In NYC, a Podcast Host Is the Ultimate Wingwoman

in nyc, a podcast host iS the ultimate wingwoman

Among her friends, Lindsey Metselaar has always been the go-to for advice on dating and relationships. These days, a generation listens in.

NEW YORK CITY – Wearing a fitted sports bra and leggings in a kitchen with granite countertops and white wooden cabinetry, Lindsey Metselaar looks to the camera and projects her voice: “Four rules for dating apps. Number one…”

There is no intro, outro, music, or special effects. In a 57 second video shot on her iPhone, she urges viewers to resist revealing what they’re looking for (unless it’s something casual); conduct background research on a match; maintain distance ahead of a first date; and finally, never send nudes. “Good luck swiping!” she says before reaching for the Stop Recording button.

Lindsey is the founder and host of We Met At Acme, a dating and relationships podcast for millennials. Since spending more time at home in 2020, she’s begun filming mini listicles for her Instagram, @wemetatacme, with titles like 4 Reasons People Ghost You, 5 Ways to Improve Communication, and Green Flags When You Start Seeing Someone New. On a daily basis, she posts dating-related memes, articles, and snippets of her personal life, drawing the attention of more than 70,000 followers.

Her tips are sound, the type of cautionary diction women often volunteer to one another – “Don’t become pen pals, get to the date as soon as you can!” – but it’s Lindsey’s relaxed confidence and no-frills delivery that separate her from a sea of influencers obsessed with curating the perfect online persona.

That any person with a working smartphone could reproduce her content drives her authority as a trusted peer. In an age of overdeveloped aesthetics, altered imagery, and social ploys, she not only flaunts but dissects the bumps and bruises of trudging through your twenties. As if to say, my messy bun is the same as your messy bun and my dating mishaps probably mirror yours, Lindsey communicates to her audience with the cool informality of a good friend.

In that sense, the podcast hasn’t changed in the three years since its debut. In the Fall of 2017, she found herself broken up with – “so out of the blue,” she said – and on her birthday, no less. “I thought, ‘This is crazy. This sucks. We need to be talking about these things with others who have been through similar situations.’ I had a friend come over, recorded our conversation, and uploaded it to SoundCloud and iTunes. That’s how the podcast began.”

Guests Emma Willmann, Joe Amabile, Kendall Long and Jazzmyne Robbins at a We Met At Acme show hosted by Dynasty Typewriter at The Hayworth in Los Angeles, August 2019.

Lindsey studied Film and Television at Boston University knowing she would pursue a career in media. As an extrovert, she says she has always wanted to connect with the world in some way. Before the rise of modern social media, she was an avid AOL user, chatting via instant messenger and uploading photos of her and her friends to public albums. In college, she started the Twitter page “Stoner Girl Problems,” @stonrgrlproblem, poking fun at the trivial inconveniences of heavy marijuana use. “I wish my kitchen was in my room,” she wrote in 2013. At its height, the account amassed over 30,000 followers. Then entered Instagram. “Oh my god. This is even better,” she thought. “I jumped on everything as soon as it came out.”

An early-to-adopt strategy has served Lindsey well, who is, now at 30, building a presence on Tik Tok, a platform with half of its users less than 24 years old. But finding relatability online comes naturally to her; she has an intuition for what people want. “Most of us are self-interested. We want to go back to ourselves.”

After graduation, she returned to Manhattan where she grew up on the Upper East Side, and worked in social media for a number of years before starting her own social media management company, Lindsey’s Lunchbox. Since her birthday breakup, she has juggled clients and We Met At Acme, though these days she is focused on the podcast full-time.

Lindsey recording at Spotify offices.

Acme is a New American bistro in New York City’s NoHo neighborhood. At ground level is a quintessential upscale city hot spot with low lighting, checkered floors, smooth black booths, and menu promising whipped ricotta butter, fiddlehead ferns, and fried sage. At basement level is a speakeasy-like cocktail bar and lounge that’s been around for as long as she can remember. “You have to know someone to get in,” she said. Because patrons are vetted at the door, the bar garnered a reputation for intermingling quality singles. “We met at Acme!” she heard giddy couples say. “I loved the way it sounded.”

Today, WMAA is at 2 million downloads with new episodes published every Sunday. Lindsey welcomes authors, sexologists, intimacy coaches, and other influential leaders in the romantic wellness industry to plunge into topics like trauma from cheating or rejection, how to handle finances as a couple, dating best practices, and sexual compatibility. In an episode from May, Lindsey sat down with Laura Wasser, Hollywood’s iconic divorce attorney, to discuss foreboding signs of an unhappy union and how to broach a pre-nup.

As a host, she is deliberate but not precious with her words. A true Libra (astrology is a big part of Lindsey’s life and the podcast), she is charismatic and balances all sides of a subject, rarely shying away from disagreement. “I’m interested in what works and what doesn’t work,” she said. “More than anything, I’m fascinated by relationships.”

Most of her listeners are in their twenties, a decade riddled with romantic turbulence and “selfish dating,” she calls it: dating someone who loves you disproportionately more or less; dating for entertainment value without long-term promise; and dating when you’re self-absorbed. “The first and second scenarios are selfish because you’re inflicting premeditated pain onto someone else,” she said, assuming a split-up is inevitable. “To understand if you fall into the third category, ask yourself, Why am I with this person? If you answer, He or she does so-and-so for me or makes me feel so-and-so way, then that’s an indication the relationship centers around you. True partnership is altruistic: What can I do for my partner?”

The upper level of Acme restaurant, located at 9 Great Jones Street in New York City.

The median age for first marriage has steadily risen since the sixties, from 20 and 22 years old for women and men respectively to 28 and 30 years old in 2019, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. “Marrying later means we’re forming connections with partners after we’ve developed,” said the Host, implying some milestone kinks may straighten out with age. “I think marriages will last longer.”

Her parents are happily married “to the point where it’s almost annoying,” she teased. Carrying that ideal, she gravitated towards serial monogamy through most of her twenties, with bouts of productive singledom.

After parting with her high school sweetheart of three years, she arrived in Boston with a doe-like innocence. “I was so optimistic. I didn’t expect anyone to hurt me,” Lindsey remembers. “I soon realized that wasn’t going to be the case.” She fell heartbroken more than once, caused aches in others, and reaped a lesson from every encounter. By wading through the viscosity of uninformed dating, she shed her fragile layers and evolved from “the naïve girl who loved love to a more logical and rational person,” she said. “I still love love though.”

To find it, disciples of modern dating know to embrace the process and fan even the dullest sparks of curiosity. “Date a lot when you’re single. See it as an opportunity to discover a new person and maybe make a friend. If it becomes a monotonous chore, you’re not going to end up happy,” she said. “If you think, I get to date, it’s going to be a lot more fun.”

“True partnership is altruistic: ‘What can I do for my partner?’”

She encourages women in relationships to nurture a life outside of romance and allow a man to lead and provide security. “A couple can split their rent check, but the man should pay for date night,” she said, acknowledging her ethos leans more traditional than not. Advice from celebrated love gurus and self-help books like The Rules and Why Men Love Bitches may seem strident – “Don’t talk to a man first” and “Don’t accept a Saturday night date after Wednesday” – but their teachings arrive at the same fundamental truth: if you live with passion regardless of relationship status, dating and love will work in your favor.

Still, Lindsey receives hundreds of personalized questions weekly asking for her feedback. “Time and time again, people are uneasy about the idea of defining a relationship,” she said. “Women constantly wonder how to have these conversations. For me, it’s black and white.” The right match will make taking the next step together clear. A woman’s job is to accept advances, not to usher them her way.

“I’ve been called an expert, but I’m still a student,” said The Host, admitting that she is learning as she goes. “That’s what’s appealing to the listener – they’re watching my experiences unfold alongside theirs.” Since launching the podcast, she’s dated Mr. Right For Now, endured a breakup, and started seeing someone new. Through each stage, she has divulged her detailed highs and lows.

Recently, a listener approached her while out for a walk alone. “Where’s your boyfriend?” she inquired. “I’m so invested in your relationship!”

“Some might have been weirded out, but it made my day,” Lindsey said. “I love when people are open about how important relationships are to our well-being.”

The couple recently moved in together and by all measures, she is happy. Reflecting on the past decade, she feels gratitude for each wall ran into, wrong hall walked, and maze-like path that led to her now-boyfriend.

He has no online presence of his own but is a loyal supporter of the podcast. “Every now and then he’ll joke, ‘You said so-and-so about us’, but I would never say anything on air meant for just us two,” she said. Though she is empathetic to his position – it can be unusual hearing your significant other thread in and out of your relationship in a public domain – she never regrets sharing, she says, because it’s the best way to connect with an audience.

“Listen to your listeners” is her proven tactic for building an effective podcast, or brand. By adamantly engaging with her listeners and replying to as many messages as her thumbs will allow, Lindsey whittles at the online barriers between fans and popular accounts like her own. “I don’t want to be seen as ‘a big influencer that doesn’t have the time,’” she assured me.

In fact, WMAA’s Instagram Highlights are a collection of small dives into listener-suggested topics: FaceTime date ideas in 2020, seasonal wardrobe staples, an anti-ghosting text template, and therapist recommendations by city.

Lindsey and her boyfriend met through mutual friends.

Lindsey has seen a therapist since she was 23 and remains an enthusiastic advocate for normalizing mental healthcare. Cognitive behavioral therapy has given her the tools to redirect self-sabotaging thoughts and become a more loving partner and person, she said. “Someone approaching therapy for the first time can browse through my highlight and find a professional recommended by others.”

Her account is best known for its Instagram polls, however, of which she posts dozens daily. She asks her community for their opinion on a variety of gray-area hypotheticals like whether you would be upset if a partner of three months was found active on a dating site, if the omission of “I” in “I love you” is less meaningful than the full three words, or if eight months without sex is indicative of disinterest or plain old laziness.

A product of New York City and the no-nonsense disposition of maturing millennials, WMAA feels honest and efficient – “It’s so ‘a friend you’re following,’” she said, looking to expand one day into other formats: a written column, book, or dating show. Lindsey’s vision is clear – to be the wise big sister sharing hard-earned insight about dating, sex, and love with the generation that may need it most.

It’s a dialogue she does not tire. Often, and with consent, she’ll take over friends’ dating apps to chat with matches as a tickled proxy. From the start, she is invested. “Everyone deserves a chance at love,” she said. “However I can help.”