Mona Chalabi’s Theory of Exploration

In the summer of 2025, I sent Feeld members a series of questions about how they tinker or tailor their profiles. I also asked them to describe how they explore and refine their parameters for other members. In their answers, I found all kinds of patterns in the ways connections are formed, and a theory emerged: there are four styles of being a Feeld member. The Cartographer, The Fine Tuner, The Gardener, and The Acrobat—which one are you? Take the quiz below to find out where you fit.

Since you joined Feeld, how often have you changed your bio?

A. Never

B. Just once or twice

C. Every few months

D. Every few weeks

How do you use your distance settings?

A. I change this depending on the city I’m in

B. I change this every once in a while

C. I leave it alone

D. I’m adjusting this along with all my other search settings as I’m looking for connection

Which of these statements do you most agree with?

A. If I’m frustrated with what I’m seeing, I need to change where I’m looking

B. When it comes to my search settings, there’s been a little trial and error before I landed on what it was I wanted

C. How I present myself is important if I want to attract the right kind of connections

D. It’s important to be very, very open-minded if I want to find something that works for me

When I feel excited by the profiles I’m seeing, I think…

A. Great! I have set my distance juuuust right

B. I figured out the right search settings for me

C. I must have really nailed my photos and bio

D. This probably has nothing to do with my behavior, there are just lots of good matches to be found

I am open to…

A. People in other places

B. I’ve got a clear list of criteria. I know myself and know what I want

C. Asking my friends for help in making and editing my profile

D. Ev-er-y-thing

If I had a plant that wasn’t doing so well, I would…

A. Move it to a different spot in my home

B. Trim off the dead leaves and keep it moving

C. Wonder if I had forgotten to water it

D. Google how to find a more resilient type of plant

You’re about to go on a date irl. Do you…

A. Go back into the app to double check where they live

B. Double check what their name was

C. Look back at your profile, you want to know what they are expecting

D. Nothing at all—you’re on your way now, let’s see where this leads

Mostly As—The Cartographer

The setting we change the most often is simply distance. 73% of you adjust this within the first month of joining Feeld and 16% of you keep on adjusting it on a regular basis after that (every month or so). 

There are lots of reasons for redrawing the map:

“I travel a lot and look to update my location to find someone to fuck.”

“I try to limit my search to people who live in my general vicinity. I accepted a like/liked back a profile of someone passing through my city. we fell in love and are now in a long distance non-monogamous relationship with a lot of potential.”

Gay women tend to draw a smaller map than straight users. And straight users tend to draw a smaller map than people who identify as “exploring.” 

Habits depend on place, too. Some people who live in smaller towns described increasing the distance of their search and then finding there were too many new profiles, so they shrunk it back down a little. It all takes a little finessing. 

But the overall trend isn’t one of constant adjustment. Most cartographers slowly make their map smaller and smaller with every passing month as they find what works for them. And men consistently have lower distance preferences than women (more on that in the conclusion below).

Mostly Bs—The Fine Tuner

This is someone who, in the first month that they join Feeld, makes a few adjustments and doesn’t really head back to those search settings afterwards. There’s a learning curve to these connections and you found your little groove! About 16% of users do this—it’s pretty common. 

Those early adjustments can be about learning:

“Based on some interactions I had with matches, I made updates to be more specific and clear about what I’m looking for.”

Sometimes people change their search settings early on to avoid unwanted behavior…such as “harassment from cis men.”

Or pragmatism:

“I don't want to appear in the search settings of people I don't want to see. Like, 50+ dudes—you will never get a shot at me. Same for <28 the age difference is too large. It's a waste for you to shoot your shot and I don't want anything to do with you… even if you were the best fella or gal ever.”

Overall, men were more likely to change their search settings. Women and other gender identities were more likely to make changes to their profiles (see The Gardener!).

This tallies up with an internal user behavior analysis in 2025, which found that men were more likely to search through discovery and women were more likely to look through the profiles of people who had already liked them. 

Mostly Cs—The Gardener

You’re an introspective person who is more inclined to change the way you present to the world than change the way you search. And you’re not alone in these pretty fields. People prune their profiles for all kinds of reasons…

“If something has changed about me—weight, plants, beard, etc—I try to show me, not an internet version. Honesty is important.”

“The other detail always being updated is my most recent STI tests. My primary partner and I always get tested in between new partners, so I always reflect the newest test date.”

And it can be after you got some feedback too…

“Made it shorter, it was very long. Once described as ‘bible length.’"

Sometimes, you also want your profile to reflect bigger life changes: 

“Sobriety!”

“I just feel so much hotter with 14 months of HRT under my belt (under my bra!) and celebrate that, perhaps in tone if nothing else.”

But the changes can also be as you get to know yourself better.

“The more experiences I have on the dating app, the more I learn about what I want and don’t want and that is reflected in my bio”

Mostly Ds— The Acrobat

You’re willing to try just about anything. You’re constantly adjusting your search settings, playing with things like desires, distance, and age. 

For some of you, that’s because your tastes keep changing. Others are just plain curious. Like dating anthropologists, you’re just keen to study… 

“A/B testing what works and what doesn't. Trying to come up with new b ways of getting people interested in communicating”

“You browse and browse, even start to categorize certain types of people, not by their looks, but by their needs and profiles. So I'm mostly on the app out of curiosity, a social study.”

It sounds pretty serious but acrobats typically don’t treat being on the app as work. It’s experimentation, it’s play, and the only way to keep having fun is to keep testing out new things. 

When you’re trying to figure out who is most likely to sit in each of these categories, it's not so much sexual orientation or age or geography—the clearest pattern comes down to gender. People who identify as men change their search settings more, and women spend more time changing their profiles. 

When I first looked at those findings, I sighed. I wondered if men are more inclined to believe that there’s something wrong with their environment whereas women are more inclined to think there’s something wrong with themselves. But I think that’s a bit too simplistic (especially when I read through all the answers people had given about why they’re adjusting their profiles). There are a ton of different explanations for this gender split. Maybe people who aren’t men (because the patterns held up for gender expansive people, too) are just really clear about what they want, and don’t want to change their search preferences. Maybe their lives are changing more frequently and more significantly in exciting ways they want to describe in their bios. 

Whatever the reasons are, most of us don’t simply sign up and search. Almost 90% of us change our bios at some point after we join the site and 92% change our search settings. Because good connections require luck and a bit of effort—most of us know that means a little tinkering now and then.