Ledger

Issue date: 2/28/08 Section: Back Page

Speed dating, the placing of singles in several consecutive brief "dates" in hopes of finding attractive prospects, is a phenomenon in romance that became popular in the last decade. Many businesses offer speed dating as a commercial dating service, but the University of Washington Tacoma's Student Activities Board offered it for free to students as part of a Valentine's Day event held in the Mattress Factory's oUWTpost.

The event was organized beforehand via e-mail, and originally anticipated 12 participants, according to SAB's director of entertainment and recreation, Monica Kayastha. At the time of the event, only
eight students participated, one of whom was Kayastha herself, and another being myself, covering the event.

Chairs were set at a folding banquet table in the center of the oUWTpost, sideby-side at the long ends so dates could face each other. Each place came complete with a cheat sheet of questions to ask if the conversation became stale, such as:

"What type of music do you like?" With only four dates in progress at once, the length of each date was extended from three minutes to five minutes within the first round. In official speed dating events, the length of the date is eight minutes, and I don't know how this is done, because five minutes felt like an eternity. Conversation with my first date had just wrapped up neatly at three minutes, when - surprise surprise! - we learned we had two minutes more to spare on light conversation. "Um," I said.
"Er," she replied.

To her credit, she might have actually been saying something, but I wasn't able to tell because the main stage - and the speakers - had been placed adjacent to the banquet table. While the dates occurred, Kiko Salas, the director of marketing and promotions for SAB, pulled and announced winning raffle tickets for the larger Valentine's Day event. Loudly.

If anything interesting was said between myself and any of my dates, it was impossible to tell over the sounds of potential prizes galore.

How did I get here? How did this become appealing to anybody at all? According to speeddating.com, speed dating was created in 1998 by Rabbi Yaacov Deyo, in an attempt to help young Jewish singles in the Beverly Hills region meet and marry. The round robin dating concept caught on with several commercial
dating enterprises, and gained popularity with portrayals in "Sex and the City" and "Hitch" as an activity that glamorous and successful people partook in. Supporters argued that speed dating saved time, and
Malcolm Gladwell, in his book "Blink," noted that a University of Pennsylvania study found that attraction was often based on first impressions.

But there was no chemistry on Valentine's Day, for me or, I suspect, my dates. It was forced, it felt forced, and every interaction was strained accordingly.

There's something appealing about speed dating, rooted in our mythical notion of love at first sight. It's romantic, but also, in a way, lazy. Why work at love? There's someone perfect for everyone, and all one has to do is wait and see. There's no work or compromise to it. Speed dating is the 21st century epitome of love at first sight. Modern lovers have no time to spare on waiting, so they should use the laws of probability to greatest advantage.

Perhaps it works to greater effect among large groups of young professionals. But among students, and with such low participation, the result was decidedly impotent.

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