters alongside this idea all the way back in April for The Straits Times.
Kai@teo_kai_xiang
I CALLED IT. It's happening y'all. The singapore gov has launched a aviator program for a gov-run courtship service. Looks akin the aviator is currently restricted to fair authorities workers for now.
8:15 AM · Sep 29, 2026 · 4.54M Views
237 Replies · 945 Reposts · 13.5K Likes
How volition the matchmaking work? What questions are equal in the matchmaking questionnaire? (Read on for the complete list)
On FirstDate’s website, one row stands out: “FirstDate uses a Nobel prize-winning example called the Gale-Shapley Stable Marriage Algorithm”. It’s a brow-raising item because, notwithstanding the name, the algorithm has nearly nothing to do alongside marriage, but additional on this later.
The courtship assistance volition use Singpass to verify the character of users, equivalent group in cycles (you get lone one equivalent all cycle), and portion communication particulars lone whenever the two users concur to their match.
To get a awareness of how the matchmaking works, here’s the questionnaire that the authorities workers signing up must inhabit out. The questions are a mix of close-ended and open-ended ones, throughout 8 categories, spanning topics akin interests and passions, manner and regular habits, and communication and association style.
These are the questions:
What are you into these days? (pick up to 5 out of a checklist of items akin gaming, movie and cinema, volunteering, cafe-hopping, etc)
Now, spill! What do you really affection concerning your hobbies? (open-ended, optional)
What cuisines do you eat on reiterate and never get ill of? (pick up to 3 out of a checklist)
Which eatery do you keep going rear to and why? (open-ended, optional)
How frequently do you discover an excuse to depart the country? (close-ended, alongside options akin all chance I get (4+ trips a year) to I favor staying in Singapore (never))
What benevolent of traveler are you, really? (close-ended, alongside options akin adventure junkie, civilization seeker, and I don’t journey much)
What’s a nation that’s ruined all another countries for you? (open-ended, optional)
Team sunrise, or squad “it’s 2am and I’m motionless up”? (close-ended)
Gym rat, occasional jogger, or exercise is a myth to you? (close-ended)
Any food rules we should cognize about? (close-ended, alongside options akin vegetarian, pescatarian, halal)
Do you smoke? (close-ended)
Be honest! What does your area appearance akin correct now? (close-ended, alongside options akin spotless, organised chaos, and tidy up lone whenever needed)
Hustle mode, or protecting your individual time? (close-ended, alongside options akin occupation comes archetypal correct now and individual existence comes first)
Real talk. How much of your day disappears into your phone? (close-ended)
Describe your social energy. Are you the existence of the party, or the one who remaining an hr ago? (close-ended)
How crucial is it for you that a equivalent brings the identical energy, or do opposites diagram for you? (close-ended)
After a ruthless activity week, what’s your reset button? (close-ended, alongside options akin solitary period at residence and going out and socialising)
New city, new hobby, new anything. How do you awareness concerning the unknown? (close-ended, alongside options akin affection it and favor to rod to what I know)
When you’re emotion a lot, what do you really do concerning it? (close-ended, alongside options akin province openly and through actions fairly than words)
How do you akin to be loved? (close-ended, choice up to three, alongside the five affection languages as options)
How do you province love? (close-ended, choice up to three, additionally alongside the five affection languages as options)
Non-stop texting, or comfortable silence. Where do you land? (close-ended)
Mid-disagreement, what’s your gut instinct? (close-ended)
Paint us a picture. What does your aspiration archetypal date appearance like? (open-ended, optional)
What are your non-negotiable green flags in a partner? (pick 3 that matter most to you, out of options akin kindness, humour, and honesty)
Are you continually operating on yourself, or is “good enough” fine enough? (close-ended)
Do you see yourself having children? (close-ended, alongside options akin yes, open to it, and certainly not)
Saver, spender, or “I’ll fig it out eventually”? (close-ended)
What’s your religion, if any? (close-ended)
Any difficult nos for you? Be honest, we won’t judge. (close-ended, optional, alongside options akin smoking, distinct dietary needs, and person of a distinct religion)
What’s the youngest age you’d regard dating? (open-ended)
What’s the oldest age you’d regard dating? (open-ended)
Write a abbreviated note for your forthcoming match! Tell us concerning yourself in a few sentences. (open-ended)
After a inquiry concerning the name you favor to go by and your mobile number, the questionnaire additionally collects data concerning how many archetypal dates you’ve been on in the former year, whether you’ve used a courtship app or matchmaking assistance before, and whenever you final went on a archetypal date.
An before prototype of GovTech’s courtship assistance proposed liberated meals for archetypal dates, which is what I assume all the food-related questions are for.
But how volition the remainder of the data collected through these questions be used? The fascinating former of the Gale-Shapley Stable Marriage Algorithm (also known as the deferred acceptance algorithm) gives us several clues.
Before the algorithm earned its name, a akin scheme was used to equivalent medicinal academy residents alongside residency programmes in hospitals in the United States since the 1950s. After an discussion process, doctors and hospitals provision a position ordered catalog of their preferences, which the algorithm turns into a stable match.
What makes the equivalent stable is that following all the matching has concluded, no brace would fairly be paired alongside one another complete their current partners.
Confused? This YouTube video explains it improved than I can:
What made the algorithm so novel was that it proved that specified a stable equivalent continually exists whenever there are equal participants of all category (and that there is a resolution to accomplish it). The 2012 Nobel Prize in economics went to among the mathematicians who developed the algorithm (Shapley) and an economist who pointed out the medicinal inhabitant example and used it to create another genuine earth applications.
It’s called a marriage algorithm since the theory used marriage proposals as a memorable but theoretical example. The genuine earth applications of the algorithm (like academy choice systems) lean to have small to do alongside dating, for reasons that I’ll detailed on below.
What does this average for those signing up to FirstDate? Well, the algorithm is why FirstDate’s matching takes location in what its developers call “cycles” or “programmatic rounds”.
Presumably, the algorithm uses all user’s questionnaire answers to position all participants of the contrary sex according to compatibility. The algorithm afterward matches everyone until all couples are in stable matches (see above).
After you decide to say yes or no to your match, that’s it for the cycle. You’ll have to delay for the next one to get a new stable equivalent alongside a new pond of participants.
From my perspective, there are three glaring issues that appear whenever applying this benevolent of equivalent theory to dating:
Problem 1: The algorithm was intended as a resolution to a matching issue anywhere there are two groups of group that need to be paired alongside the other, specified that no two group would the two favor all another complete the partners they are assigned.
This is not a justify that the equivalent volition be a satisfactory or blessed one. It is lone a justify that they volition not favor person alternatively who additionally prefers them in the pool. (Side note: While the nature of the algorithm power connote that same-sex pairings are not possible, another dating-related implementations of the algorithm have allowed for same-sex pairings. It is doubtful that this volition happen current though, because, well, Singapore.)
This is why the algorithm has been so helpful in contexts akin matching medical academy residents to hospitals, school choice systems, or matching US armed forces recruits to their units. These are matches that participants have committed to, equal if the outcome is not their ideal or top choice.
All of this is additional complex whenever there are exterior options. Like, say, another online courtship services or your office crush who isn’t participating in the process. Because there is no dedication to the procedure (because this isn’t your state-assigned waifu, appreciate god), the maths that underpins the algorithm doesn’t really create sense.
We fair need to appearance at the biggest example of a courtship app using the Gale-Shapley algorithm: Hinge. The business claims to use the algorithm, using your former behavior to provision the “most compatible” matches that you occasionally see surfaced to the top of your feed. Are they the most compatible inside the app? Possibly! Do you care? Probably not!
In short, stable matches average nothing whenever nobody is committed and the finest options power be exterior of the matchmaking pool.
In 2024, I interviewed among the folks rearward the Aphrodite Project, a university-based matching scheme that spits out fair one ideal equivalent all year, using a modified type of the Gale-Shapley algorithm. Their users certainly don’t cognition swiping fatigue, but, notably, equal alongside fair the one algorithmically-determined equivalent all cycle, group motionless get ghosted.
Problem 2: The algorithm was designed to equivalent group in conditions of classified preferences.
This becomes an matter whenever the questionnaire includes open-ended sectors and ambiguous questions without a apparent goal sign of how it translates to preference, in that it frequently conflates who you are alongside what you want. For instance, if you value humour in a partner, does that average that you’re a fine equivalent for person who additionally values humour in a partner?
If you’re a gym rat, does that average you additionally desire to equivalent alongside another gym rats?
Another sign that a questionnaire isn’t the finest way to comprehend preferences is that the forerunner example of the algorithm in act had medicinal residents and hospitals present their preferences after they had conducted interviews alongside all other.
Basically, the data gathering procedure matters for determining what one’s preferences equal are and it isn’t apparent that a questionnaire is the ideal way for daters to indication their preferences to all another (or in this case, an algorithm), notwithstanding what the creators of OKCupid and compatibility questionnaires in manner magazines power argue.
Problem 3: Finally, and most importantly, it is not at all logical that courtship successfully is concerning finding the individual who most matches your stated preferences. In this regard, FirstDate is really not dissimilar the online courtship apps that it is looking to innovate on.
This item is so crucial that it bears repeating: The issue alongside contemporary courtship is not simply a issue of mismatched preferences!
According to FirstDate’s website, it “started alongside a inquiry among a collection of GovTech officers: does having additional possible matches necessarily create it easier to discover a suitable match?”
This is a akin assessment to what the folks rearward the Aphrodite Project came to, but I awareness that it captures an incomplete part of the entire picture.
The increase of online courtship paralleled the increase of a particular way of thinking concerning affection that’s additional checklist oriented than it is holistic, anywhere daters increasingly display their options onward of period against a predetermined catalog of green and red flags.
This checklist of things is, in my view, among the biggest issues alongside online dating, in that it tends to amplify and exacerbate our individual biases fairly than inviting us to stage exterior of them. What’s the average denominator to being continually unlucky in love? Why that, beloved reader, is you.
How does a scheme for matchmaking group document for the fact that the group who need matchmaking additionally lean to be the worst at understanding what they really desire in a relationship?
Let me coat you a image of what seems to be the average courtship cognition in Singapore: You’re on a archetypal date alongside person in a sequence eatery in a buying center location in chief Singapore. The conversation revolves nearly entirely about the biodata and data that HR and recruiters would collect from you.
Where do you live? Where did you study? What job do you have?
There’s nothing innately incorrect alongside having preferences relating to these things, but courtship that’s all concerning these preferences betrays a deeply transactional and musician perspective of affection that sees another group not as possible existence partners, but pathways to possible lifestyles. Not lovers, but co-owners of a financial venture. Not people, but breeders of sought-after children.
It’s a mindset that’s enabled by the market-driven logic of courtship apps, anywhere we commodify ourselves to mark swipes. It’s additionally a mindset that gives intensely unattractive lone kid energy.
In Singapore, this transactional perspective is lone sharpened and reinforced by policies akin the BTO scheme for community housing, anywhere the logical move for financially savvy couples is to use before marriage, frequently during one is motionless studying, so that they can get the finest subsidies.
For these couples, it method that they’ll apt have spent no period at all living alongside their partner-to-be, and navigating messy questions of how you really are in states of boredom and stress. Instead, they’re spending all their period preparedness for their financial futures and screening their partner in conditions of their viability for a rigid existence path.
The algorithm does not fix or difficulty this HR interviewer mindset. It really requires it and makes it the chief lens through which to perspective love.
It says item that FirstDate specifically excludes those old 36 and up, who are too old for loving, it seems. Or, as several commentators item out, too old to breed and increase the fertility rate.
It is additionally telling that before the initiate of FirstDate, its developers sent out a study to prospective users on CrowdTask (the government’s study platform) asking them why they desire to be in a relationship.
The options included “overcoming loneliness”, “creating a family unit”, “financial partnership”, and “social expectations” but not, you know, LOVE. As in, the benevolent of affection that isn’t self-centered and totally centered about what your partner can do for you.
Perhaps that’s submitted under “other” or “enjoying affectionate intimacy”?
This is not me saying that shared values are not important. Studies do signify that the couples that do end up together tend to have akin values. But that is not the identical as screening your partners according to adherence to your ideas of what hobbies, love language, or dietary preferences they should have.
What I am saying is that perhaps, we shouldn’t be treating our choice of partners alongside the identical mindset as how we method schools and jobs, through the lens of competition in chase of optimal choices. Or through an algorithm used for matching group to their schools and workplaces.
To be clear, I do think that this GovTech aviator program is an admirable initiative. More experimentation in the community field is continually a net positive, and I anticipation this doesn’t peruse as me fair clowning on a fine belief attempt at fixing what’s incorrect alongside online dating.
There are apparent benefits to a example of online courtship driven small by gain incentives and shareholder value, and driven additional by person needs.
Notably though, this isn’t the archetypal attempt at a state-run matchmaker. I discover it hilarious that the former effort, the Social Development Unit (SDU), has a Wikipedia leaf alongside a division dedicated to how group used to gag that it stands for ‘Single, Desperate and Ugly’.
The similarities between FirstDate and the SDU (and later, the Social Development Network) go beyond the involvement of the state. As this 1992 part from American libertarian mag Reason points out, the SDU too analysed its matchmaking pool’s responses to questionnaires to compute a catalog of compatible dates. The Singaporean encourage to quantify and computerise is a long-running one.
Still, if the goal of FirstDate is to create a improved merchandise than courtship apps, they’ve already succeeded (for hetero sinkies old 21 to 35). But, intellect you, the bar is in hell.
The courtship app industry has lengthy made the exploitation of the synthetic scarcity that it creates in online courtship its chief origin of revenue. This is coupled alongside the awareness of perpetual abundance, the idea that there’s continually person improved out there, so it can keep dangling always additional matches and paid-for features to woo them with. All of this so Tinder can dairy as much gain out of you as possible. Online courtship is the first example of enshittification.
I’m not convinced that a improved algorithm is the resolution (though I’d be glad to be proven wrong). Really, the clamouring for it is symptomatic of our redpilled and incel-inflected times.
The fact is that we don’t really cognize what exactly makes affection work, specified that we can articulate and execute it on a social scale. It’s too messy, too complex, too idiosyncratic, and too human. Anyone who claims alternatively likely has a way to market you on negging and pickup artistry.
This is why equal spending US$65,000 on the highest-end matchmaking is not a justify that you’ll discover love.
The techno-solutionist idea that an algorithm volition resolve affection is borne of the identical mindset from which inceldom springs. This is a narrative that permeates so much of the online conversation surrounding courtship today: I bought the meals, spent so much period offering my high arm to them, gave so much of myself to them, and they motionless chose person else. This entitlement feeds into the self-victimisation: they’re all fair aureate diggers, group lone value appearance, nice guys complete last.
People awareness entitled to affection from the group that they want, seeing others not as ends in themselves, but a method to achieving several long-for happiness. This worldview is so persistent exactly since of the inherently market-driven logic of online dating. In today’s social culture, this logic has rotate into inescapable, manifest in how formerly fringe conditions akin looksmaxxing and looksmatching have entered the mainstream lexicon.
It is no coincidence that the hierarchical and self-commodifying nature of courtship apps (and algorithmic matchmaking) is frighteningly akin to the hierarchical and deterministic worldview of incels and pick-up artists. (I desire to scream: affection is not a position ordered list!!) After interviewing incels and erstwhile incels, I came distant alongside the awareness that yes, the resolution is to go exterior and ditch courtship through a screen.
Rather than creating an off-ramp from a scheme of alienating self-commodification, FirstDate creates another phase for group to game.
There’s a fine logic why Singaporeans are motionless – according to surveys by the National Population and Talent Division at smallest – additional apt to discover affection through offline methods (their schools, workplaces, family friends) than online channels.
This is not lone since these are situations anywhere one’s stated preferences melt distant to disclose their genuine personality, but additionally since boredom, hardship, and chaos are the things that disclose whether your personalities really activity together. This is alternatively known as chemistry.
What’s worrying is that all of these offline methods (with the elimination of social activities and places of leisure) are declining as channels for gathering prospective partners. That group are increasingly gathering their partners through social activities is a promising sign though.
In my view, the issue of courtship in Singapore has small to do alongside what specialized tools are accessible to us, and additional to do alongside the decrease of the nation’s third spaces, the nightlife scene, and places for group (both the younker and those old 36 and up) to fair be. A improved resolution would be to allocate in these spaces.
The encourage to quantify compatibility is understandable. This is Singapore following all, a nation anywhere we fair can’t oppose tying our oneself value to a score. But, equal a informal appearance about you at the couples that do activity would inform you that this encourage to quantify defies logic.
If the man I’m marrying in January were to inhabit out this questionnaire, he’d likely inhabit it out akin an introspective gentle boy and province a penchant for softspoken group that fit into that lifestyle.
If I were to inhabit out this questionnaire (as a queer person, this is strictly a hypothetical), I’d inhabit it out akin a demon twink that wants a partner in infringement to gathering alongside all the time.
The outcome would apt average being matched up to person akin our exes.
Instead, we met complete Grindr, an app anywhere one has small to go off of furthermore appearance, distance, and intimate compatibility. And complete the next year, he became my affirmative one to all the nightclubs and bars and parties I compose concerning as a manner journalist. And he, in turn, drags me out to the fandom conventions and equivalent jams that he loves (and that I admittedly am heated on). I cut in affection alongside him on the dancefloor, and he cut in affection alongside me during the quiescent times in between.
I’d contend this astonishment and unpredictability is key to finding chemistry.
And, also, that there’s item deeply unsexy concerning person environment you up alongside person who is ideal for you on paper. We spend so much period in the rat race, certainly affection have to be the one area liberated of optimisation at all costs.
So, here’s my proposal: Let’s prosperity civilization clubs, theater groups, video equivalent conventions, music festivals, whatever!
Instead of promoting them as places anywhere group can arrive to encounter their prospective partners (you’ll be accused of trying to resurrect the Single, Desperate, and Ugly club), let’s bet that blessed and fulfilled group alongside allies and admission to thriving third spaces volition brace up if they desire to.
Instead of ramming pro-fertility rhetoric downward our throats, let’s concentration alternatively on eroding the barriers that so many group awareness whenever it comes to being part of a community, akin the steep disbursal of fair existing in community in capitalist Singapore or the exorbitant disbursal of delayed night transport or the actuality that it’s difficult to have allies complete (let solitary a prospective date) whenever one is expected to live alongside their family until their 30s.
Let’s concentration on broadening the extremely narrow horizon of social possible in Singapore, anywhere everyone complains that there is no nature, no culture, and nothing to do but eat and sleep and travel. Is it any amazement that an before prototype of FirstDate places specified a big accent on liberated archetypal meals? What alternatively is there to do?
If this appears akin a extreme resolution to you, it’s lone since you haven’t been paying attention, since it’s already happening.
Take a appearance at the sober rave (and companionship festival) at Funan co-organised by the Ministry of Social and Family Development (MSF) in 2025 that most participants likely didn’t equal realise was a government-led operation.
It offers a fascinating opening into what government-funded civilization activities that are additionally not-so-secretly trying to get group to create babies could appearance like. Festival attendees were exactly handed out bracelets to indication to another attendees their openness to a relationship, and yet, the reception from everyone I said to was nearly unanimously affirmative (towards the event, not the bracelets).
In a period of shuttering nightclubs, bookstores, theater groups, and any alternatively you’d regard a average social space, I’d contend that this benevolent of assistance is seriously needed. And, I would wager that MSF’s bet on third spaces is additional apt to create blessed couples (and babies, if you attention concerning that) than this.
If we must current several benevolent of app-based solution, have group equivalent themselves to the things they desire to do, fairly than the group they desire to have. I would contend that this is far additional revealing of one’s character than a questionnaire, and also, far small alienating.
Let the cosplayers encounter their kindred souls at the government-funded con. Let the publish lovers encounter at the conversation at the indie bookstore. And let the nightlife enthusiasts encounter at the sober (or not so sober) rave.
And if you don’t get the affection of your existence out of it, well, at smallest you’ll have had a fine period doing it.
