IDEA No 78
ONLINE DATING
Whether for friendship, marriage or sex, we are programmed to look for love. Before online dating, it used to be a romantic affair. Now it is an algorithm.
Eighty-one-year-old professor Wu Jieqin and his 58-year-old bride Jiang Xiaohui met online. ‘The internet does not belong to the young alone’, Wu Jieqin told a local newspaper.
Except this is not strictly true. There have always been matchmakers. There have always been blind dates. There have always been arranged marriages. Since the invention of the newspaper in the 1700s, we have had the lonely-hearts column. The Web took this to the next level.
Online dating sites worldwide are visited by hundreds of millions of people. It is estimated that one in five marriages in the US started with an online encounter. A recent survey revealed that a third of adult Germans had looked for a partner online.
The appeal of online dating is not hard to fathom. Rejection via email is not quite as excruciating as being snubbed in real life, and anything that minimizes humiliation is bound to catch on. Combine this with a huge pool of similar-minded people looking for love and you have a winning formula.
Instead of looking for love in your social circle, online dating enables you to search a pool of thousands – thousands of people who have conveniently let you know their interests, their personal statistics and what they are looking for in a partner. In the same way that the Web made buying an obscure book possible, it can help us find love. According to long tail theory (see The Long Tail), the Web provides a market for niche products. It does not get more niche than individuals.
It is now quicker and cheaper to find love than ever before. We work longer hours. We move around more. We stay single longer. Busy lives mean less time for dating. Moving around means smaller social circles. Older people go out less. Online dating offers the answer to these barriers to love.
Online dating used to be a last resort, something people turned to when they had given up on meeting someone in their day-to-day life. Now it is not only stigma-free, but also empowering. Women find it easier to make the first move. Shy people, older people and people from minority groups can find a place to court like-minded others.
The Web has moved dating beyond time and place to shared interests. It offers a solution to people who have typically found it harder to cultivate relationships, and it fits conveniently into our busy schedules. But ultimately, it is just another way of meeting someone, indicating a deep emotional acceptance that the Web is now a normal part of life.■
‘Instead of looking for love in your social circle, online dating enables you to search a pool of thousands.’
Ashley Madison is an online dating service for people who are already in a relationship. Its slogan is ‘Life is short. Have an affair.’