Alise Morales simply occurred to be on the courting app Feeld the night time a person was detained by ICE agents a mile from her Brooklyn, New York, house.
Contemporary off of a divorce, Morales, a 35-year-old comic, was in the marketplace for one thing strictly informal. That’s when she got here throughout Paul’s profile. “I used to be a pair swipes in, and it took me a second to even get what I used to be seeing,” she says. He was 32, straight, and, like Morales, in search of “informal enjoyable.” He was additionally one mile away. Then she seen his bio: “Hey I’m Paul! ICE agent in from out of city in search of enjoyable :)”
Initially, Morales thought it was a nasty joke, “however there was nothing else on the profile to point out that it was, or what the joke would even be,” she says. Information alerts throughout her socials had talked about an lively ICE operation in the area. “I’m like, is this man actively kidnapping one in every of my neighbors proper now?”
Of all the dating and hookup apps, Morales felt the least overwhelmed by Feeld when she joined in the summer time of 2025. She “preferred the radical honesty” of the individuals on the platform. However this was a primary. “Clearly, I do not count on everybody on there to have the identical, like, progressive political views as me, however Feeld does really feel like the sort of place—due to the sex-positive nature of it, and what it embraces—the place it is surprising to see somebody like that on there.”
Although her expertise is distinctive, it represents a bigger shift being felt by some Feeld energy customers that the app, as soon as primarily an area for nontraditional and kink-friendly daters, now caters to everybody.
Launched in 2014 as 3nder, Feeld made a reputation for itself by embracing individuals who didn’t match into the bins of each different courting app. (Its unique pitch: Tinder however for individuals into threesomes.) On the lookout for a play companion who is two-spirit however not nonbinary? All in favour of discovering a brat that is into bondage and moral non-monogamy? Feeld was for the freaks.
That’s altering. In accordance to the firm, from 2021 to 2025 membership grew 368 p.c, with a virtually 200 p.c spike in new customers over the identical interval. In information shared with WIRED, “discovering group” has turn into the platform’s fastest-growing relationship modal, which surged 257 p.c amongst new customers from December 2025 to mid-January 2026.
“We’re able to doing one thing actually huge and vital for individuals,” Feeld CEO Ana Kirova says. “And that a variety of what we stand for can resonate with extra individuals, not as a result of we enforced it, however as a result of we discover a method to mirror what individuals need after which ship it.”
However many longtime customers describe Feeld as a spot that has gone from a bespoke platform to “hopeless” “normie hell” overrun with vanilla daters who are “using the app as the new Tinder.” That’s on high of the “scammers,” “matches peddling their OnlyFans,” and bots. The largest grievance, said one consumer on Reddit final yr, “is the quantity of individuals now on the app who are not sexually open minded.” Added one other: Feeld “took the greatest and what appears like the quickest nosedive in a courting app I’ve ever seen.”
At the coronary heart of the app’s evolution, a query lingers and swells: Who precisely is the platform for today?
On Tuesday, Feeld will launch a brand new “self-discovery expertise” referred to as Reflections. Developed by College of Michigan affiliate professor Apryl Williams, Reflections is a guided 30-minute survey—out there inside the app or on-line for nonmembers, freed from cost—that measures your capability in three areas: needs, boundaries, and relationship preferences. Throughout 165 whole prompts—questions vary from “What would cease a connection from transferring ahead?” to “Would you utilize giant toys or objects on somebody?”—Reflections exams customers on issues like their kink affinity, consciousness of pink flags, intercourse drive, potential for exploration, and self expression. (Customers are given a proportion rating in every space together with a abstract of customized outcomes.)
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