As that first whiff of cuffing season cuts through the air, anyone who’s been trying to ameliorate all this isolation amid several global crises through endless swiping, rose-extending, and Super Liking is over it. And why not? We’ve spent the last year weathering mind-boggling solitude while also having our worst suspicions about corporate interests and faceless algorithms confirmed: The overlords are ditching us for space, and whole streams of video await to feed on the first sign of depression. At a moment when advertising your desire to dismantle capitalism on Tinder gets you about the same results as a tired Parks and Rec reference, it’s time, my fellow single and temporarily non-single folks, to revisit romance’s most underrated technique: the setup.
Or at least that’s the idea that Lakshmi Rengarajan, a master of the form, walks listeners through in the pandemic’s most wholesome new podcast, Paired by the People. Having released six episodes since its inception in September, Paired is like a social-experiment capsule collection where Rengarajan takes her seven years of experience in the dating industry to set people up. But it’s more than foisting two randos on each other via Zoom: Each aspect of the setup is designed so that listening in feels less like eavesdropping at an overpriced cocktail spot and more like having your brain massaged open to new possibilities in regard to the way we could connect with each other, if only we had a little help.
To dig into the philosophy behind Paired by the People, I called Rengarajan up to discuss what dating apps have always gotten wrong, how we can tell better stories about ourselves, and how good dates affect our entire communal ecosystem.
Vanity Fair: Can you tell me about your background in the dating-industry space?
Lakshmi Rengarajan: I’ve been both interested and concerned about the trajectory of dating for a while. Back in 2010, I actually started in-person storytelling events for singles called “Me So Far.” Kind of like TEDx for singles. Then I got connected with match.com—they had started doing events, but what they were doing was putting a bunch of single people together and giving them drink tickets and saying, there you go.
So I was their director of event design for two years, and then I worked on Match, ourtime.com, blackpeoplemeet.com, and I helped launch the app BLK. I really wanted to do something great there. I wanted to make dating more human. But there really wasn’t an appetite for that.
Really?
Dating apps are very engineer-led and metrics-driven. It was much more about database management than anything else. I don’t think they really understand how they’re impacting society, and they don’t want to talk about it. Because if they talk about it, they have to think about their business model. No one wants to do that.
So I left. Honestly, I was really down for a couple of years, and I wanted nothing to do with dating. I was living in Dallas, and then I got recruited by WeWork. That’s what brought me to New York. I took what I learned from the dating industry and brought it into the workplace as their first-ever director of workplace connection. I was there for a year and change.
What inspired you to create Paired by the People after that?
I had always been really interested very specifically in the art of the setup. Not matchmaking. The matchmaking industry is a whole other beast and actually quite predatory. I was very interested in people who set people up without any kind of monetary incentive.
If you listen to people who are single, they’ll be like, I’m turning into a consumer. I’m turning into this person on Amazon. And what a setup does is that it kind of disrupts that behavior. I started thinking, Well, my parents were in an arranged marriage—the ultimate setup. My brother met his wife on a setup 15 years ago. Yet there was this study done by a Stanford sociologist, Michael Rosenfeld, in 2019, about how heterosexual couples have met and the “met through friends” method has plummeted.
Meanwhile, the “met online” part of the chart has shot, like, straight up.
Everyone thinks if it’s on an app or tech, it’s better, and that’s just not necessarily true. We’ve given our hearts over to corporations, and I don’t think we’ve fully realized that. So for Paired by the People, it wasn’t this idea that you have to strike gold and these people have to be perfect for each other, but this idea of pairing: putting two people together by the people.
Structure-wise, I thought it was interesting that each episode of Paired starts by introducing the listener to an existing couple, and they’re the ones who go through candidate profiles and discuss who to set up.
I knew I wanted the first half of the episode to include couples. There’s this divide between people who are in a relationship and people who are not. Why are we on opposite sides? Nobody knows how long they’re going to be in a relationship. It’s hilarious that people are like, I’m in a marriage. I’m like, you’re married now.
And I wanted to model what it would be like to incorporate couples, where they’re assisting in the process, and you’re hearing them debate and how they make a decision. And that solves one of the big things that is so hard about dating, which is that it’s all up to you. At least for one episode, we’re taking the decision out of your hands. All you have to do is get excited.
It’s also interesting to see the podcast take these deeper turns into setup culture. I loved the one where one guest, Jenny Tolan, talks about her “date of the month” club.
Right, we’re also telling stories around the setup. The one that just came out is called “We Were Set Up.” It’s six different couples who were set up by someone in their life, and it’s a tribute to those people. Because you’ll hear that Kamala Harris was set up, and Prince Harry was set up, but you don’t hear about the people behind it.
And you think a setup is shoving people in the bar, but there’s all these different ways. There’s a woman who met someone on a plane and then a year later was like, Hey, I think you should meet my friend. Would you guys be interested? They now live together.
How are you finding these people—the candidates and the couples?
I literally just email people and ask my friends. This is the funny thing with so many people—it takes them a minute. A lot of people don’t even realize they’ve set people up. You have to jog people’s memory. But I do not showcase people who charge for it. Otherwise it’s just another business model.
Tell me more about the “story profile” that you have the candidates fill out and share. When I was listening to the setup episodes, I was struck by how intentional those questions for the “bio” appeared.
So when I did those storytelling events for singles, people answered these questions with slides. I was constantly iterating and starting to understand how you want to use questions that bring out the less judgmental side of people, that allow them to give you a story rather than an answer. Dating is so fraught with judgments. What really good questions do is temper that for a second.
In the Atlanta episode, I talk a lot about the question: What’s something people might assume about you? When I first did that question, I used to ask, “What is something people tend to assume about you?” That actually had a negative effect because it made people think about how they’re being judged. But then I switched the word from tend to might, and it became an empowering question.
I love that episode, especially at the end, where—spoiler alert—the setup isn’t “successful.” But there’s a little line of narration where you say, “When people leave a date this way, it affects the entire ecosystem.” Tell me more about that.
Well, dating is a pool, right? There are only so many single people at one time. So there’s not just exhaustion that comes with swiping. It’s arriving at a date when the other person has been on eight shitty dates, and you’ve been on nine shitty dates, so together you have 17 shitty dates.
If people are asking better questions, if people are truly trying to grow and respect each other through this process, that’s important. Right now people don’t mean to, but they’re slinging mud at each other—ghosting, going to the bathroom and never coming back. We need to equip people to be a little more resilient and open, and the way to get there is by inputting better stories. The stories we are telling people are very binary—that it’s okay to shit on someone if they’re not your type, or to throw a glass of wine in someone’s face. We’re so influenced by the entertainment narrative that they make their way into our real life.
The more I think about it, the more I’m realizing how unnatural the apps feel by comparison. Like, the other night, I was watching one of those pop-psychology TikToks that was like, “Dating apps introduce you to people you don’t normally meet. But what if that’s because you’re not supposed to meet them?” A hilarious high thought. But I did close the app down and had a long, hard think about it.
It’s a fine line. What dating apps are good for is that you are going to cross paths with people you’d never cross paths with. That part is awesome. What people are not paying attention to is how the interface changes you. Even though you might have more options, you have been rewired. That’s a nuanced conversation a lot of people don’t want to have.
When it comes to matters of the heart, everyone turns their brain off. We’ll criticize Jeff Bezos, but who runs your dating app? How are dating apps affecting you? Who are they putting out of business? Well, they’re putting out of business this very important gesture in what is a communal society.
What’s next for you and the podcast?
I got approached by a couple television producers, so that’s something I’m exploring. I want to do more in-person episodes. I want to do events again, and take the principles of the show and make them more accessible.
The top thing on my bucket list—this is actually how the show started: I wanted to set up a celebrity. We don’t think about that, but celebrities have a really hard time meeting people. And a lot of times they want to meet mortals! I want to set up someone like that who’s open to it. When it comes to love and searching for romance, we’re all trying to figure it out, and our hearts are all equally susceptible.
You should get Nicholas Braun from Succession. I just read an interview where it sounds like he’s having a hard time with dating.
How do I get to him?! He’s going to be in that WeWork movie, right?
— Cover Story: From Puff Daddy to Diddy to Love
— Behind-the-Scenes Details About Working With Meghan and Harry
— The Doris Duke Cold Case Reopens
— A Meghan Markle and Kate Middleton TV Project?
— Monica Lewinsky on the Love of Her Life and Her Greatest Regret
— Jennifer Lopez Unfollows Alex Rodriguez on Instagram
— Love Is a Crime: Inside One of Hollywood’s Wildest Scandals
— “That Woman Was Made of Steel”: Aaliyah’s Life and Legacy
— 19 Black-Owned Beauty and Wellness Brands With Something for Everyone
— From the Archive: The Code of Silence at Brett Kavanaugh’s Alma Mater
— Sign up for “The Buyline” to receive a curated list of fashion, books, and beauty buys in one weekly newsletter.