Facebook knows that sometimes the people you want to take on a one-way train to bonetown are people you already know in real life. So it’s created a feature to bring you together. Called Secret Crush, it allows users of Facebook Dating to pick nine of their friends that they have a crush on. If any of those friends also picked them back, they’ll get notified. If their love is unrequited, the other person will never know.
While it’s possible that this could help people too shy to make a move fall in love, it’s also possible this is…a creepy and terrible idea that no one wants debuting at a time when Facebook is widely viewed as particularly creepy.
If this sounds familiar, that’s because this is essentially the same concept as an app that was minorly popular and largely reviled in 2013 called Bang With Friends (renamed Down). The app synced to your Facebook contacts, and then let you pick which ones you’d like to, ahem, bang. If those people also picked you, you’d get notified. If they didn’t, well, maybe they just didn’t use the app — or maybe they found you revolting.
Facebook Dating was announced at last year’s F8 conference. But 2018 was a tough year for Facebook, and the dating app mysteriously didn’t appear for months and months. Finally, in November, it launched in Canada and Thailand only (now it is launching in 19 countries total, but not the US).