Over the summer my daughter got me hooked on this awful reality dating show. I openly admit it quickly became a guilty pleasure.
The show was called “Are You the One”. The premise was that there’s a group of twenty something’s, in the case of the season that I watched there were equal numbers of women and men, and I think there were about 14 in total. Before coming on the show, the contestants were subject to personality tests and interviews, and their friends and families were interviewed. After review, each contestant was said to have a perfect match that would be in the house/on the show with them. The trick was to figure out who your perfect match was.
Cheesy. Tawdry. Ridiculous. A way for people to just sleep around in the hope that they spot their person.
I was all in for the ride.
So once you get past the drama and the craziness of a house filled with horny, attractive people, you get down to the concept of a computer finding your perfect match. And I had to wonder: should there be a computer generated dating show for people that are older?
When you’re young and looking for love, you may have unreal expectations as to what your ideal partner would be. But when you’ve been around the block a few times, you get down to knowing what does and doesn’t matter. You’ve made the mistakes, you’ve paid for the mistakes, and in many cases you’ve returned the mistakes. Would an older person be more ready to accept what the computer says is the ideal person for you?
Should we trust the science when it comes to relationships?
Does a computer know best who our person should be?
What do you think of computer generated matches for compatibility? Do you think a computer would be better at finding a mate than a person looking across a crowded room and seeing someone?
Discuss: