The newcomer is called RAW and as one can take right from its title on app stores, “date 100% real people,” the team behind it is championing all things authenticity, immediacy, and imperfection. 

The idea is that most dating apps are a carnival of fakes that makes you put on layers—of makeup, filters, personas, and declared interests from an optimized list of preselected tags written by people who have never touched grass.

Enter RAW, swinging its built-in two-facing dual camera (shoutout BeReal) and not allowing users to illustrate their dating profile with anything besides spontaneous double shots they’re prompted to take daily at random times. Users match with people whose pictures-in-pictures they like—as they have barely anything else to show for themselves with RAW’s skeletal decluttered dater profiles. All that is meant to evoke the rush and spontaneity of falling in love at first sight. 

RAW's current rise isn’t just about timing or tech prowess—it’s what feels like a cultural zeitgeist moment. The app happens to have the ear attuned to the masses’ clamor against the filters industrial complex.

Marina Anderson, RAW’s co-founder, posits that seeing your crush with their pet or dog day-to-day carries more weight than seeing your crush, and explains that the app’s minimal interface and profile formatting are deliberately designed to encourage closer readings of other people’s energy and moods. Which we have to say anyone who has ever ended up on a date with a hot person with zero vibes will appreciate.

The app also prides itself on being completely free, no but also freeing. While other apps make the free version feel like a teaser trailer for a movie that's always “coming soon,” RAW delivers the whole feature film out of the gate, no premium ticket required. This is again designed as a concrete answer to the fatigue with the swipe-and-ghost carousel. The same goes out for the app’s ingenious upcoming features: self-destructing chats that help minimize the effects of ghosting and a “respect meter” on inside dater’s profiles listing  their green/beige/red flags as reported by others.

And with the latest developments of RAW charting at #1 on Google Play and 200K monthly active users since 5 months launched, RAW doesn’t look like just a blip on the radar. It’s already an app that didn’t just climb to the top; it vaulted there, powered by the very real desire for something real.