I studied with Aanya [name changed] at a journalism school in Chennai, but I don’t remember us ever speaking to each other. She was one of those girls who was ultra-chic and confident, while I was painfully shy, and suffered from the syndrome of not being able to open my mouth at a social gathering without the aid of alcohol.
Many years passed, and one day I saw on Facebook that she was in my city to write a feature on marine life here. I asked if she wanted to connect. She said yes, we went for breakfast to a charming café, and spent hours catching up over strawberry French toast and coffee. She told me about her battle with cancer, and I told her about the various projects I was involved in. We bonded over the perils of singledom, and the alarming scarcity of eligible bachelors in our cities. It struck me that in the pre-Facebook era, I would have forgotten her within a year of graduating from journalism school. If we had met somewhere by accident, we would probably exchange tremulous smiles, wondering why the other person looked familiar.
Facebook has revolutionised how we interact with others, maybe in ways we are not aware of. By expanding our social connections, it has opened a window into the lives of people who would have been no more than 'hi-bye' acquaintances in another era. And now, Facebook is entering new terrain―that of online dating. Facebook will soon launch a dating feature that is “not just for hookups”, but to build “meaningful and long-term” relationships.
“There are 200 million people on Facebook that list themselves as single, so clearly there’s something to do here,” said Mark Zuckerberg.
Other than invading users’ privacy, the problem with Facebook, some say, is that it is detrimental to intimate, face-to-face interactions. It connects people in an artificial way, in a land where everyone looks cheerful and no one has a bad hair day. With the dating feature, is the elusive land of intimacy within its grasp? Can Facebook connect people in a warm and genuine manner, instead of a fake, my-life-is-perfect way?
It is difficult to say. Online dating has always been a slippery slope. Dating apps either use algorithms to help you find the ‘perfect match’, like OkCupid and eHarmony, or they make no claims to perfection and keep things more casual, like Tinder. Algorithm-based matching never really clicked, maybe because people’s emotions and behaviour patterns are too messy to be codified through machine learning. Although Tinder is a popular hookup app, it is fast losing its mojo because people are getting tired of keeping things no-strings-attached. They want emotional connection and lasting relationships, even if it involves doing the other person’s laundry and sharing bathroom rights.
That is why Facebook’s dating feature just might be a game-changer. Facebook has enough information about you―from your favourite ice-cream flavour to your best Bruce Willis fan moments and go-to heartbreak songs―to connect you with potential friends, if not lovers. Two great things about the feature is that it promises to protect your privacy, and it will not suggest your friends to date. This will be useful because people haven’t really gotten over their hesitation to use dating apps, as though it signifies some failure on their part to attract the opposite sex. Dating in the digital age is hard, not because there are no choices, but because there are too many. It’s like going for one of those weddings where you have so many dishes on the buffet that you don’t feel like eating any. If Facebook can finally crack the dating code, it will have the eternal gratitude of all the singletons in the world. And their future partners.