Will virtual dates stick around after the pandemic?

The Verge's Why’d You Push That Button? is back for a special episode all about virtual dating in 2020. The pandemic has forced us all to stay at home when we can, which means if you want to go on a date, it may have to be done online. Ashley Carman and Kaitlyn Tiffany return to talk to online daters and app makers about how they are adapting to virtual-only dating, and what features and behaviors will stick around after social distancing and the pandemic end. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Nilay Patel?

  Hey everybody, it's Neelai from The Vergecast. Special third episode in the feed today. Not The Vergecast, but Why'd You Push That Button? One of my favorite podcasts that we put on hiatus when Kaitlyn Tiffany went to the Atlantic. Ashley Carmen convinced her to come back, record a special episode of Why'd You Push That Button? About dating in the pandemic, under quarantine, under lockdown, the tools people are using, how relationships are developing. I love this show so much. I'm so happy Kaitlyn did a little Renegade episode with us. Check it out, it's Ashley and Kaitlyn with Why'd You Push That Button?

• 0:39Speaker 01

  Hello and welcome to Why'd You Push That Button? A show where Kaitlyn Tiffany

• 0:44Speaker 02

  Hello.

• 0:45Speaker 01

  And Ashley Carmen, that's me, examine all the choices technology forces us to make. We are back, sort of.

• 0:54Speaker 02

  Just for now, just for today.

• 0:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, a little one-off for all of you who have stuck with us for this almost year since we last released an episode.

• 1:05Speaker 02

  I have absolutely no sense of whether that's accurate because I no longer have any idea of the use of calendars.

• 1:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it's a pandemic. Kate, how have you been doing? Let's give the listeners a little bit of a sense of our mental state these days.

• 1:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think I'm getting into the swing of it. When, a couple of months ago, when we started talking about doing this episode, it was chaos here in the Tiffany home. I had recently broken a mirror, a window, two wine glasses. It was basically like I was just kind of crunching around like a floor covered in glass, being like, I wonder if I'll ever see my friends or family again.

• 1:46Speaker 02

  So that was a dark time, but you know, things are picking up in New York a little bit. We're allowed to go to the beach.

• 1:53Speaker 01

  Crucial.

• 1:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, we're allowed to look at each other outside, if not touch each other. So things are on the, on the up.

• 2:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, we've, we've seen each other, which is really great. I think I've sort of settled into a routine of sorts. I've done pandemic bingo, I've done Peloton work. Workouts, I've made various foods and baked. I've done a puzzle, I hate to admit out loud.

• 2:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:17Speaker 01

  I've learned TikTok dances and I've had Jell-O shots for my birthday that you made me.

• 2:21Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:22Speaker 01

  Anyway, so we wanted to do this episode where, you know, of course, why'd you push that button? We are always curious about how dating is affected, what's changing in dating these days. And so we wanted to do an episode about how COVID-19 and the pandemic has forced us to make a ton of decisions about how we live, work, relax, et cetera, and how we date. Everyone's been staying at home, as you all know. And so that means they haven't been able to go on real dates. And virtual dating has become a thing. And we want to know, is this a thing that's going to last forever? Or is this a pandemic phenomenon that we're going to all forget ever happened, repress it? Maybe mention it to our therapist once and then that's it.

• 3:00Speaker 02

  Yes, so virtual dating, I guess the first half of virtual dating is like a concept that was already part of normal dating. It's just like swiping on Tinder or OkCupid or Hinge, which I guess is more of a scroll type action, but you know, whatever. And then the virtual component is that because we have been under stay at home orders and because people have been encouraged not to hang out in close proximity with people who don't live with them, you just don't do the whole thing where you meet up in a bar, which you can't do. You don't do the whole kissing thing. You don't do any of that. You just like FaceTime or Zoom or Skype

• 3:41Speaker 02

  or insert alternative secure video conferencing software here to see if you have a connection, which all of that, I think, makes sense. We're kind of interested in what happens after the first time you FaceTime with somebody? When, you know, how do you build momentum? Can you build momentum? Is it actually dating? And will there be like remnants of virtual dating in post pandemic romance?

• 4:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, how effective is virtual dating really? And I think broadly geographic location has become increasingly less important. Like, when you're doing remote work, it doesn't matter where you are. I could be doing in a forest, or a beach, or in a city. And it really does not matter as long as I have an internet connection. But, you know, with dating, these dating apps have kind of made it seem like maybe geographic location doesn't matter for that either. So we want to know how effective it really is to date from afar. And so here's some stats. We're just gonna throw some numbers at everybody. OkCupid said that it saw a 62% increase in daters on OkCupid going on virtual dates in April compared to March. And it started including COVID-19 questions in people's profiles so they could talk about how they feel about the pandemic.

• 4:51Speaker 01

  eHarmony reported a 27% increase in messages in April. Match said that daily swipes were at an all-time high during its last earnings report, which was mid-pandemic. So obviously, all of these stats are a little bit older, but they are from the peak of the pandemic, which is when we would expect most people to be using their apps and video calls the most. So presumably, while the pandemic kind of wanes and then comes back during the year, we'll see people stay on the apps, but probably change how much they're using them depending on the state of lockdown in their state or country. So, we figured we should reach out to a dating app expert, aka someone who works in the field, and find out how things are going on the ground.

• 5:34Speaker 01

  So back in March, way back when, we talked to Pretty Joshy, the VP of Strategy at Bumble, about what they were seeing with numbers during the pandemic. And it's true, more people are using the app.

• 5:44Speaker 03

  We saw an 84% increase in video calls that were placed between users. And what we are hearing from our users is that this is basically a way for them to connect safely because they can't actually connect IRL right now.

• 6:03Speaker 01

  And because we interviewed her back in March, I reached out to get a little bit more of updated numbers. So Bumble actually saw a 69% increase in video calls on Bumble during the week ending May 1st versus video calls during the week ending March 13th. And the average of video call slash phone call time on Bumble is 28 minutes. So people are really like doing the thing. They're doing the virtual dates. There were also some product changes to actually deal with the influx of people using the app. Most significantly, Bumble adjusted their quote unquote "distance filtering" for finding matches.

• 6:35Speaker 03

  Prior to this world, everyone was able to really interact with or meet people within 100 mile radius. But now because, you know, you can't really meet anybody IRL. And a lot of people are kind of quarantining in communities that they aren't necessarily a part of because maybe they've gone back to their parents' houses or something. What we've tried to do is give them the ability to connect with folks that might be a part of the community that they'll eventually go back to.

• 7:01Speaker 01

  And they also added voice notes, which actually voice notes are kind of having a moment right now.

• 7:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, I remember earlier in the whole like, "how do we date from inside our apartments?" conversation, a friend of mine was saying that she was going to start sending like sultry voice memos, which I honestly thought sounded really fun. I actually tried it out a little bit when I was long distance dating during the pandemic. I mean, it wasn't actually sultry, but I did send a lot of voice memos.

• 7:27Speaker 01

  I love voice memos.

• 7:29Speaker 02

  They're, I think, more intimate than a sexy pic because they go on for longer.

• 7:33Speaker 01

  Plus, we're all alone anyway. It's like you have time and space to listen to this voice message. It's not like you're on the move.

• 7:40Speaker 02

  R.I.P. the move.

• 7:41Speaker 01

  Okay, so Bumble is not the only dating app that's creating all these product features. Others are, of course, doing it as well. So Tinder is letting everyone around the world swipe for free to find quarantine buddies. This is usually a paid feature, but now they're making it free. They also launched something called Global Mode, which completely gets rid of geographic filters entirely for free. So you could be mashing with people wherever and vice versa. Hinge is also letting people tap a button to say they're ready for a video call date, which is kind of interesting, but I guess it's supposed to facilitate the conversation so you don't have to be awkward about like, "are you open to video calls?"

• 8:15Speaker 02

  If you're having a conversation with someone in the messages, then you just like hit a button being like, I'm ready.

• 8:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it shows up at the bottom of your chat and it's like, okay, I guess that means she's good to go or he is.

• 8:26Speaker 02

  Okay, I don't know about that, but okay.

• 8:29Speaker 01

  And then Facebook still has a dating thing. They launched their video call dating and Tinder is also going to launch one-on-one video calls too. So everyone is going all in on video calls, virtual dating, the badges, lack of location filters, everything.

• 8:46Speaker 02

  I will say that while I do support this in principle, in practice, as someone who has really bad webcam face, I don't know that it will work for me.

• 8:55Speaker 01

  You really have to work your angles and your lighting. You have to know what you're doing. Tinder, I think for me, is the most interesting one, primarily because it's, I would assume, the world's biggest dating app. And Neelai and I, our editor in chief at The Verge, we actually talked to the CEO of Tinder, Ellie Seidman, for The Verge's other podcast called Vergecast and got a little bit more of the behind the scenes details about why they invested in video dating and also why they care about this as a phenomenon.

• 9:24Speaker 04

  Video is not about video. Video is about live and video is about the ability to get connection. When we do it on Tinder, we actually, the positive side is we bring to bear all of our experience with safety. You know, the things that are completely off platform, we have, you know, in most cases, zero ability to do anything about. They happen outside of our purview, so there are a lot of benefits.

• 9:44Speaker 01

  So really what he's saying is that Tinder is going to keep us safer on our video calls than maybe they would be if we were just using FaceTime or Google Duo or whatever else people use. And this applies to privacy too, so you can actually keep some of your personal information secret from your matches.

• 10:02Speaker 04

  People often want a certain amount of privacy as they're developing a relationship, as that relationship is forming, and they don't know where it's going to end up. They don't know if it's going to last. And so giving out your FaceTime ID, giving out your Snap handle, et cetera, like giving out all these other things may not be what you want.

• 10:18Speaker 01

  Ellie was actually saying that before the pandemic, video calling was on the list of features they wanted to launch, but it was very low on that list. So the pandemic just sped it up. But I'm curious, Kate, if you were on Tinder, would you want to use a video call feature with someone you don't know yet?

• 10:35Speaker 02

  If it became like a norm to do a quick screening video call with someone before you took a whole night out of your week to meet up with them in person, I think I would be into that. I mean, not on the dating apps right now, but that seems useful to me. I can't even count the number of times that I've like dragged my butt to Bushwick or to a piano bar in midtown. And then as soon as the person comes in and says hello, I'm I'm know that I am not gonna vibe, which maybe sounds shallow, but I think it would be better for everyone if you can just like video chat, be like, mm, and then not have to have that embarrassing like 20 minute date

• 11:18Speaker 02

  where one person is ready to book it.

• 11:21Speaker 01

  Exactly. There's been not so many days, but definitely a couple of dates that stand out in my mind where I'm like, oh, if I had a video call to just screen you preliminarily, we would have been good. We could have avoided this whole awkward thing where I've had to chug a glass of wine and then make up an excuse to leave.

• 11:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, there are people who will expose themselves like real quick and then you can just cut it off.

• 11:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, if you're gonna make problematic comments, the problematic comics are gonna come out in that video call, one way or the other.

• 11:56Speaker 01

  So I'm imagining that after the pandemic, video calls, kind of like we're talking about, might stick around as a screening system. It just makes sense, especially for women, for safety, to avoid ghosting, all the things like video call, cool. But what I'm really curious about is during the pandemic, if while we're stuck with digital dating, which is text and voice and video, whether people are actually talking about more meaningful things and thereby building a relationship, or if they're kind of just shooting the shit, talking about being depressed pandemic, like fireworks.

• 12:28Speaker 01

  In Brooklyn, whatever, versus actually trying to, you know, go a little deeper. And Pretty from Bumble told us that with people being stuck inside, they are having more meaningful conversations in the app. And Bumble says that it knows this because they have an algorithm that apparently assesses conversation.

• 12:46Speaker 03

  We have a proprietary algorithm that basically helps us understand what a meaningful conversation could look like. And that we can see has increased since the time of kind of COVID and everyone being quarantined and likely putting potentially more intent, right, behind the conversations that they're trying to have. And so now we're seeing that about one in four conversations are turning into these meaningful conversations and meaningful chats, for lack of a better word, that I can then only hypothesize are turning into good forms of relationships, however folks are defining them.

• 13:23Speaker 01

  I wish Pretty gave us more info because this is like really shocking to hear. But it's also not that surprising considering we give all of these apps lots of data about ourselves, even if it doesn't really seem like we are, so they can see what we're talking about and can kind of analyze that information. But yeah, just suffice it to say, these apps know what you're doing.

• 13:43Speaker 02

  I would assume that they're probably talking about like the number of messages people are exchanging or the length of those messages, which could have been, you know, a temporary pandemic thing. People are just dumping their anxieties on each other. It could have been sexting. People were extremely horny at the beginning of quarantine. I don't know if we use that word on this show, but it's possible that the meaningful conversation was a blip. We don't know how long that's going to last in the online dating world.

• 14:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, like temporarily, people were vulnerable because they had no other outlets except for like therapy and a few friends. But as we go back to potentially at least being able to go on dates outside, I think people might go back to their game playing ways. But because, you know, Kate and I are not in the dating scene right now, we wanted to talk to a few daters who are on the ground experiencing this and get their take on how it's been going for them and whether virtual dating is here to stay.

• 14:44Speaker 02

  First, we talked to Catherine Smythe, a writer and author of the memoir, "All the Lives We Ever Lived: Seeking Solace in Virginia Woolf."

• 14:53Speaker 05

  I also just finished a piece about coronavirus, ding ding, loneliness, singledom.

• 14:59Speaker 02

  So she truly knows about isolation and loneliness. Those are some key themes.

• 15:05Speaker 05

  I'm talking to you from Rhode Island, but I actually live in Brooklyn most of the time.

• 15:10Speaker 02

  Catherine got a taste of social distancing a few months before we did in America.

• 15:14Speaker 05

  I had matched with a guy named Ian earlier in the year, in January. And then he had actually gone to Hong Kong, where he teaches at a university. Because he was in Hong Kong, he was going through social distancing two months before I was. So he was the first person who introduced me to the term "social distancing", actually, on Valentine's Day. And I had no idea what he was talking about. And he was like, "Oh, yeah, no, that's when you don't see anyone." And I was kind of like, "Oh, well, whatever, because this is a problem unique to China."

• 15:45Speaker 02

  Of course, two weeks later, she was ordered to stay at home as well. She then noticed a side effect of at-home dating, the dreaded check-in texts from scummy exes and former flames.

• 15:57Speaker 05

  I was also noticing that all these other men from my past were kind of popping up, you know, people that I hadn't heard from in months, or else people that I had just started dating, you know, back in Brooklyn, who, you know, were at this kind of indeterminate place in our relationship, where it really wasn't clear what it was going to be, and it was just kind of put on hold.

• 16:17Speaker 01

  I'm very disappointed in my exes, unsurprisingly, that they have not hit me up at all. I'm all offended. Like, don't you kind of reflect on our relationship when you're all alone and have no one else?

• 16:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, the two that I had were not very exciting. One was from somebody I will never speak to again in my life, and another one was just from some internet boy I went out with like, three times. So they weren't like, they didn't have the drama of Catherine's. But I do understand the impulse to reach out within your pre-existing contacts rather than going onto the app, you know? It's, we're lonely. We're sad. We want the familiar. Go with something you already know, even if you might get an extremely harsh text back.

• 16:58Speaker 01

  That's what I heard from a lot of my friends who are dating too, is that they were texting people who they had either gone on one date with and it fizzled, or people who they like meant to meet up with, or at least were hooking up with, just because it's a little bit easier than starting fresh.

• 17:12Speaker 05

  Like the advent of COVID kind of feels like the silence in a game of musical chairs, where all of a sudden the music stops and you're just like, oh, I guess I'm stuck with whoever it was that I was kind of casually dating.

• 17:24Speaker 02

  So as we were talking about before, since so many people are working from home, geography is becoming a lot less relevant in dating. So a lot of people are figuring they might as well video chat with someone who lives nowhere near them. In Catherine's case, Hong Kong.

• 17:39Speaker 05

  I reached out to him and I was just like, I'm lonely. And he wrote back hug with all these parentheses, which I'd never seen before. And I was like, oh, that's weirdly comforting. And then he was eventually like, you know, we should do one of those weird FaceTime first date things. And I was thinking, you know, that's not something I would ever normally do in real life. But I was kind of like, sure, yeah, let's do it.

• 18:00Speaker 02

  Another interesting consequence of the pandemic has been the slide into complete lack of fashion. Nobody that I know is getting dressed anymore. We all look like slobs. Webcams aren't very flattering. And Catherine, knowing this, decided to have her date with Ian over the phone instead of on FaceTime, so that she would not have to try to put herself together for the video call.

• 18:25Speaker 05

  So we ended up just talking on the phone for three and a half hours. And it was really nice and like a very strange way to get to know someone. And he had this kind of a really amazing radio personality voice.

• 18:37Speaker 02

  I can imagine that in a phone call that long, you have some pretty meaningful conversations, maybe even more so than you would in an IRL date, which don't tend to last three and a half hours in my experience. So is social distancing making for better dates?

• 18:53Speaker 05

  I mean, No, it definitely does not feel like a real date. Like, you know, if you're both like, say, in a bar and you, you know, have a couple of drinks, you're kind of just like warming up to each other and getting to like, all the impulses that are coming at you are the same impulses, you know, and you're seeing the same things and you're, whereas, you know, like, he's looking out at these like beautiful hills of Hong Kong and, you know, enormous towers and I'm like sitting on my deck in the dark.

• 19:17Speaker 02

  According to Catherine, there's still something missing with this new form of dating.

• 19:21Speaker 05

  Like, I miss like touch, you know, like, like not necessarily that, you know, we would have gone to bed, but like, just even this, the fact that that's not an option felt very like, a little bit of an anticlimax.

• 19:33Speaker 02

  As we've said, we live in a world of unknowns now. Calendars have no meaning. We don't know why we own them. It's horrible to think about the future. Dating was already so disorienting and alienating, and now it is worse.

• 19:49Speaker 05

  There's something about not knowing when this is gonna end that makes it feel, I think, a little bit daunting. You know, like, I think, I think part of the excitement of like going online and talking to someone is this like promise of possibly, you know, getting to see them and, and, and heading it off. And it feels to me like, what's a little bit like, you know, what's the point?

• 20:12Speaker 01

  So Catherine kind of makes it sound like this whole experiment around virtual dating just is not working out that well and that maybe the whole effort is kind of useless.

• 20:23Speaker 02

  She definitely had some issues, but she wouldn't go so far as to say that it's useless.

• 20:26Speaker 05

  I think it's actually a very probably great way to get to know someone. To me, the barrier feels like, what happens next? And, and the fact that like, how long can you sustain this kind of like endless talking when you don't really know, like, are you gonna be able to meet up in a month? Are you gonna be able to meet up in like four months? You know, it just feel, I think it's like that indeterminacy is really, really hard to, to maintain, like, an excitement.

• 20:52Speaker 01

  Okay, so the fact that Catherine is not willing to completely write off virtual dating makes me think that we haven't totally gotten to the core here of whether virtual dating will completely stick around, but at least makes me think aspects, if not most of it, has lasting potential.

• 21:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, video chat, like, we're sold on video chatting, I think.

• 21:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, and the numbers show that more people than ever are using dating apps than before. So clearly, there's people out there who are trying the apps for the first time. And I wanted to talk to someone who I knew was new to the dating apps. And that person is my boyfriend's brother, Max, whose Tinder and Hinge dating stories have been keeping me quite entertained.

• 21:34Speaker 06

  I don't know if I 100% love it, but it's working and it's okay. I think I'm setting myself up for post-coronavirus.

• 21:42Speaker 01

  So the thing about Max is that he always hated on the dating apps pre-pandemic and refused to use them. So I was super surprised when suddenly he pivoted to downloading them as soon as the pandemic set in.

• 21:55Speaker 06

  I think it was just because, like, one, I couldn't go out. And like normally, like, how I would meet someone is like out and about at a bar or meeting with friends or whatnot, or just through mutual friends. Now, I obviously really can't go out much and socialize. Then I was like, okay, I need to socialize somehow.

• 22:12Speaker 01

  And for a newbie, he's been very successful. He chatted with two women, both of whom he's gone on FaceTime dates with. And the first one went really well until she pulled the ultimate dating sin.

• 22:25Speaker 06

  We had another one set up, and she, like, snapchatted me before, and she was drinking tequila. And I think she, like, drank too much tequila, so she actually ghosted me on our second date. So that was kind of a Corona red flag for me.

• 22:38Speaker 01

  Actually, this happened to another friend of mine, too, now that I'm thinking about this. Someone else I know got ghosted during the pandemic. And I can't believe it. How do you ghost during a pandemic when we are all under no illusions that you have nothing else going on?

• 22:51Speaker 02

  Also, kind of rude at a time where everyone's really nervous about people getting sick, you know? Just a polite, "I no longer feel like talking to you." I guess that's not polite, but, you know, a polite version of that. Then no one has to worry that you have become ill with a communicable virus.

• 23:07Speaker 01

  But going back to Max, Max's second woman he went on a date with actually might have some potential.

• 23:14Speaker 06

  This girl is actually pretty awesome. And like, we talked like consecutively for a few weeks after the fact. You know, we were just drinking wine, hanging out and talking over FaceTime. And we got to know each other pretty well. We were talking about like, maybe cooking together. She loves cooking. She seems like a really good cook, based off of the food that she showed me. And I was actually cooking the other night.

• 23:34Speaker 01

  Generally, he's feeling pretty good about this woman, but the relationship has reached a standstill.

• 23:39Speaker 06

  After some time though, we like, kinda like disconnected just because there's no physical connection there. It was just because we obviously can't see one another. After a certain point, it was kinda like, where's this going?

• 23:52Speaker 01

  The conversation was meaningful enough to make him want to keep talking to her, but it's still missing that essential, physical aspect.

• 23:59Speaker 06

  We were talking like, for weeks on end. And it was like, you know, we're really getting to know one another. But like, I just feel like, I don't know. Like, I feel like if there's no like, actual physical connection, or like, being able to actually be with one another in person, I just feel like it's limiting and it kinda doesn't feel, you know, 100% real. And I also don't want that to take away from, you know, what we could have in person, if that makes sense.

• 24:21Speaker 01

  You know, Max makes it sound like the virtual dating situation and the dating apps is just kind of a Band-Aid over the situation. Like, he's fine, he's doing it, he's making it work for him. But this is just a placeholder. He is ready to get back to in-person dating. I mean, the first weekend that restaurants were open, he's like, "I'm going to a restaurant." And I'm sitting outside. Like, he is ready to go back and be social. He's ready. So I think, you know, this doesn't speak too highly of virtual dating sticking around, specifically for people who have never been interested in dating online before.

• 24:50Speaker 02

  It seems like he doesn't want to go on any more FaceTime dates, but he is maybe like, comfortable with Tinder now as a concept.

• 24:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think he's seeing the potential of meeting a bunch of people. Like, it does broaden your horizons as far as how many people you can meet in a day.

• 25:06Speaker 02

  Right.

• 25:06Speaker 01

  It's unparalleled.

• 25:15Speaker 01

  So with both Catherine and Max, they are kind of in this spot of like not really knowing what the future's going to hold, if they're going to be interested in continuing virtual dating. But that isn't to say that people haven't successfully managed dating from afar by virtual dating. And, you know, people who do long distance relationships have had to make the internet work for them for a very long time and way before the pandemic hit. So we wanted to talk to someone who has been in that situation for some time to see how the pandemic is affecting them. You know, they've been using these tools for a really long time. So we want to know what they can tell us about the future of virtual dating. So we chatted with a man named Matt, whose partner lives in another

• 25:58Speaker 01

  country and was already in a long distance relationship before the pandemic started.

• 26:03Speaker 07

  My name's Matt Willie. Right now, I am living at my childhood home in New Jersey.

• 26:09Speaker 01

  He and his partner, Mike, who lives in Canada, are a true Tinder love story, but the pandemic is throwing off their plans.

• 26:17Speaker 07

  I met my partner, Mike, four years ago now, when I was on a business trip in Montreal. And we met on Tinder at the time. We're now working on a Visa application and that requires us to live in separate countries. So we're pretty used to long distance at this point. You know, we have gotten into the groove of it and understand each other's boundaries and communication.

• 26:41Speaker 02

  Matt is feeling what both Max and Catherine kind of talked about, feeling this no end in sight type of mindset.

• 26:49Speaker 07

  In the past, we've been able to visit each other once a month or so. And that's really been like what's rooted us to the relationship, I guess. You know, obviously, now that the border's closed, that's changed. So since then, we've kind of had to reckon with not knowing when we'll see each other again, which is something that we've never really had to deal with before.

• 27:10Speaker 02

  Matt and Mike have figured out ways to stay in touch normally, but now that they can't see each other in person at all, the need to keep up communication is even more urgent. It's honestly impressive how many different platforms and chat formats they've been using.

• 27:27Speaker 07

  One of the main things we do is we watch TV together. That's always been a way that we relax. And recently, we've been really into The Real Housewives. It's just such a good way for us to chill out at the end of the night. Ultimately, we usually end up using Facebook Messenger call or FaceTime. We also play Animal Crossing together now or play Mario Kart together, things like that, where the online play element makes it feel like we're closer. And then we try to, throughout the day, keep that call going as much as we can. And I'll just prop my phone up against the wall while I'm writing

• 28:09Speaker 07

  or while I'm drinking my coffee and writing and just trying to keep the connection open.

• 28:15Speaker 01

  So still, we're seeing technology as a dating enabler, but that only seems to be a temporary replacement. It's a buffer for when you can eventually be together in person. And in the end, unfortunately, Kate, Real Housewives is not a replacement for her real hug.

• 28:32Speaker 07

  Physical intimacy doesn't translate very well. That's also something that we've had to deal with for a long time, but always with that knowledge that next month we'll see each other again. Next month, we can lay in the same bed. So I think that probably is what translates least well for us, is how much you want to be able to give somebody a hug right now.

• 28:56Speaker 02

  There are also real-life gestures and activities that are genuinely romantic, but don't really work when you adapt them into a digital context.

• 29:05Speaker 07

  Things like having a candle at dinner or just things where you would usually put some extra effort into a date can feel cheesy when you're on the internet. Because it's like, why am I lighting these candles in my bedroom and nobody's here?

• 29:24Speaker 07

  So I think a lot of what I've come to realize is like, you kind of have to change your expectations a little bit of what is romantic or intimate. You know, now it feels somewhat romantic to just sit down and watch The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, whereas like cooking the same dinner and lighting a few candles can feel cheesy or like it doesn't translate as well.

• 29:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, and the pandemic is just a huge hurdle for them because more than anything else, going through hopefully what's a once in a lifetime event would be really nice to do with a human being by your side.

• 29:56Speaker 07

  The feeling that while this absolutely ludicrous thing is happening in the world, like I can't be with him for it, like we can't really go through it together. That's the part that bothers me more is the present moment and not being able to help each other through it as much as we'd like to.

• 30:15Speaker 02

  Obviously, we love Matt and his partner and wish them the best. They seem to be working really hard to keep their relationship steady, and we have no doubt that they'll make it through the pandemic.

• 30:27Speaker 07

  Yeah, I guess I feel optimistic in that we both seem to be in a similar place with it, which is uncomfortable, you know, not okay with it at all. But I think that starting the relationship long distance kind of gave us a little more clarity on that fact that like, you know, the next time we do see each other, whenever that is, the way we feel about each other isn't going to change.

• 31:06Speaker 01

  It seems like the big takeaway here is, one, that originally when dating apps came out, it was kind of positioned as like, oh, this is how you're going to meet people. Like, this is the new way to make introductions. No longer do you have to go up to someone at a bar and hope for the best. But this pandemic situation and virtual dating sort of suggests to me that more than that, you can facilitate, like you can get through the first couple of dates worth of material online and you're probably doing okay. But it's when you get to that fourth date where you're like, okay, we're ready for that physical, physical connection, probably.

• 31:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think we kind of decided, correct me if you feel differently, but is that this isn't really going to completely overhaul like the dating experience, but it is maybe shifting somewhat our ideas about which parts of the dating process can happen online and which parts can't.

• 31:57Speaker 01

  Exactly. Now, since we did some of these interviews a while ago, we wanted to give you all a little update on our guests. So Catherine says that she is still single, although Ian broke up with her over a text because of the piece she wrote, which I guess just speaks to the fact that the pandemic is making it awkward to break up with people, even if you've never met them in person, and people still feel like they can do that over text. And then as far as Matt and Max, I think the pandemic and their use of virtual dating really was just a placeholder, because as soon as they had the opportunity to meet up with people in person, they did. So Matt was able to finally cross the border into Canada in June to see his partner, and he's with him now.

• 32:39Speaker 01

  And Max went on a date first thing with one of the women he was speaking to, the ghoster, actually, and it seems to have gone fine. So I think what we're seeing here is just that virtual dating has some merits, but clearly in person is preferable.

• 32:53Speaker 02

  Right.

• 32:54Speaker 01

  It seems like the features we really like and can see sticking around is definitely the video calls as screeners, which again is kind of that first couple dates preliminary info slash just that initial, are you even someone I want to talk to in person screener.

• 33:09Speaker 02

  I should mention that in the course of thinking about this episode, I briefly became obsessed with this Reddit community called NeverMet's, which is for people who are in internet-only relationships, which some of them are extremely sweet. They're just like teenagers who flirt in Minecraft for like months and months on end. So we shouldn't say that online dating doesn't work for anybody, because some people do find it really romantic.

• 33:33Speaker 01

  For sure. And when I spoke to the Tinder CEO, he seemed to suggest that the younger generation, like Gen Z, are the ones who could pull off virtual dating more than millennials.

• 33:44Speaker 04

  Gen Z, the 18, 19-year-olds who arrive on Tinder today, they've grown up with the social internet. They've had that in their life from a very young age. So when they arrive, they've already hung out in digital environments. It might have been Fortnite, right? That could have been the place where they were hanging out with their friends. So the idea of like hanging out and developing a relationship and developing a connection, letting it unfold in a digital environment is not a new idea.

• 34:09Speaker 01

  But as far as whether geography matters, you know, a lot of these dating apps are starting to get rid of their geographic filters. You know, on one hand, I do think that makes some sense because you can have things in common with people around the world and find valuable things in everybody. But at the same time, I'm like, well, you're going to have to overcome some hurdles if you can't see each other in person. Like eventually, you're going to be like, oh, we want to probably meet up and see each other in person. So I don't know how long those filters and the global mode for Tinder is really going to be appealing.

• 34:38Speaker 02

  Right. Like in New York right now, people are still not taking the subway. So I probably wouldn't, if I were on the apps, agree to go on a date with someone who lived in a different borough. I would really like keep my circle tight.

• 34:50Speaker 01

  Right.

• 34:50Speaker 02

  But I would maybe be willing to meet up with someone in person at this point.

• 34:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, same here, totally same. You know, I guess to close this out, I did want to pull again from that Tinder CEO interview because I really wanted to ask him whether technology was advanced enough to replace the IRL experience of dating and kind of get his take. So this is what he had to say.

• 35:11Speaker 04

  I think that this varies for everyone. But you know, our view, you know, my view personally, but our view more broadly as a team at Tinder is that there is a limitation. There is only so far you can go that, you know, we're physical beings, right? And that's important and that's wonderful. And that's been true for, you know, millennia and millennia and millennia. It's not going to change because of COVID and it's not going to change. Uh, it's not going to change. There's a very important place to play for hanging out virtually, but I think there's a very important place to play for the physical world. And we'll have a better sense in a year's time of like how this shakes out, what percentages are what. But I'm definitely betting on the physical world being very important and here to stay.

• 36:04Speaker 01

  So that's it. That is the one-off bonus episode of Why'd You Push That Button? I hope we are back soon. Kate, anything else you want to plug here? You've been doing a lot of great reporting work.

• 36:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, we even neglected to mention this. It's a top of the episode, but I work at The Atlantic now, and this is a lot of the type of thing I've been covering there, just how people are using the internet to cope with the strange feelings of the pandemic. So you could give me a Google if you wanted, find my new home.

• 36:39Speaker 01

  And everyone can follow me on Instagram at AshleyCarman. I hope, I hope one day we get to come back with another season. That would be really cool. But we have no news for you on that front. So don't ask any more questions about that, as much as we love you. All right, that's it for us. See you all later. Bye.

• 36:56Speaker 02

  Bye.