5 Common-Sense Dating Apps That Unbelievably Don't Exist
Using a dating app to meet someone is a bit like being Matt Damon in The Martian -- the marvels of modern technology got you here, but now your only chance for survival is your sense of humor and knowledge of potato trivia. Damon made it home, but we're not all NASA-trained botanists. Some of us need more help. Which is why I've come up with the following ideas for apps which would not only get you a date, but also make sure that it goes well. It's the best I could do, short of outfitting Cupid's arrow with a smart-bomb targeting chip.
Asshole Alert
The Problem:
Most people are awful. The search for love isn't a stroll through cherry blossoms; it's sifting the sewage outflow from an asshole factory. You spend the whole first date trying to find out if your companion's a jerk while they try to stop you from finding out if they're a jerk, and vice versa. This romantic maskirovka turns first dates into romantic cold wars -- hugely expensive wastes of time in which two powers posture about how much they want to screw each other.
While it only takes a right-swipe and a thumb-typed message to meet someone, it takes months to know them, and by that point, you're committed to them out of sheer inertia rather than any human desire. It's the one problem an app could never solve. Unless ...
The Solution:
This app would immediately identify a jerk. Luckily, modern technology makes this more realistic than you might think. The Internet makes it easier to detect assholes by amplifying the hell out of them. Most people aren't imaginative with their profiles when registering for new social websites, so "Asshole Alert" would use their dating profile, or facial recognition from a photo you've taken, to find and scan all their other online accounts. It would then alert you if they contain certain keywords.
"Yeah, I'm not ready for someone that into farm animal role play."
Social media is like a Geiger counter for human toxicity, in that your average asshole doesn't know how to type 140 characters without shrieking about his or her most depraved psychosis. Has your date called a stranger a bitch? Written about ethics in gaming journalism? Do they defend Dawkins? You deserve to know if racial slurs or threats of violence are bubbling away inside them, because after a certain length of time, they're going to spill some on you. This app would avoid more wasted time and bodily fluids than several wars. No reason to spend hours working out if someone is an asshole if they've already volunteered their nights and weekends advertising that to the world.
Just a prognosticatory warning: Even if I don't get the credit, this app is definitely coming (unlike anyone it identifies). And it'll affect everything, because the Internet is the real world + global connection at the speed of light. This is the future. Accept it.
The Conversation Shot Clock
The Problem:
We've all overheard a guy talking his first date to death. The girl gets three words into what she does for a living before he starts explaining it to her, and at that point he might as well be reciting vows of celibacy. A primal urge to display mating worthiness combined with a tragic lack of woolly mammoths to hunt has left him with an insatiable urge to demonstrate expertise in all of existence, which is just one of the many ways our biological programming has betrayed us. Or maybe the girl is outputting her entire mind over a cup of coffee, because the only thing that impresses her more than herself is her ability to explain how impressive she is. Either way, it's the kind of obnoxious tragedy that nearby hipster coffee-swillers can't help live-tweeting about.
The whole point of conversation is getting to know others, and somehow, both these people have missed it. If your part in the conversation could be replaced by a six-inch chunk of silicone, so could your contribution to the rest of the relationship. If you're either of these people, then this app amends it.
The Solution:
The Conversation Shot Clock is the easy fix. Siri and Cortana aren't quite stenographers just yet, but basic differences in vocal frequency would make it easy for phones to track who's been talking, and for how long. The screen could show a colored bar, lighting up if it gets too lopsided, maybe flashing alerts like "It's time to stop making statements and start asking questions, dipshit" while prodding the other person to say something with subtle electric shocks.
This impartial electronic referee makes it easier for everyone. They can't claim that you're "interrupting" when you've only been 10 percent of the conversation so far. It's also worth mentioning that a smartphone which makes us better at talking to each other could silence an entire generation of assholes complaining about "kids these days."
And I haven't even gotten into the prospect of recording stats. Adding sports statistics to dating would make flaws obvious to everyone, and let even the most oblivious asshole work on improving themselves. People could start working on being better dates the same way they unlock video game achievements (like new content for co-op mode). And "able to maintain 50/50 chatter" would be an attractive award on a dating profile. We'd finally be able to apply video game logic to sexual encounters in a way that isn't totally psychotic.
Get It Right
The Problem:
First-date conversation topics should be light but also stimulating. You don't want to go about unloading your deepest anxieties, but you also can't simply recite the current state of the weather. So most first-daters end up talking about current events, like whatever happens to be trending on Twitter. These topics are neutral, topical, and show that you're capable of reacting to outside stimulus. All prime factors for mating! The problem is that your date has read those exact same stories, so if you get them wrong, they'll know, and they'll judge you for it. How do you avoid this? Simple ...
The Solution:
With only a few trending topics each day, a "Get It Right" app could easily identify which ones you and your future makeout partner are yammering about. It could queue up the relevant facts, and alert you when you're getting them wrong. You don't want your first date to demonstrate an inability to remember things you saw on a screen ten minutes ago -- that's practically the only survival skill our species has left.
We can reverse the polarity of Get It Right into Emergency Subject, because now you can say "reverse the polarity" in a dating context without immediately losing that context. (The Internet has been awesome for nerd romance.) Emergency Subject would load one of the day's topical subjects to talk about. (This basically how we use phones with friends already, without the pretense or delay.) The Emergency Subject would be triggered when Get It Right realizes that you're screwing up an existing story, or when Conversation Shot Clock detects too much silence. We already let phones beep and bug us when they're running out of power or memory. The least they can do is help us when we're in the same situations.
The Abandon Date Timer
The Problem:
If a dating app is encouraging you to meet strangers, then it should also help get away from them. Our phones already stop us from screwing up our spelling. They should help with the other kinds of screwing, too. After all, people will soldier through more warning signs than the first ten minutes of a slasher movie if they think there's sex at the end. Our brains come pre-loaded with enough denial to build and flood a pyramid, because in the stone age, every sexual opportunity was vital to the future of our species. These days, we have the opposite problem, and our evolutionary urges are contrary to our desire for long-term coupling. That's why we need to program a robot to tell us when to abandon a crappy date.
The Solution:
Some doomed dates are appallingly obvious to everyone except the couple themselves, stuck as they are in the eye of the sexually-frustrated hurricane. People sitting at nearby tables know it. The servers know it. People walking past the restaurant somehow know it, feeling a small shiver in their pancreas which tells them that a terrible, terrible mistake is about to be made. Far across the galaxy, Jedi feel weak and sit down, causing their apprentices concern.
The "Abandon Date Timer" is Tinder in reverse. Instead of looking at lots of people, saying whom you'd be great with, and encouraging mistakes, it would watch your current date, compare it to your pre-selected preferences, and scream "NO!" when appropriate. Or, you know, notify you in a more subtle way. It would gather data from all the other apps on this list and give you an objective opinion about whether your next conquest is going to be a disaster. Remember, dates are like an airplane: Just because things are going quickly doesn't mean you're moving in the right direction. This is the app that tells you when to pull up
It would also be a tremendous time saver. Instead of struggling though an entire date to get to the point where it's polite to leave, the app can alert people after a certain awfulness threshold has been reached. No longer do you need to pretend that someone just called you. Your phone itself can signal your escape.
The Dateometer
The Problem:
The most common dating disaster is as mundane as it is devastating. Sometimes, dates don't work out. It's no one's fault. No one's acting entitled or cruel. Things just aren't meant to be, and it's painfully, cringingly obvious to everyone except one person: you. Once you finally realize where you've been all night, it's devastating. Another common problem is actually the opposite: Things went way better than you thought, but you were too timid to make a move. Don't feel bad -- everyone does it. But what if they didn't? What if an app fixed this too?
The Solution:
This app wouldn't just be a GPS guiding us to our date, but also a street sign telling us how fast or slow it's safe to go. The "Dateometer" would track data from all the other apps on this list, compare things to pre-selected preferences from both sides, and objectively tell people whether things are going well.
"YOUR AI OVERLORD COMMANDS YOU TO BONE!"
The app could evolve and improve with experience. The more dates you take it on, the better it'll get at working out what you want. Love-luddites would say this is a soulless approach. One which would end with us sending our smartphones on dates so that they can bring back the perfect person without us ever having to leave our homes. I say that this app would be perfect and make every billion dollars. If machines could automatically connect good dates, most people would leapfrog over Tinder into blissful Skynet-approved marriage.
An important part of the Dateometer would be manual overrides. (Another nerdy romance fantasy: the opportunity to say "Manual overrides!") Each person could toggle options like "Meet Again" or "Let's Get Out Of Here And Do Each Other," so the Dateometer would only generate results within a range agreed by the people. OKCupid already does this with its questionnaires, but the Dateometer would do it live, and with context-specific options!
More importantly, when the Dateometer gives a special blinking red light, the users unlock a second set of options, asking questions, like "Did the other person respect that?" "Were they cool?" or "Do you need help?" And that information would appear on the target's dating profile. Above their name. In giant yellow and black letters.
Aside from the fact that this app would require incredible technological leaps and/or magic, how are tools like this not the standard? Especially now that sexual violence resulting from online dates is skyrocketing? In the future, people will look back at social networks built without anti-abuse and reporting tools in the same way we look at early cars without safety standards or safety glass: as nonsensically dangerous vehicles of painful disaster. Even plumbers have certifications and public reviews, and they're only working on things that go near your naked body.
Likewise, when all lights are green, both people can stop trying so damn hard to decode each other and get on with enjoying the night and each other.
Check out the dating apps the world doesn't need (but still has) in 4 Creepy Dating Apps That Actually Exist and check out the app that doesn't let you see who you're dating in 5 Relationship Apps Designed Solely For Insane People.
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