I know a woman who hasn’t had the best luck with guys. A self-described country girl, she’s a full-time student and works as many hours as she can to pay the bills. She doesn’t have a lot of time to hit the dating scene, but fortunately there’s an app for that! She sifts from the pool of eligible bachelors on her phone, swiping from one photo to the next, until she finds a match.
It hasn’t been working out too well.
I know a guy who works at the gym I belong to. A typical 20-something suburban guy, he also goes to school full-time and works as many hours as he can to make ends meet. He is incredibly friendly and radiates positivity. But, dating technology has been letting him down.
These are two hard-working, wonderful human beings who are inexplicably single.
So, I set them up on a blind date.
It wasn’t easy. It took weeks of coordination, reconnaissance and the right balance of promotion and discretion.
The concept of a blind date in today’s digital world seems, well, dated. Who needs a matchmaker when you can launch a multitude of apps, employ all sorts of filters and sort through the seemingly endless list of candidates in the comfort and security of your own home? With an infinite supply of data aggregating in real time within an ever-growing network, the algorithm of love will surely create the perfect match.
Except, when it doesn’t.
Such is the weakness of data-driven endeavors that is so common there are several academic terms to describe it – Campbell’s Law, Goodhart’s Law, The McNamara Fallacy, to name a few. Since human beings began counting things, the ones doing the counting understood data has limitations. It doesn’t always have the answers.
That hasn’t stopped everyone from giving it the college try – designing complex equations, expanding networks and gathering all forms of information in an effort to comprehend a chaotic world. At the speed of light and with relentless resolve, an online merchant can suggest products you desire, an entertainment network can deliver content you find compelling, and social media apps can identify communities to which you want to belong. With each interaction, the algorithm becomes freakishly more accurate.
Except, when it isn’t, and often in the most critical areas of existence, such as love.
I have zero experience in match-making, but I had a gut feeling about these two kids. She’s on the introverted side, but once she warms up, she’s full of energy. He’s extroverted and thrives on energy. Most importantly, he’s sincere and patient. Marketing types would call my hunch “qualitative data.”
A couple of weeks before the holidays, the pair met at a quiet coffee shop and hit it off. There was a first date, a second, a third and, now, they’ve been seeing each other as often as they can.
It’s still early. My friend admits that this guy is different from the type she normally dates, but he keeps surprising her, which she likes.
The guy, whenever I see him at the gym, never stops thanking me.
It all looks very promising, whatever the numbers say.