It seems St. Valentine has swiped left again.
Ah yes, it is indeed that time of year again, folks. Welcome to ?Valentine’s Eve.
It’s the day lonely lovers gather around their smartphones to round up a last minute date on Tinder, Grindr or whatever digital dating app the lonely heart may desire.
As we try to convince Cupid his arrow is no longer needed, because we truly believe an emoji will suffice, the Editorial Board is reminded of simpler times. Yes, times when smartphones, Tinder and the infamous heart emoji didn’t exist.
We are reminded of a story that dates back to the third century, when a saint named Valentine was imprisoned for conducting secret marriages against Roman law and fell in love with his jailer’s daughter.
To express his heart’s desire, he penned a letter to her and signed it, “From your Valentine.” Much to our despair, he was beheaded shortly after.
And thus Valentine’s Day was born. Or at least that’s how the story goes.
In all seriousness, modern digital dating doesn’t result in beheadings, or at least we hope they don’t. But it does reflect a shifting cultural phenomenon of how humans connect.
We’ve now entered into a world where we have the ability to dismiss another human being by simply ?clicking a button or swiping a finger.
We get it. It’s easier and faster to swipe through an app than to fall in love in a coffee shop. In fact, according to Tinder, the company monitors more than one billion swipes a day, and it matches about 12 million people a day. That’s a lot of swiping.
We also understand aggregated data has a certain power to connect individuals with similar interests and characteristics, but data isn’t ?everything.
There’s also something quite telling about how people express themselves privately on a digital dating platform in comparison to how people express themselves publicly.
So the real question is, can computers truly understand human nature?
As OkCupid co-founder and “Dataclysm: Who We Are (When We Think No One’s Looking)” author Christian Rudder said, “There’s no way OkCupid, Facebook, Twitter, these sites even added all together can stand in for the entirety of the human condition. People do all kinds of things they don’t ?do online.”
So as you start to finalize your Valentine’s Day plans, we’ll leave you with this note: As much as you would like to, you just can’t send a dozen roses to your one, true online love — Netflix. We’re really sorry.
