This week, we interviewed Randa Sakallah, who writes Hot Singles, a publication that profiles and connects local singles on the lookout for love.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
What’s your publication about in one sentence?
Hot Singles makes dating fun through personal ad interviews, a monthly advice column, and in-person events.
Where did the idea for Hot Singles come from? What made you think there was space for it in the 2020s?
I started Hot Singles to solve my own problem. Dating apps had become the default way of meeting people during lockdown, and I was tired of using them. All the profiles were starting to blend together, and I found myself thinking about ways to make them more textured.
I love reading Q&As with creatives on sites like Passerbuys, Gossamer, and The Creative Independent. I’m fascinated by interview podcasts like Longform. And I’ll always read a profile in The New Yorker. All of this content is about people. And really, a dating profile is content about a person. So I thought it would be cool to give the interview treatment to single people looking for love.
How did you first get interested in matchmaking?
I actually don’t consider what I do to be matchmaking. I’d characterize it more as curating people. I think matching people one-on-one is really difficult unless you know each person super-well. Instead, I’m curating a community of people who might like each other and leaving the one-on-one matches to them.
I do have a bit of a matchmaking past, though. In college, I ran an event inspired by that buzzy NYT article “To Fall in Love With Anyone, Do This.” I don’t know if anyone fell in love, but people seemed to have a good time anyway. That sparked my interest in creating fun experiences revolving around dating.
What does the Hot Singles process look like? What goes on behind the scenes?
There are two main elements to the process: selecting someone to feature, and creating the posts.
When it comes to picking people, I generally optimize for humor, but that’s not a hard-and-fast rule. Most of the people I feature are from the waitlist, but sometimes I get recommendations through previous hot singles, or meet people when I’m out in NYC.
Once I’ve picked someone, I send them the template. They choose two “personality” questions from a long list, and then they also answer the three questions that everyone answers: What’s your toxic trait, what makes you hot, and who are you looking for?
Posts go out Friday at noon, and then the responses roll in. I forward them along to the featured hot single, and if they’re interested, they reach out directly.
You recently started an advice column. What sets yours apart from other dating advice?
The secret sauce of the Hot Singles advice column is the cheekiness and the community. For one edition, I brought in two hot singles to be in conversation about booty calls. I'm not sure they gave the most actionable advice, but they certainly put an entertainingly pseudo-intellectual spin on the question.
In fielding these questions, I'm gathering a general sense of confusion as to how we should behave that feels specific to the current cultural moment. For example, I get tons of submissions asking about how to meet people, so I did a crowdsourced post about it.
What have you learned from working on Hot Singles?
When I started Hot Singles, I thought my focus was going to be on making high-quality matches. As much as I like to hypothesize about romantic chemistry, I’ve realized I don’t want to be some kind of social scientist or the best matchmaker in the world. And when I surveyed my readers and interview subjects, I learned that what people like most about Hot Singles isn’t that they’re meeting their soulmates. It’s that they’re having fun trying.
In dating, there’s this dichotomy of “looking for something serious” or “just having fun.” With everything Hot Singles does, from the personals to the parties and the advice column, I’m asking: Why can’t we have fun while looking for love?
“What people like most about Hot Singles isn’t that they’re meeting their soulmates. It’s that they’re having fun trying.”
In 2021, you had one “power couple” form out of 55 dates started through Hot Singles. Can you share how that love connection played out?
She responded to his ad. They went on a great first date. Their second date was a late-fall Rockaway Beach trip where they saw dolphins. He went to see her band perform. She got Covid, he brought her phở. They’re currently planning a trip together to somewhere warm.
Is Hot Singles cooking up anything special for Valentine’s Day?
There's some secret stuff that I have yet to reveal (follow us on Instagram for updates) but I just announced Hot Singles Week, a whole lineup of events starting February 10th. I intentionally curated a variety of experiences so there's something for everybody, whether you like a little mingling combined with a late night DJ set or some flirty competition. There's a specific dinner for queer people and an evening I'm calling Love Over The Influence where you get to try the latest in non-alcoholic drinks. Throwing parties unexpectedly became one of my favorite parts of Hot Singles—we're so thirsty for connection and community right now, and it's been really rewarding to create spaces for people to find it.
Who’s another Substack writer you’d recommend?
Default Wisdom. I appreciate Default Friend’s perspective on internet culture. And her advice column is a work of art.
Subscribe to Randa’s publication, Hot Singles, and find her on Twitter and Instagram.
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