People complain about online dating all the time but rarely present solutions for improving it. Meeting in person? (Scary!) Through friends? (What friends?) At work? (Not in 2018!)

Kelly Rakowski has a new idea. Well, sort of.

Old-school personal ads — once the domain of newspaper back pages before Craigslist — are the currency of Personals, an Instagram dating community she has built for lesbians; bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex and asexual women; and gender-nonconforming and nonbinary people. (Basically, anyone who isn’t straight and/or a cisgender man.)

There, a “late 20’s glitter femme” who loves to cook summons an “andro/moc/butch taste tester.” A “sober non-binary switchy Gemini grad student” looks for a friend with whom to eat snacks. A “soft butch dapper dyke” looks for “the right lady.” Unlike mainstream dating apps, which tend to impose their own categories, the identities on Personals can be inventive and highly specific.