ABOVE VIDEO: The Frant - how much public money goes into private schools?
I went to public schools my entire life.
In fact, my public high school was one of the worst-regarded on the Gold Coast. We even had our own police officer, whose job was to patrol the grounds and stop kids from wagging.
So, it’s safe to say I shouldn’t qualify for Toffee, the dating app that launched in Australia last month which is exclusive to the privately educated.
But I’ve never shied away from a challenge before.
Turns out it was pretty easy to circumnavigate Toffee’s “hybrid checking process” that uses “automated social media cross checks” and a “manual screening process” to check if you went to a private school.
I embellished my application to say that I attended the poshest private school in my high school’s area. Within days I received a notification that I had been accepted into Toffee Dating.
User Experience
I might be a povo public school kid but I know my way around a dating app and Toffee has some of the worst UX I’ve ever encountered.
The entire experience can be summed up in one screenshot.
When I managed to get the app to work, it has a pretty similar swipe left/right design to Tinder, Bumble etc. Upload some pictures, enter some information about yourself and you’re off...with your private school displayed in prime position.
The only profile requirement unique to Toffee was a prompt to design a “perfect menu”. Yes, like, restaurant menu. Most of the people I saw just used the default suggestions. I decided to personalise it and see if anyone noticed...they did not.
But perhaps the biggest of Toffee’s sins is that it does not have autocorrect built into its messaging system. Maybe this is a nod to the higher level of spelling prowess Toffee assumes it’s carefully selected dating pool possesses. Maybe it forgot to add it.
Toffee's default "perfect menu" (left) and the author's (right). Source: The Feed
Either way, the result was conversations that are more typos than anything else.
There’s also a small matter of price. I eventually found that to use the app that actually costs $6.99 per month. I had to read through the T&Cs to figure out that I got a free ride for six months because I was a “founding member”.
The Talent
Toffee’s promo promised a more refined collection of gentlemen. An elegant selection of potential suitors. A cut above the riff-raff of the apps used by plebs.
Exhibit A: The first man I spoke to here. Here’s what he said when I asked him why he is using Toffee. 
But wait, there’s more.
Truly the cream of the crop. Thanks Toffee.
Other men I spoke to seemed angry, in a way that will be familiar to women who have used dating apps. It’s just their anger was a little more directed.
There was even one guy who said he was using Toffee because “private school girls are easy.”
That’s not to say everyone I spoke to was awful. A couple of men said that there were just there to make friends or meet a like minded partner.
Would I use Toffee Dating to find my happily ever after?
No.
But that’s just me.
In fact, what this experiment did show me is that - as much as I wanted every guy to be a snobby, rich kid villain character - they weren't. Some were gross, crude, overly confident, weird and others were polite, kind and sweet. Just like any other dating app.
Perhaps, dividing people into romantic classes depending on how much they paid for school is unnecessary and ineffective.
But what would I know, I went to public school.
