Online Dating in the Coronavirus Era: How to Get With the Game
CHECKMATING Dating apps are encouraging quarantined singles to interact via games of all sorts
Illustration: Kiersten EssenpreisBEFORE COVID-19, the biggest danger of a first date was the risk of rolling your eyes while your match droned on about parasailing or poker. Back then, the online-dating protocol was to move from a brief chat via the app to a date, even kissing, “as quickly as possible after mutually swiping right,” said Coffee Meets Bagel founder Dawoon Kang.
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But now with no end to the pandemic in sight, dating-app creators are looking for ways to prolong safe virtual relationships for weeks, even months, stretching their roles from matchmakers to love nurturers.
“It’s giving us a chance to rethink the way we date and meet people,” said Dani Fankhauser, who co-founded XO, a recently launched app that aims to facilitate meaningful and more playful relationships.
Instead of fostering connections through basic conversation, XO uses in-app icebreakers like the games “Kiss, Marry, Fight” (choose which of three celebrities/cartoons/brand mascots you want to Kiss, Marry or Fight) or “I Draw, You Title” (self-explanatory). Each gives Covid-era singles fun ways to interact and non-apocalyptic topics to inspire discussion.
Similarly, this week Coffee Meets Bagel is rolling out a “Virtual Date Nudge” to facilitate burgeoning, socially distanced relationships. Once two people have swiped and started chatting, the app prompts each one to select a digital-date idea from a list of six, including a game night, a virtual museum tour or the swapping of recipes to cook together over video. When one person selects one, signaling “I’m open to it,” the other is alerted.
In April, Hinge launched its in-app “Date from Home” feature. This pop-up lets users announce to matches mid-chat that they’re ready to dive into a digital date.
While these new prompts and proddings might feel analogous to the meddling of an overinvolved mother, many find the suggestions an improvement over shapeless modern courtship.
When Gabriella Garcia’s immunocompromised status sent her indoors for the foreseeable future, the 22-year-old college student wasn’t expecting to meet her “soul mate.” But then she matched with Ishmael on XO, and the two quickly bonded over an “Abraham Lincoln fish morph” amalgamation they created while playing a complete-the-drawing game.
“It was the stupidest thing, but it broke the ice,” Ms. Garcia said. For two weeks, she and Ishmael have been FaceTiming multiple times each day. She’s even met his mom.
While Ms. Garcia and Ishmael matched by mutually swiping right, XO users can opt-out of scrolling through suitors and instead go on “blind dates”: A cartoon obscures each person’s profile as you talk. Another option lets you “play a random game” with someone who fits your preset match settings.
Can you make a genuine connection over an app? Ms. Garcia’s mom has expressed doubt. “She thinks I’m nuts. ‘You’ve never met this guy—how can you have feelings for him?’” Ms. Garcia recalled. “I just tell her, ‘Mom, you would never understand.’”
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