The future of dating post-coronavirus.
A biotechnology nerd’s take on the fate of singles everywhere.
On Saturday March 21st, the Canadian Health minister Patty Hajdu, announced that self-isolation to flatten the curve of the coronavirus pandemic may last longer than we initially expected. Not a few weeks, but months.
Being in the dating scene during self-isolation, and a biotechnology geek who is constantly thinking about ways in which technology can improve and/or augment the human experience, made me reflect — are all the singles out there essentially guaranteed to remain single for as long as coronavirus lasts ? How will self-isolation change the way people meet and make connections with potential romantic partners ?
For those who’d rather see this article as a video, here’s a summary for ya !
Otherwise, let’s dive into it !
On Friday, March 20th, ahead of the weekend, Bumble (the popular online dating app) sent all users a message that read, “We encourage you to please take your dates virtual. Use our Video Chat and Voice Call features in the app to connect from home ! Please don’t meet your Bumble matches IRL for now.”
While at first this may have seemed like an odd notion for some, users are quickly coming around to the idea, with some even posting about their virtual dating experiences. Imagine, you chat online, seem to hit it off, and decide to grab virtual drinks the following evening. You pour yourself a glass of wine in the comfort of your own home, and at the agreed-upon time use the app-based video chat feature or get on FaceTime if you happen to have already exchanged numbers. If things go well, you may plan a virtual dinner date next time — perhaps one of you orders Uber Eats ? And if things don’t go well, you “exit call” and continue on in your virtual quest for love.
Let’s explore what’s wrong and what’s right with this scenario, and what’s next.
“Love is Blind” IRL ?
This self-isolation situation is coming right after the popular Love is Blind Netflix series, where couples “date”and fall in love virtually by speaking to each other through a wall without ever seeing each other face to face.
The series ended with three couples who are still together, two of them legally married.
While with virtual dating people aren’t necessarily doing so “blindly” having presumably seen each other’s photos on dating app, it still follows a similar principle of developing a connection with someone without actually meeting in real life.
“Ghosting culture” is about to go to the next level.
If “ghosting” culture is already a generational phenomenon, permeating not only the dating scene but now also professional interactions such as job interviews — it’s about to get worse.
The effort and energy required to “date” has now been further diminished. Now you don’t even need to leave your house to go on a date ! Order wine delivery and dinner takeout and hop on FaceTime or a Skype call. Hopefully, you both hit it off and continue chatting.
If you don’t hit it off though, now you no longer have to sit through a bad date making small talk and chugging back the wine to get it over with so that you can go home. Woohoo ! On a virtual date, all you have to do is hit “exit call” and you’re free to finish your Uber Eats in peace.
Somehow, thought, hitting the “Exit” button on someone though, starts to feel uncomfortably close to that Black Mirror episode where John Hamm’s character’s wife decides to “block” him such that he can no longer see her or interact with her.
Eventually, his character gets put “on the register” by the police and he is “blocked” from everyone — here’s what that could be like.
Eerie right ?
The way I see it, everyone’s about to start “ghosting” like never before. Whereas before people might’ve ghosted after the date, now they can do so during the date. After all, it feels awkward and kind of awful to simply get up and flee a dinner date in the middle of a restaurant. Pressing “exit call” on a digital screen would remove that social stigma, and as terrible as this may sound, interacting with a potential romantic prospect over a digital screen may somehow de-humanize them and make things feel a bit less personal.
So, let’s get back to your virtual date for a moment. You’ve exited out of it, and now you’ve still got some wine left and the rest of the evening ahead of you that you’ll be spending indoors. Now, nothing is stopping you from scheduling multiple “virtual dates” in a single evening. So, you ping another prospect from your list of matches and get back on FaceTime.
Which brings me to the next point…
The paradox of choice gets even greater.
There is a slew of psychology articles, studies, and talks online about how the “paradox of choice” or having too many options to choose from, is the reason so many people are remaining single. 80 years ago, people tended to marry people they met in high school, who lived in their neighbourhood, or who they met at a wedding. Now, there are tons of dating apps, dating websites, and really, the internet. We are living in a time where people meet over Instagram DMs and Bumble has expanded their platform to allow you to swipe right or left on potential platonic friends, and professional networking connections.
While this may sounds great, according to a theory by a psychologist who wrote the book “The Paradox of Choice”, Dr. Barry Schwartz, having more options can be a very difficult thing. People with more options are actually less happy as they have a hard time figuring out what’s the best choice. They’re constantly checking the facts and trying to figure out what they really want. What’s more, is when people finally do make a choice, they start regretting the choices that they didn’t make. Think of yourself trying to figure out what to watch on Netflix or trying to pick out a jam at a grocery store — yep, they’ve done studies on this and people get so overwhelmed with being faced with many options that they tend to just walk away without purchasing anything.
So think about it, with “virtual dating” becoming normalized in this time of self-isolation, what’s stopping you from starting a virtual dating relationship with someone across the world ? Why limit your radius to those living in your own neighbourhood, or city ? You won’t be meeting them in real life anytime soon anyways ! So why not expand your horizons ! Your dating poor just grew by 10s of millions of people. Personally, just the thought of that gives me anxiety. How will anyone ever make up their mind now !? The paradox of choice struggle is REAL.
If you don’t have a personal hologram I’m not interested.
Ok so we’ve talked about virtual dating. FaceTime, Zoom call, Skype… been there done that. What’s next ?
Hologram dating.
We first got to experience the magic of holograms at the 2012 Coachella music festival, where Snoop Dogg performed on stage with a hologram of Tupac Shakur.
People loved it and earlier this year, the Whitney Houston European hologram tour began eight years after the singer’s death, a holographic Houston will embark on a European tour started in the last week of February.
From The Independent reporter who attended Whitney’s hologram concert in UK earlier this month, it sounded pretty amazing:
“As soon as the hologram appeared, I knew I’d made the right choice in coming. A mixture of emotions hit me; joy, exhilaration, along with a slight twinge of sadness. The hologram looked so real I could have sworn she was really there. It was different than I had expected. For some odd reason, I thought the hologram was going to be giant, but it wasn’t. She was life-sized, dancing seamlessly, talking and singing smoothly. Her gestures weren’t glitchy and sim-like, they were graceful and perfect. Her facial expressions weren’t robotic, they were absolutely genuine and beautiful.”
You may be thinking, alright but that’s a serious production. How will holograms play into my dating life ? Well, hologram apps have been around for years (with varied success), with the most recent player being LA-based app, Jadu that’s looking to bring you the ability to create & share videos with life-size holograms of celebrities.
What I can see happening next is technology that will allow you to surpass geographic limitations and take your long-distance (or short distance, because quarantine) relationship to the next level and project yourself in your partner’s living space, so you can feel like you’re having a real life dinner date, etc. Kind of like that female leader (I forget the name!) in the opening episode of Season 2 of the futuristic show Altered Carbon — with her hologram hovering outdoors above a crowd of people to give a speech, with perfectly realistic image quality, while in reality she’s indoors somewhere far away.
Here’s a trailer of Altered Carbon Season 1, in case you haven’t seen the show yet (and because it’s arguably better than Season 2):
Now the trouble with holograms is that you can’t actually look around the space where your hologram is being projected and see what’s there. You may be able to speak in real time through your hologram, and maybe your partner still has the real you propped up on a Skype screen somewhere nearby, so that you can see and hear what’s going on. But at the end of the day, you and your virtual date partner won’t be able to enjoy your surroundings together. Which takes us to my last point, the grand finale.
Meet me in VR.
That’s right.
A virtual world that you and your romantic interest can enjoy together in real time.
Let’s face it, in our pre-coronavirus days, experiential and immersive attractions were already becoming a thing. It turns out that we already have so many things in the developed world, that people are increasingly seeking out tactile and memorable experiences as more valuable than possessions, hence we enter the experience economy (#firstworldproblems). In a seemingly never-ending quest for sensory stimulation (and new Instagram photos), people flock to experiential attractions. Think of LA-based Dreamscape that uses immersive VR to enable groups of people to share exotic encounters together. High Fidelity meanwhile, is building a fully-immersive VR world where if it’s raining in VR, you’ll be able to experience the sensation of the raindrops on your skin. And if an avatar touches you in VR, you’ll be able to feel their touch.
Apply this technology to the dating world and you now have the ability to put on a VR headset and experience a VR world together with your partner. Still doesn’t seem realistic ?
Well, some are already doing this. For the 16,000 employed agents eXp Realty, the first cloud-based national real estate brokerage, coming into work means putting on a VR headset to gather virtually on a virtual campus complete with meeting rooms, library, and sports field.
These people work in a virtual world, what’s stopping us from taking our dates into a virtual ?
The way I see it, taking our virtual dates into VR will allow us to spend quality time with our romantic interest AND have the immersive experiences our senses crave.
Regular IRL dates are starting to sound a bit boring in comparison. Meet me in VR instead.
