Online dating companies are privy to the fact that people use them for travel. Last year, Tinder launched a paid feature called “Passport” which lets people swipe on members anywhere in the world. And Scruff, a dating app for gay men, has a section called “ScruffVenture” which helps users coordinate travel plans and connect with host members in foreign countries. Scruff’s founder, Eric Silverberg, told me the company added the feature when they noticed lots of users were already posting travel itineraries in their profiles; now one in four members posts a new trip every year. [...]
“I guess people on online-dating sites know what they’re looking for, but these younger people in nevermet relationships aren’t really looking for love online,” the /r/LongDistance moderator, a 20-year-old college student who goes by Bliss online, tells me. (As a female gamer, she’s asked me not to use her name for fear of being harassed or doxed.) “Then one day they realize they love the person they’ve been talking to online. It’s a weird mindset to be in.” Bliss was a nevermet herself who, when I called her, had just met her German boyfriend of three years for the first time when he flew to her hometown in Florida. They’d first connected through the online game Minecraft, which is how Bliss thinks most nevermets on the subreddit meet: through video games, Instagram, or Reddit.
To me, someone who hates first dates, this sounds great. I like the idea of going on a date with someone after you get to know them. “With Tinder, you’re shopping,” says Vivian Zayas, the director of the personality, attachment, and control lab at Cornell University. “But playing these games and chatting, the mentality is more organic, like in a normal social network.” Plus, research suggests the sheer amount of time people spend together is one of the best predictors of attraction—we’re more likely to like people we find familiar.
No comments:
Post a Comment